🍦Scoop: Bezos-backed Slate Auto has “no plans for self-driving”

Slate Automotive CEO Chris Barman is entering an increasingly crowded American electric vehicle market with a rare proposal: delivering an electric truck that costs only about $25,000, without any tax credits, by the end of next year. 

The Jeff Bezos-backed startup is a shot across the bow for the entire auto industry, especially one where a rival electric truck might cost 3x that. Sherwood toured Slate’s design studio and prototype facility in Michigan and sat down with Barman to talk about how she plans to achieve what no one else in America has.

• Much of the cost of vehicles comes from that entertainment console and the sophisticated computing that will enable self-driving. Slate’s avoiding that altogether and just focused on providing an affordable car.

• “We want this vehicle to live on with time.  As the consumer electronics life cycle changes, you can just buy a different tablet when you want and mount it,” Barman told Sherwood. 

• A huge advantage? By using composite exterior panels, Slate doesn’t need a stamping operation or even a paint shop, which Barman said saves the company something like $400 million to $600 million in capital expenditures.

“Through simplification as well, we have roughly a little over 600 parts, where most vehicles today have 2,500 or more,” Barman explained. “It brings our costs down. We don’t have to have as many engineers designing parts. We don’t have to have as many employees putting parts on the vehicle. We don’t have to have as many supplier-quality engineers.” 

The Takeaway

Slate’s making a bet that the other auto companies — which keep adding in features like interactivity and autonomy, upping costs — have been going down the wrong road, and sometime in 2026 we’ll find out if it’s right. One of the scoops she shared with us? The company has absolutely no plans for building self-driving features and has a date set for profitability. The whole interview is fascinating, so do check it out.

Bonus: See our exclusive photo tour inside Slate’s Michigan design studio and prototype facility.

• The crypto rally is very much on. Last week was filled with wild enthusiasm for crypto at levels we haven’t seen in some time, and it wasn’t just for bitcoin, which broke record after record to hit $118,667 on Friday morning. Meanwhile, ethereum climbed to a five-month high, reclaiming the $3,000 level as ethereum ETFs and treasuries pick up steam, among other reasons. All this comes ahead of what the White House has declared is “Crypto Week” and the possible passage of the GENIUS Act, which focuses on stablecoins but could send the entire ecosystem soaring if passed. 

• The market’s decided that tariffs ≠ recession anymore. There are many ways to say “the market is pricing in no recession and a continued AI boom,” but let’s focus on two of them. First: Nvidia on Friday enjoyed a healthy gain while the S&P 500 had a relatively run-of-the-mill decline following some fresh tariff tape bombs that sent futures lower  Thursday evening and Friday morning. That’s one way to say it. Another way would be to look at the market’s pricing of inflation risk over the coming 24 months, and how that’s evolved since tariffs started to become a front-burner issue. Here’s how that looks, charted.

Battle of the sad desk lunches

Both Cava and Sweetgreen want to become the next Chipotle. In the last few years, with piles of people opting for a salad and even larger piles of capital willing to pour into the sector, healthy, premium chains have expanded aggressively to chase the success of Chipotle — which has seen its stock soar more than 6,000% since going public in 2009, an astounding rise visualized here. 

Which chain is winning the slop bowl battle?