Autoline article: Slate, A MasterClass in Frugality

https://www.autoline.tv/automotive-insight/slate-a-masterclass-in-automotive-frugality/

Edit by OP: Admins, please do not insert full source of article here.

There are some nice tidbits here. Thanks for posting.

Aside from the part about Faricy sitting at a desk with torn carpeting and thrown out furniture picked up from the office down the street, here's one of many tidbits:

Instead of building expensive standalone service networks, Slate has partnered with 3,000 independent repair shops across the U.S. to handle maintenance and fleet service, a move that the head of fleet sales, Drew Walker, says is already drawing interest from both small and large commercial fleets. Slate is hoping for 10,000 to 20,000 fleet sales a year.

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Its design studio in California was an abandoned warehouse that had been stripped clean of all its wiring and plumbing, which saved Slate the cost of having to gut the building before updating it. This is a company that scrutinizes both sides of a penny before it spends it.

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Tweaker-assisted site prep.

This caught my eye: " $24,950 (plus a projected $1,400 destination charge). "

I enjoyed reading this article and learned a few things, like grinding up and recycling the concrete they demo’d for paving the new flooring surfaces. And by sourcing used racking and safety caging from closed automotive plants saved millions of dollars. It’s readily apparent that Slate lives by their mission statement of fast, frugal, and scrappy.

But in the end, McElroy leaves us hanging with a disappointing, poor choice of words in his concluding statement:

“With a late 2026 launch on track, on time, and on budget, I think Slate has a good chance of making a go of it.”

cadblu said:

But in the end, McElroy leaves us hanging with a disappointing, poor choice of words in his concluding statement:

“With a late 2026 launch on track, on time, and on budget, I think Slate has a good chance of making a go of it.”

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What they did has a Wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise

I'm not surprised by what I read there. The Slate looks to me to be inexpensive by design.
As a former municipal planning commissioner, I saw the difference in low and moderate income housing proposals. Some were gold-plated, flashy projects with all the latest features - requiring massive subsidies of various sorts - while others were simply designed to be built at a cost which allowed them to be rented out at an affordable rent, while still paying the expenses and returning a modest but very real return to the builders. The second route is harder, but more sustainable.

If you start with "If we eliminate all of these expensive, failure prone peripheral gadgets and focus on making an electric truck that costs as little as possible to build while satisfying safety requirements and doing the things people actually need done" then use that as the basis for what the price should be - with a gross profit on each vehicle sold (and the prospect of additional revenue from licensing third party add-ons, which probably costs Slate nothing in capital expenditures) the business model should be sustainable.

I see that in the design and the material and engineering choices at Slate. I can't take the people who say "They should price it at $20,000" seriously, because you can't build a vehicle at that price - not paying American workers and American costs. Making the effort to design and build a vehicle that pencils out at $25,000 isn't easy, but I think they've done it. I think it's brilliant and applaud the effort and the philosophy.

Jamie Standring, the propulsion and engineering leader, notes that the outer skin is made from inexpensive polypropylene panels–the same kind of plastic that milk jugs are made of.

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Polypropylene yes, milk jugs no: milk jugs are made of polyethylene (HDPE to be precise). Obviously not a problem for Slate, but the lack of fact-checking on that but of common knowledge makes me question the more relevant details, like this one:

CEO Jim Faricy says that for $450 the factory will install them.

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That's a $50 discount from previous rumors. Thanks, Jim! ...or is that factoid untrustworthy?

To maximize asset utilization without burning out staff, the plant will run on three, staggered 40-hour shifts, Monday through Sunday, with zero overtime.

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How does this work? Three 40-hour shifts takes 5 days if you're running 24 hours a day, but I don't know of a tidy way to stagger that evenly across Monday-Sunday if they're planning on two shifts per day.... Open 20 hours a day, everyone works 4 tens, with rolling 3 day weekends?

To save time and money, Slate built and validated its body shop “live” inside the plant, skipping the traditional supplier-site pre-assembly, validation, and disassembly process. By using Siemens simulation software, it had the confidence this would work. This single manufacturing risk alone saved them six weeks of lead time and a bunch of money.

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One of the few positive stories I've heard about "digital twin" simulation working out! Lots of hype in the automation sector, not a lot of positive results from what I've heard. I'm interested in how that Siemens software worked with all the Fanuc robots they have in the body shop....

Neat article, thanks for sharing!

kvermeer said:

Polypropylene yes, milk jugs no: milk jugs are made of polyethylene (HDPE to be precise). Obviously not a problem for Slate, but the lack of fact-checking on that but of common knowledge makes me question the more relevant details, like this one:



That's a $50 discount from previous rumors. Thanks, Jim! ...or is that factoid untrustworthy?



How does this work? Three 40-hour shifts takes 5 days if you're running 24 hours a day, but I don't know of a tidy way to stagger that evenly across Monday-Sunday if they're planning on two shifts per day.... Open 20 hours a day, everyone works 4 tens, with rolling 3 day weekends?



One of the few positive stories I've heard about "digital twin" simulation working out! Lots of hype in the automation sector, not a lot of positive results from what I've heard. I'm interested in how that Siemens software worked with all the Fanuc robots they have in the body shop....

Neat article, thanks for sharing!

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They will run A crew in the morning Mon to Thursday B crew in the afternoon Tuesday to Friday and C crew Friday and Saturday in the morning and sun and Mon in the afternoon. It's how other auto plants run 3 crews all 10 hr shifts as well

P. Regent said:

This caught my eye: " $24,950 (plus a projected $1,400 destination charge). "

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meh. That's the authors projection, nothing substantive behind it.

ScooterAsheville said:

https://www.autoline.tv/automotive-insight/slate-a-masterclass-in-automotive-frugality/

Warranty: 10-year/110,000-mile battery warranty; 5-year/50,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty.

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My guess is the 5-year/50,000-mile on bumper-to-bumper warranty is an error, as I've only seen it previously stated as 4 year/50,000 mile Standard Warranty & Roadside Assistance.

The article got this wrong: "5-year/50,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty."
The warranty is 4 years, not 5.

I spotted the "projected $1400 delivery" too. It's the same as some youtuber's guess. The only official word at this time is less than $2000 as I recall. (Maverick's delivery is $1800.) No word on Doc fees yet.

With positive gross margins even given the "start-up tax", they should be able to hold to that $25k price even into next year (assuming they hit sales targets).

I read recently in another article that they have a 10 year plan.

coregrind said:

My guess is the 5-year/50,000-mile on bumper-to-bumper warranty is an error, as I've only seen it previously stated as 4 year/50,000 mile Standard Warranty & Roadside Assistance.

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https://www.slate.auto/en/service

Our Standard Vehicle Limited Warranty has you covered for 4 years/50,000 miles**, bumper to bumper.

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Cheapest destination Fee in the USA is $1,195 for the Toyota Corolla. I bet SLATE will make headlines with a $995- destination fee.

You read it here first. 😁

D’Roc said:

Cheapest destination Fee in the USA is $1,195 for the Toyota Corolla. I bet SLATE will make headlines with a $995- destination fee.

You read it here first. 😁

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Love your optimism! But at 1000lbs heavier, I'm pretty sure Slate will be more.