Slate Talk About the Truck’s Style, Safety, and a Front End You Can Design

When the Slate Truck was revealed earlier this year, it generated a massive amount of interest, and it’s easy to understand why. Should Slate follow through on its promises, customers will be able to purchase a small, affordable, highly configurable, and American-made all-electric pickup. It’s a vehicle that touched a nerve with the public, one with the potential to usher in a new era of mobility for the masses. To get more of a sense of the present state of Slate and its coming offerings, we recently sat down with a trio of company executives for a roundtable discussion centered on its approach to design and safety.

For now, Slate says it’s on schedule to hit its first customer deliveries toward the end of 2026, with mass production expected in 2027. Its 1.4-million-square-foot production factory in Warsaw, Indiana (the facility started out as a phone book printing press), is currently empty but will be filling up soon. Once things are up and humming in Warsaw, Slate is aiming to build 150,000 units a year. The company says it has already received more than 100,000 reservations and seen more than 8 million configurations via its online configurator.

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The factory will lack a paint shop on site because, as Slate has outlined, every truck will be built as the “Blank Slate,” meaning they’ll come off the line as steel-framed, single-cab pickups with removable composite body panels. Anything else a customer would want (vinyl wraps, a bigger battery pack, a radio) is something they can add via DIY kits. For example, should you opt for the Slate’s SUV setup, it will be sent to you as a flatpack.

As for those removable body panels and the potential risk of them getting stolen off the Truck, Slate has developed a dual-layer fastening system that’s designed to ensure the panels can’t be easily removed without the proper access. Slate is also presently crash testing all versions of the Truck (and its SUV variant) and is targeting a five-star safety rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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The company declined to offer additional comment on how much more the larger battery will cost over the standard version, but it continues to maintain the Slate Truck’s “mid-$20,000” expected price as advertised on its website before state and local incentives kick in.

Below is our interview with Slate’s head of design, Tisha Johnson, head of brand and marketing, Ben Whitla, and head of PR and communications, Jeff Jablansky.

The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

MotorTrend: Via your configurator, are you seeing people choose more colorful options as opposed to the gray and black everybody assumes buyers want?

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Whitla: We’re seeing so much variation in color. One thing we’ve always said is the options for color are effectively unlimited because not only is there color, but there are also partial wraps, sticker wraps, or smaller pieces. But we also have a soft spot in our hearts for the people who then take it into Photoshop and make it even more wild than we offer. We’re seeing that our customers and fans are hungry for this. When we level the playing field from a price standpoint—wraps starting at $500—all of a sudden, any color you choose has the same impact on your wallet. So why not choose something you actually love?

MT: What’s been done to ensure the longevity of the vinyl wrap kits against harsh environments, weather, sunlight, car washes, stuff like that?

Johnson: Ongoing development, making sure that we're creating robust scenarios.

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MT: Does that mean, for example, you’re parking the trucks out in the desert and seeing what the sun does to the wrap?

Johnson: We have heat and cool durability testing.

MT: What was one part of the Slate Truck that was particularly challenging to design, and which are you the proudest of the way it came out?

Johnson: There are several fun places, but I like to talk about the front fascia. That whole area—from the lights, the word mark, to the plate where we carry the logo—usually represents high, high-dollar development costs to create unique signatures. Producing the parts themselves is very, very expensive. Our first thinking was this is the area we will consider sacred ground. If we were going to put more money anywhere, it would be right here.

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But we kept looking at designs and thinking, it’s just not right. We would test internally, people liked them, but as a design group, we just did not feel good about it. Finally, we realized it was because we were using that old playbook. So we shifted our thinking, and the idea was clear: Now our DNA is about enabling accessorization and personalization.

The first thing we did was to get head lamps that are easy to swap out and don’t require an expensive lighting internal program to create them that we’d have to spend a lot of dollars to make. And then we set up the geometry so it was obvious to people that they should feel free to touch this and swap it out. No precious materials. The exposed fasteners that say, “Take this off if you want to put something else on.” That was a huge “aha” moment. When we presented those ideas internally, it was a resounding “yes.” We all knew this was right.

MT: You’re not beholden to all these years of heritage and tradition like other automakers are, where they’re under this pressure to maintain their “look.” There isn't “a look” to maintain here, but you take it a step further, which is that the customer can change the face of the Truck.

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Johnson: It defies the big ideas that are embedded in the automotive industry. We wondered, “Are we delivering back what people are asking for?” And the apparent answer is yes, people are saying yes, so now we just need to make sure that we do it.

Jablansky: It’s also part of the product planning life cycle. Part of the fatigue of EVs is everyone associates EVs with screens, computers, and difficult technology. It’s an intimidation factor, particularly for contemporary seniors. We wanted to separate those so you don’t have that association.

MT: With how infinitely customizable the Slate Truck will be, what sort of guardrails has Slate put in place to keep modified trucks safe and street-legal?

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Johnson: When you customize, if there’s a safety implication, or if you accessorize the truck, we’ve set up an order of operations so that you can’t put it together in a way that is dangerous around, say, compliance. So our SUV kit, as an example: It comes with an order of operations that assures that you’re putting it together properly. We’ll also have a lot of online education.

Jablansky: The Slate University has a bunch of different applications, but it’s everything from an online user manual to things like how to change a part, how to install an SUV kit. We want to show people how to do it. Slate University will use a difficulty indication tool: a number of wrenches it’s going to take to do something. One wrench is easy operation. Three wrenches? Maybe bring a friend. Four wrenches: You should be pretty good at this. And then there are some customizations that a professional should handle because it’s dealing with high voltage. But we want people to be comfortable making these things happen on their own.

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If you see a two-wrench and you’ve never turned a wrench, we’ll connect you with somebody who can help you. So to get back to the point of how we’re doing it safely, we’re trying to educate people without speaking at them. The key to the customization and accessorization is people actually doing it. That’s why we have all those exposed pieces on the body panels.

MT: But there’s always that customer out there who thinks they know best. They won’t watch any of the material. They think they know how to put everything together themselves. What if it turns out they don’t have a clue, and something is loose? Is there any probability that a panel would fly off on the highway because they didn’t screw it down properly because they thought they knew better?

Jablansky: We started as an engineering organization. On our staff we have people who definitely think they know better, and they’re the ones engineering this stuff. They’re working through those questions, and when we need to help people, we will.

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MT: How will buyers know the seat belts they install will adequately protect their children? Specifically, to the rear seat.

Johnson: Everything’s compliant, and the big important thing is the accessories we have meet safety standards. It’s a pillar of our brand. It is also part of our core of operation to make sure you’re not able to drive around without having all the safety structures that lead to that seat being properly installed.

Whitla: The order of operations for installation won’t be complete if you don’t do it in order, and that will make it compliant.

Jablansky: We’re not just crash testing the Blank Slate. We’re crashing SUV kits, larger battery. That’s one of the reasons we’re telling people, “You can put a seat back there.” We’ve crashed it, we’ve seen the result, and we know how we’re trying to keep people safe. We’re in our internal rounds of testing right now, but ultimately, our goal is a five-star NHTSA rating.

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Johnson: It’s something we committed to very early: Making sure that these critical accessory parts are part of that testing. It is foundational to the vehicle.

MT: Last question. With the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act signed into law, will you still honor the expected “mid-$20,000” starting price as advertised on your websites?

Johnson: Yeah. We’re American-made, so we’re able to benefit from that in a pretty challenging department.