Slate Auto’s New EV Is Coming, Tax Credit Or Not

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This is a heckuva time for a startup to launch a new EV into the market, but the Jeff Bezos-linked venture Slate Auto has just earned a fresh burst of attention from the automotive press, so let’s take a look and see how the company expects to motivate car shoppers to save their egg money and make room in their budgets for the company’s first EV, the Blank Slate pickup truck.

Slate Auto Dreams Of A New EV, Tax Credit Or Not

Slate Auto burst out of stealth mode in April with the unveiling of its first new EV, a pickup truck that earned the title “Anti-Cybertruck” from CleanTechnica’s Steve Hanley for its lightweight, stripped-down, low-tech footprint and price point of less than $20,000 with the $7,500 federal tax credit in play (see our complete Slate Auto archive here).

However, the tax credit will not be in play when the new EV finally rolls off the assembly line. Thanks to US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, the tax credit will expire on September 30.

Still, Slate Auto is forging ahead. As befits its new EV-on-a-budget business model, the company has been refurbishing a former printing plant in Warsaw, Indiana, to produce the Blank Slate pickup along with other variants on the same platform. As for how one might expect to squeeze an entire auto assembly line into a former printing plant, that’s the Slate penny-pinching model in action.

Stripped down to the bare essentials, the new EV only requires about 600 parts, compared to thousands of parts for a typical truck. Slate expects customers to take their new EV as-is, saving space on paint shops and trim stations.

Republican Welcomes New EV Factory — Shocker!

Slate Auto held an open house at the Warsaw factory earlier this week, where demolition work was still very much in evidence. Despite the somewhat bare-bones background, the mood among local officials was celebratory. When the printing plant closed in 2023, it wiped out 525 jobs. Once the new factory is up to full speed, more than 2,000 jobs will pour in, along with a $400 million investment on the part of Slate.

Well, money talks. Despite having voted to kill the $7,500 tax credit, US Representative Rudy Yakym of Indiana’s District 2 made sure to give himself credit for shepherding the new EV factory into life, having voted in to pass the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” along with the rest of the Republican majority in Congress.

The news organization Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly was among those broadcasting Yakym’s enthusiastic endorsement of the vehicle electrification movement.

“Slate is proof that when we keep the made in America provisions strong, companies step up and they build right here at home. And thanks to things like immediate expensing and common sense tax reform in the One Big Beautiful Bill…new manufacturers like Slate can put shovels in the ground faster and hire workers sooner and get their trucks on the road without delay,” Yakym commented.

Here Comes The Anti-Cybertruck

It’s not clear how the timeline works out there. After all, the new bill was not signed into law until July, after Slate acquired the Warsaw space, organized its supply chain, and ordered up the assembly line equipment.

It’s also not clear how any ordinary run-of-the-mill new manufacturers are supposed to launch new operations in the fraught environment of Trump’s tariff wars, especially in the auto industry. Slate started life as an exception, not the rule. The company’s Series A haul totaled $111 million in 2023. In May, Newsweek reported that a Series B round brought the figure up to $700 million in 2024.

“The funding comes from Bezos Expeditions, General Catalyst and TWG Global, among other investors,” Newsweek noted, with Bezos Expeditions referring to the personal investment portfolio of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

“General Catalyst, a venture capital firm, has a varied portfolio that also includes cosmetics company Beauty Pie, image software company Canva and online travel search tool Kayak, among others,” Newsweek added.

Although Jeff Bezos and Amazon have acquired some brand reputation baggage to carry around, it’s difficult to find any bona fide brand reputation crisis that compares to the bonfire Tesla CEO Elon Musk lit when he bankrolled his way into the White House and proceeded to tear the US government apart, brick by prick and human by human, sparking a swift and sudden downturn in Tesla EV sales.

The reputational crisis is continuing to spin out in all directions as Tesla attempts to venture beyond its passenger car lineup with new EV platforms. The Cybertruck “pickup truck” began life with a respectable sales record only to devolve into an an Edsel-worthy flop in short order. Tesla’s only other distinctive new EV is the much-delayed Semi Class 8 heavy duty truck, which is already facing stiff competition from startups and legacy truck makers alike.

The Face Behind The New EV

With that in mind, if you can name the CEO of Tesla and the CEO of Slate Auto both off the top of your head, run right out and buy yourself a cigar.

There’s no shame in only getting as far as the Tesla part. After all, Tesla CEO Elon Musk helicoptered into the former Tesla Motors startup in 20024, fresh off a $175 million payout from eBay in 2002, soon cultivating the image of a high-flying engineering genius beloved by gearheads and technophiles around the world. Everyone knows who Elon Musk is.

Slate Auto CEO Chris Barman, not so much. Barman came to Slate with multiple decades worth of related experience under her belt, having earned master’s degrees in both mechanical engineering and business leading up to a slot at the Chrysler Institute of Engineering in 1994. By 2014 she was vice president of systems and component engineering at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles North America.

Reflecting Barman’s experience and reputation in the auto industry, Slate expects that its new EV will appeal to broad swaths of the auto-buying public that have been overlooked by the hype over “Full Self-Driving” and touch-screen controls. That includes the many modders and makers circulating around in the automotive aftermarket, as well as drivers in search of an affordable zero emission ride.

Photo (cropped): The new EV startup Slate Auto opened the doors of its Warsaw, Indiana, factory to the automotive press earlier this week (courtesy of Slate Auto).