Slate Auto, the buzzy new EV startup that broke stealth this week, is located in Warsaw, Indiana, and is trapped as a future production site for cheap electric trucks, public records reviews show.
The company plans to lease the 1.4 million square feet of facility for undisclosed amounts. Economic development officials told local media earlier this year that the factory could employ up to 2,000 people (without naming a slate), and that the county provided an incentive package for private companies.
It is not immediately clear what is included in that incentive package or whether it has been confirmed. Slate did not respond immediately to requests for comment. Peggy Friday, CEO of Kosciusko County Economic Development Corporation, said in an email that it was “under a strict non-disclosure agreement with the project.”
Slate showed aerial photographs of the factory during the event Thursday. The company did not say where it was, but the photos match the public list of facilities available on the Indiana Economic Development Corporation website. TechCrunch previously reported that the company plans to create an EV in Indiana that is under $20,000 after federal tax credit.
“Our trucks are made in the US, America,” Slate CEO Chris Berman said on stage while a photo of the factory was shown on the screen behind her.
The slate, which focuses on domestic manufacturing, is embedded in the company’s DNA. The startup was originally created inside Re:Build Manufacturing. It is a Massachusetts-based company that focuses on strengthening the country’s capacity to make things.
The Warsaw factory was built in 1958 and was occupied for decades by printing the company RR Donnelly. According to local media, it has been dormant for about two years.
Converting factories, especially those that hadn’t pumped cars before, is not cheap or easy. Slate has accumulated serious war chests that help them tackle that goal. The startup, backed in part by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter, and Powerhouse VC Firm General Catalyst, has so far surpassed $100 million.
The approach Slate designs and working on building electric trucks should also help keep costs down. The company plans to sell wraps for trucks instead of painting. This means there is no need to build a paint shop in the factory. That alone saves hundreds of millions of slates in the plant build-out process.