Slate Auto CEO Chris Barman tells us how exactly it’s making a $25,000 EV

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. That’s cheaper than the vast majority of internal combustion cars, let alone EV trucks, which can easily cost 3x as much. It’s also cheaper than many vehicles in the used car market, which the company considers its competition.

The company’s lone truck is different from the rest of the EV landscape. The so-called Blank Slate is a small, bare-bones, two-seater truck with no stereo included. It’s also highly customizable with an emphasis on DIY. Customers can change its color, its number of seats, its electronics, its looks — all by themselves.

Barman has a background as an electric engineer and had a long run at Fiat Chrysler, where she rose to vice president of electrical and electronics. Now she’s the CEO of an EV startup that could disrupt not only her previous employer but more buzzy names like Tesla, which has long promised but been unsuccessful in delivering a low-cost EV. 

This week, Sherwood News 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 — and if it’s possible to keep that promise in such an uncertain macro environment. 

(The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.)

Sherwood News: Slate trucks are bucking the trend of not only expensive trucks with huge footprints and giant infotainment systems, but also the move toward driver assistance and self-driving, which is so important for your EV competitor Tesla. How are you thinking about people driving their own cars versus being driven by AI?

Chris Barman: There’s a large population out there. Some of them want AI, some of them want autonomous, but there’s still a vast majority of people that want and need to drive themselves.

Sherwood: So no plans for self-driving Slates? 

Barman: No plans for self-driving. There are a lot of smart people that are working on solving the self-driving problem. We’re focused on providing an affordable vehicle.

Sherwood: Understood. So the basic Blank Slate is expected to come in at about $25,000 and be available by the end of 2026. Tell me about that price point.

Barman: The industry pulled away from the space of providing an affordable vehicle. It kept going up and up and up in price, and it’s created this space now where it’s extremely difficult for everyday Americans to be able to afford a new vehicle. Overall, 55 million vehicles are roughly transacted every year: 15 million new, 40 million used. New vehicles are about $50,000, or a $900 monthly payment. A used vehicle is about $27,000 or $28,000, which is about a $500 monthly payment. It can be a stretch for people to even be able to afford that, because studies have shown if an individual or a household makes $100,000 a year, they should put about $400 toward a monthly payment. So even getting into that average used vehicle is a bit of a stretch, and most of Americans don’t make $100,000. It’s a massive population of individuals. 

What we want to do is go into a space where we’re able to provide a vehicle that meets all the latest safety standards — NCAP (New Car Assessment Program) five-star and IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) Top Safety Pick — and give an industry-leading warranty so that individuals say, “Hey, I can either buy a high-mileage used car that’s out of warranty, that could break down, or I can get into a new car that meets the latest safety standards, comes with a warranty, and it’s been designed as a platform that’s open-source where I can change it over time. I can turn it into what I would want it to be through personalization.” 

Sherwood: That makes me think of one of your investors, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Amazon realized, hey, all these people are buying basic goods like underwear, sheets, and toilet paper; let’s make the Basics line, or Amazon Essentials line, and sell stuff everyone wants a little bit cheaper and make a boatload of money that way. Did that inform your strategy?

Barman: Well, the original idea actually came out of Re:Build Manufacturing. The CEO of Re:Build Manufacturing, Miles Arnone, had this idea: where have all the affordable vehicles gone? He actually wrote a paper on what if there were a modern-day Model T or VW Bug, or those type of vehicles, harkening back to that. I think about the Model T — any color you want, as long as it’s black. We say any color you want, as long as it’s Slate gray. How do we get back down into that space of the affordable vehicle? Miles Arnone iterated it with Jeff Wilke, the chairman, and they decided, “Hey, we think this has merit. Go and see if it could be done.” So Re:Build hired a few people, myself included. I’m employee number two.

Our chairman at the time, Rod Copes, was employee number one, and we hired a very small team of people just to understand: could we build a form factor that could be an affordable vehicle for everyday Americans? At the end of 2022, we were able to show that it’s possible to do that and have a viable business case. Then we moved forward to raise money. It was at that point that Jeff Bezos invested in the company that became Slate. 

Sherwood: As you’ve said, the auto industry has been moving up and to the right as far as vehicle cost and accessories. What did Slate cut to get down to its $25,000 price point?

Barman: We looked at it and said, what are only the essentials that need to go in a vehicle? Some things are pretty basic: you need a steering wheel and you need wheels and tires. But then we started to get into what are the things that maybe aren’t essential, but that people want in the vehicle even if it’s an affordable vehicle. Air-conditioning is one of those. One that didn’t make it in but is available as an accessory is power windows. We put in manual windows.

We also wanted to be thoughtful about safety and security. We spent actually a lot of time as a team talking about how the most economical that you could get is a bladed key. Walk up, put it in, turn it. 

But we had this discussion, myself and other members of the team, about as a single female at night in a dimly lit parking lot, I would not feel safe. There’s a twofold reason we did the fob. One is from the security perspective: you can unlock it from the remote. It lights up, and you can see everything’s safe and secure. We also have a secure key ignition module through that — you put the fob into a slot and through that, it passes a code in order to start the car. We didn’t want people to think, “Well, if it’s affordable, was it not secure?”

One of the things we’ve tried to do often throughout the whole process is consider what can we do to make sure that the customer gets the benefit they want, but can keep costs down. An example is if you look at our door armrests, they’re not handed. We have one tool that makes the door armrest for the left side and the door armrest for the right side. In addition to that, we thought about, hey, for our accessory console, could that be used for the lid? We also multipurposed it into the lid for the console. We were able to narrow it down to three different parts that go into the vehicle that we had to pay one supplier for, and it really reduces costs.

Sherwood: What are some of the biggest things you cut out? 

Barman: We looked at infotainment and said, people’s navigation and their streaming audio and everything they need comes from their phone. Design a way where they can bring their phone or a tablet or whatever they would like into the vehicle to provide that information for them. So, in the configuration, we’ll have a phone mount that is universal for different sizes of phones. If you want to bring in a tablet, there’s an accessory bar you can bring in a bracket to attach it there. There are two USBs where you get power. The way we thought about it is twofold: most infotainment systems are very expensive, they’re very intense to develop, and honestly, most people don’t like them and don’t use them.

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.

Sherwood: My understanding of what’s been happening in the auto industry is that prices have been going up and to the right because carmakers, to make money, have been putting in more expensive add-ons, like infotainment systems, so that they can charge a premium and have higher margins. What will your margins be like without all these bells and whistles?

Barman: It really comes down to our business case, and our approach of what it takes to be able to get into the industry.

For example, we have composite exterior panels, and through that we don’t have to have a stamping operation. You don’t have to have a paint shop. If you look at our overall capex as compared to other vehicle platforms that go to production, that would save us anywhere in the order of $400 million to $600 million, depending on the type of the vehicle. So we don’t need as much capital investment to be able to start our first plant, or start our second plant. Through simplification as well, we have roughly a little over 600 parts, where most vehicles today have 2,500 or more.

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. We don’t have to have as many finance people, accounts payable and all of that, which gives us a lower overhead and then allows us to operate in a more efficient manner. 

So we will be profitable on the vehicle, and we will make additional profits through the accessorization. 

Sherwood: When will you be profitable?

Barman: We expect by the end of 2027 to be cash-flow positive. 

Sherwood: It took years for Tesla to become profitable. Why do you think you can do it so quickly?

Barman: Again, the approach that we’ve taken, and what it is for our overhead cost of getting the most efficient operations. Building a configuration of one really drives cost out of the whole operation. We won’t have as many people. It’s a simpler and more efficient operation for us.

Then, as we start to produce vehicles and we’re more profitable on those vehicles, it allows us to get our independence. 

Sherwood: Will it be profitable if people simply get the Blank Slate, or are you reliant on the accessories and additions to drive profitability?

Barman: We will make money on every car. 

Sherwood: To grossly generalize about Americans, I would say the conventional wisdom is that these people over here drive trucks and these people over there drive EVs. They’re not overlapping circles. What are you seeing?

Barman: We’re seeing a complete mosaic of individuals and geographies, too. We’ve seen reservations from actually all 50 states as well as Puerto Rico come in.

Sherwood News: Why hasn’t someone else done this — gone down-market with EVs? 

Barman: It’s hard for me to speak on behalf of other people and why they haven’t. I think a lot of the industry has a model that they follow, right? Breaking pattern with that model can be difficult. 

Sherwood News: I spend a lot of time on Cybertruck subreddits and when the Slate news came out, the reaction was, “Who could possibly want this?” You’ve since gotten more than 100,000 reservations and people have designed more than 8 million trucks using the Slate Maker tool. Who wants this?

Barman: What we’re seeing is a range of demographics, which is really interesting to us.

• Some of it is individuals who are those kind of everyday Americans, for whom it’s just an affordable vehicle and a lot of utility and value for the money. 

• The other thing we’re seeing is a lot of young professionals — individuals who are either just finished trade school or are just out of college. They’re looking for value for the money, and what they love is the fact that it’s an EV and they love the customization.

• We see it going into households as an additional vehicle for potentially a newly licensed driver. Parents like the fact that there are only two passengers, it doesn’t have an infotainment for distraction, it has really high safety standards, and it’s affordable.

• One that’s really interesting to me that we’re seeing is what we’ve started referring to as “contemporary seniors.” They’re individuals who are semiretired or retired and are interested in an electric vehicle, but have been intimidated by all the other technology that has been in an EV. They just want a simpler form of driving. 

• And then the fifth type that we see is a lot of people who are just auto enthusiasts. They want to just be able to trick it out. 

Sherwood: What are the comps for this truck? Ford Maverick? Honda Ridgeline? Is there anyone out there whose lunch you’re trying to eat?

Barman: No, honestly. I think we’re going to see a lot of people that may have had the opportunity to consider only a used car, and it’s across a wide spectrum. It resonates for different reasons for people: what their lifestyle is, and value is a big part of it for most of the people. A lot of them are really excited about the personalization of it. Not only can you do it once, but you can do it again and again and again over time. And it can be not just for them when they buy it. For instance, a dad gets it and it’s a way to get to work. Then his daughter turns 16 and she wants it, but doesn’t necessarily want to drive dad’s car. Well, for $500 you can get a new wrap kit and put it in a completely different color and buy a couple other accessories, and it becomes her car.

Go Deeper: See inside Slate’s prototype facility and design studio.

Sherwood: How much will it cost if I want my truck to be wrapped completely in hot pink?

Barman: We’ll offer a number of colors. The kit itself will be priced at about $500, so if you want to do it yourself, it’s $500. If you decide that you want an individual to put it on for you that’s more of a professional, we estimate that it’ll be $200 to $300 for the installation. The cost is very low compared to getting another vehicle wrapped because you don’t have to remove any hardware and it’s in a kit. 

Sherwood: One of the most interesting things about Slate to me is how it’s so DIY-friendly. You expect people to not only accessorize and put additions on their cars but to potentially fix them themselves. If they dent a side panel, they could order the part from Slate, watch a video, and install it themselves without getting insurance involved. Do you think people really want to do that?

Barman: I think it’s a split population. Some people just won’t. They don’t have the time. Everybody’s busy these days. Some people just may not have the confidence to be able to do it. But I think other people will want to do this. They’ll be intrigued by the ability of being able to do it. We are going to work to try to build that confidence through Slate University. We’ll be offering an online platform so before somebody decides, “Hey, I’m going to do it myself,” they can come in and we have modules that they can watch in a video. We’re putting this together to show everything that’s from a one-wrench simple process to a four-wrench more difficult process.

Then we want to tailor the content also to what a person’s level of experience may be. If you’re one of those auto enthusiasts, you may go Slate U and it’s like, “Hey, I don’t need the novice guide, just give me the high points. What are going to be the tricky parts?” But if there’s somebody who is new to doing DIY on their car, they’re going to need some content, so we’ll have different levels. We think that will be confidence-inspiring for people to say, “You know what? I can do this and I can take it on, because I have Slate University that can help me.” They can also get ahold of our customer service centers. Then there’s always the escape route: there will be a service available in their local community that can help them.

Sherwood: Let’s talk about the plastic composite you’re using on the outside of the truck, which has a steel frame. Are there any unique challenges with that physically or when trying to sell it to a buyer?

Barman: It’s a composite, so it is 10% glass-reinforced or -filled. That is a very durable type of structure. This is used in other areas of a vehicle — bumpers, lift gates of SUVs — but it’s typically painted. Saturn did this previously and had composite panels for its exterior. It painted them versus a molded-in color. We’re not painting it but putting in features that help with wrapping.

You’ll see down the side of the truck, there’s an accent line, and it starts with the design of our hood, which is a clamshell hood that goes around the side to the fenders and starts the line. Then that accent line continues through the door and down through the quarter panel. That actually becomes a point where we can separate parts of the wrap kit. And that’s where the seam can be to make it easier to wrap. 

Sherwood: You’re an engineer. Where have you felt you’ve had the most influence on Slate?

Barman: It’s been a new experience starting a company. I’ve never had the opportunity to do that. I’ve been able to grow it and influence the culture and how we approach it. Where I think I’ve added value as an engineer — I hope the team would say I add value from being an engineer — is in having developed programs previously, having launched programs previously, so being able to support the engineering team, the manufacturing team, the purchasing team in a number of those areas. 

Sherwood: I want to move on to tariffs. You’re designing and putting the cars together in America, but obviously some parts are going to come from Canada, Mexico, China. What are you doing to mitigate tariff costs that could drive up the price of building a truck?

Barman: From the outset, we were really intentional about wanting to source domestically wherever we could and where it was either available or the cost made sense for us to do that. The majority of our parts are domestically sourced. Quite frankly, we get our window regulator from Brazil because they don’t make them here. Hopefully someday, somebody does. We do have other components that were more economical to source from overseas. 

We are even looking at, as the tariffs change, in some cases where our supplier has multiple locations in Asia Pacific, moving from one country to another to manage the tariffs. But we really tried to hedge or protect ourselves against exposure based on our original sourcing, trying to do as much domestically as we can.

Sherwood: Does anything big or surprising come from the US?

Barman: Our batteries. SK On is producing our modules out of Commerce, Georgia. Then we’ll be assembling the packs at our plant in Warsaw, Indiana. 

Sherwood: We’re halfway through 2025 and this truck isn’t expected to be out until the end of 2026. Is the price then really going to be the price you’ve promised now?

Barman: Our objective is to hold to that. Who knows what other market dynamics may happen, but we are focused on trying to achieve that mid-$20,000 price. I think that’s very important. 

Sherwood: It’s just that I’ve heard other EV CEOs before say their vehicles would be one price, but when they come out it’s much higher. Are you doing anything special to make sure that doesn’t happen?

Barman: We’re working closely with our suppliers to try to mitigate any cost increases where we can. Again, there are market dynamics we’ll need to manage along the way, but a big focus for us is hitting that price. 

Sherwood: One thing I’ve noticed talking to your employees is that you have a lot of remote workers based all around the country. Ford is calling everyone back to the office four days a week. How are you thinking about the office?

Barman: The way that we’ve approached it is we do understand that there are some positions where it’s just critical to be here and they need to meet in person, be it here or in other locations. We have engineering, a good part of our purchasing team, and our HR team located here in the southeast Michigan area. We do encourage our teams to be in three to four days a week, but it’s not a mandate.

We’re going to have a manufacturing plant where we’ll need people to come in every day and we’ll run a shift in order to make sure that we build. We have a design studio out in Long Beach where we have a hybrid work model. Then we have a critical mass in the Seattle area that’s working on our digital team. But we more so look at the type of job to understand if it’s something that really needs to be here or if it’s something that could be remote. We’re trying to be flexible to that because we want to make sure we’re able to get the best talent we can to be part of our team. 

Sherwood: I’m here in Troy, Michigan. Why did you pick Troy as your headquarters? 

Barman: We looked at southeast Michigan. There’s lot of great talent in the automotive industry here. Our supply base is here. For us to have the ability to work closely with our supply base — be it an earlier prototyping phase, our production suppliers, throughout the whole life cycle — being close to that talent pool is really important. 

Sherwood: Same thing for the manufacturing plant in Warsaw, Indiana, which is about 3.5 hours away from here. Why there?

Barman: When we started the journey of thinking about where we wanted to be located, we wanted to look at what we call the automotive corridor, so there was some type of automotive manufacturing. That’s a lot of Midwest. Then we started to look at the footprint that we need versus what was available in the market. Most manufacturing facilities are 3 million to 4 million square feet. Ours is 1.5 million because we don’t have a stamping operation and we don’t have a paint shop. We’re able to have a much smaller footprint. We also wanted to find a brownfield facility, something that had been abandoned that we could convert. So we just narrowed it down over time and found that Warsaw was a really good fit for us. The facility that we’re going to be building out of had formally printed catalogs and phonebooks, and it shuttered in September 2023. As we evaluated it, we found it had the right footprint for us.

It’s also logistically for our inbound material very economical or more economical than other locations, as we’re looking at our supply base and where we’re having parts built. They’ve got a great labor force there, as well. There are a lot of good reasons why we wanted to go to Indiana.

Sherwood: What will the operation look like when it’s in full production? 

Barman: We’re at about 450 employees now. In Q4 2026, we should be at about 1,500. We’re still going to be ramping into our launch curve.  We will ultimately end up having a two-shift, three-crew operation when we get to 150,000 annual units by the end of 2027.

Sherwood: Will Slate go public somewhere down the line? 

Barman: We’re fully focused on just getting the vehicle to market at this point. 

Sherwood: OK. What does it take to be the CEO of an EV company in 2025? 

Barman: With Slate, it’s being nimble with the challenges that face us, what we have to do, what’s happening with the market — the things we’re seeing as we’re standing up a new company. 

It’s having strong partnerships with our suppliers and other partners that we’re going to be working with in our model. And it’s being very open with our organization — we’re a small organization, a small but mighty team — and having a very transparent, very open culture so that as issues arise, we raise them as quickly as we can, we understand what they are, and we address them so that we can move forward. 

Sherwood: What car did you drive here today?

Barman: I have an Audi Q4 e-tron.

Sherwood: Anything else I should know about how things are going so far?

Barman: You know, we operated in stealth for almost three years. Nobody knew what we were doing. We had a committed team that understood that we’re doing something very different. We’ve really been just humbled by the amount of reservations that we’ve received and what the reception has been. 

Slate received an invitation to a wedding yesterday. 

Sherwood: The car company or you? 

Barman: The car company. On the outside it said Slate Automotive with our address here. You open it up and it’s a couple that’s getting married on Long Island. I guess people are just expressing enthusiasm in different ways, but that was one that we were like, “That’s kind of cool.”

Sherwood: Are you going to go? Send a truck?

Barman: We are going to send some nice gifts.