OFFICIAL: Slate truck production plant in Warsaw, Indiana 💪 [MORE DETAILS]

[Tran]

Slate has officially announced that the Slate truck will be built in its Warsaw, Indiana plant.




More details via https://www.theverge.com/news/658223/slate-factory-electric-truck-location-indiana

• Because the Truck doesn’t have paint, Slate Auto’s factory doesn’t need an expensive paint shop. (Mercedes-Benz recently spent a reported $1 billion building a new one.) And, because the body panels are made of a form of plastic, that factory can skip the massive presses typically used to stamp metal body panels into shape.
  
  
• Slate will build out their production hub at the former R.R. Donnelly facility in Warsaw, Indiana, a printing press that was once responsible for stuffing your mailbox with catalog pulp from retailers. It shuttered in September of 2023, putting over 500 people out of work.
  
  
• When it opens next year, Jeff Jablansky, Slate Auto’s head of public relations and communications, says the plan is to employ 2,000 people at the facility.
  
  
• Slate wouldn’t confirm the total investment the facility’s retrofit will require, or the terms of Slate’s use of the property, only that renovations will cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
  
  
• All that will need to be completed before the Truck can begin production, which is currently scheduled for Q4 of 2026.
  
  
• At 1.4 million square feet, Slate’s facility is roughly one-quarter the size of Tesla’s Fremont Factory, which currently produces approximately 650,000 vehicles per year. Again, Slate hopes to produce upwards of 150,000 Trucks annually at this facility, an annual production rate that took Tesla more than five years to achieve in Fremont. Given its simplified manufacturing process, Slate will surely be hoping to move more quickly.
  
  
• Slate is committed to not only manufacturing the Truck in the U.S. but to using domestic suppliers as well. “The vehicle is designed, engineered, and manufactured in the U.S., with the majority of our supply chain based in the U.S.” Jeremy Snyder, Slate’s Chief Commercial Officer, told us ahead of the Truck’s debut. As global trade wars only escalate, that’s looking like a sound move.

 

[MavStangVa]

What about those massive presses to injection mold the panels. Or are you going blow mold route? Or the old RIMM machines from Pontiac?

 

[MavStangVa]

Maybe Webasto is going to make them. 🤣🤣🤣

Not sure the have the presses for body panels. The press to mold the top of a John Deere combine uses 6600 tons of force to keep the mold closed while injecting. It wouldn't fit in the building Slate is using. Bumpers for a Toyota Camry is in a 4000 ton press. There are suppliers out there and Slate has already negotiated the production and done test shots and fittings. I will wager they will be molded in either China or India but assembled here.

 

[Daley]

I was making a joke about Webasto, seeing if anyone would get it.

Totally got the joke and was actually thinking the same thing lol. Please no Webasto! Or maybe someone will want the honeycomb, cardboard edges look.

 

[TheShark]

Totally got the joke and was actually thinking the same thing lol. Please no Webasto! Or maybe someone will want the honeycomb, cardboard edges look.

Being a fellow hard top Bronco owner I got the joke as well, can you imagine a Slate with Webasto panels? The fit and finish would be comparable to a Cybertruck!

 

[cvollers]

Warsaw is my favorite live music venue in New York City. It’s in a great neighborhood in Brooklyn.

 

[cvollers]

Maybe Webasto is going to make them. 🤣🤣🤣

Webasto is a German heater and auto supply company.

 

[MavStangVa]

I was making a joke about Webasto, seeing if anyone would get it. Though I do think Webesto's plant in Michigan may have tooling big enough to make the body panels for the Slate truck. None of the panels have that complext of a shape. I'm not sure Slate has said what forming process will be used for panels nor even specifically what type of plastics will be used. Let's hope they keep the panel manufacturing in the US.

Doubt they have the type of press needed. I spent 47 years in the plastics molding business, machinery side and production. Since Slate is a low volume vehicle they will have already locked in molders. Each mold for a body or under body panel could cost 250k and up. If they need 2 shot molding for flexible sealing edges that mold goes up to a million. You would be surprised how many little places you drive past makes bits and pieces for the automotive industry. I used to service a plant that made nothing but windshield washer nozzles. The plastic will likely be a pvc base for the body panels.

 

[Sojourner]

All that will need to be completed before the Truck can begin production, which is currently scheduled for Q4 of 2026.

So, essentially, 2027? At the earliest? Meaning, probably wouldn't get it until 2028? I may not even be alive by then!

Webasto

I was in the middle of eating when I read the dreaded "W" word in your post. I lost my appetite. As I'm sure all of us who have a Bronco with the MIC top do when we see THAT word.

Where did I put that Pepto bottle...? 🤢

 

[Sojourner]

Sorry dude. 🙂

At the end though, I think the Bronco MIC top came out very nice. Mine is flawless in execution, works well, and still looks good 3 years in. I do keep my Bronco under a carport. I'm not sure how the top fairs in Arizona parked out in the desert sun all day.

Mine started cracking less than four months after coming off the line. Waiting on the dealership for the replacement. During the time I've had it it's been covered by carport and cover.

The Webasto cardboard top is literally the only thing I don't like about my Bronco. Once I run out of opportunities for Ford to replace it under warranty I'll be buying something else. Which is a bummer considering that, as far as aesthetics go, I love the look of the MIC top. Just wish it was fiberglass like my Rubicon had.

Sorry, not trying to derail the thread.

 

[MavStangVa]

But the Bronco top is material to the Slate discussion because the Slate truck has some decent sized plastic panels. Someone has to make them. Building large plastic body parts is not new technology and not a strickly off-shore industry. The problem with the Bronco top was it was in spiral development by Webasto with the rest of the Bronco in development by Ford. Two things happened, (1) Webasto's Michigan facility was delayed by nearly a year, and (2) COVID impacted the MIC top engineering disciplines in Wuhan, China and N. Italy. The MIC top got a bad rap.

It's material to Slate because making the plastic panels is not easier than stamping steel parts for numerous reasons. It's an engineering / production cost trade off. Slate's slogan is, "You can have it in any color you want as long as you wrap it yourself ". It puts the cost of the paint shop onto the consumer. A shifty move if you ask me. They tout (err... mask) it as a consumer choice to individualize the truck as the consumer wants it.

If I buy a Maverick, it comes with a decent factory paint job for basically the same price.

These panels could be made using structural foam low pressure injection molding like the livestock water troughs are. Also plastic pallets are made with structural foam molding.

 

[MavStangVa]

Go on the B6G Bronco website circa mid 2021 and I said the same thing about the Webasto MIC top. I understand the Bronco's coated cardboard honeycomb structure architecture, but it should have been injected with structural foam instead. And IMO Ford should have just gone with a SMC/ foam core design from the beginning.

I'm not sure if you have experience with the Bronco MIC top, but once they got the production figured out, it's a pretty nice piece. The two front lift out panels work great and the rear shell lifts off easily and locks right back into place.

The structural foam molding is different than sandwiching foam. You know the Rubbermaid yellow mop carts that kinda look like fiberglass? That's structural foam molding.

 

[Sojourner]

I'm not sure if you have experience with the Bronco MIC top, but once they got the production figured out, it's a pretty nice piece.

I'm gonna push back a little bit on one part of your excellent comment. My 4-dr BL had a production date of Aug 2024. So maybe some progress, but not entirely fixed. Even Broncos I'm seeing that are currently on dealer lots still have the cracks.

 

[gwp]

Webasto is a German heater and auto supply company.

Webasto makes horrible quality roofs for Broncos here in the US. I own one…. Like the Bronco. Despise the roof.

 

[MavStangVa]

It would be interesting with structural foam molding how good the colorized surface would look. Hopefully the slate gray molded in color shows a quality appearance (as you eluded to in another thread) suitable for leaving unwrapped. As I remember it, the foaming agents can leave a swirled appearance in the plastic yet with a good surface quality.

Yes it does.