A look inside Slate Auto's first EV factory, a $400M investment just outside Warsaw

KOSCIUSKO COUNTY, Ind.--- The brand-new electric truck company, Slate Auto, opened its doors to community leaders Thursday, providing a sneak peek of the factory that will produce the Jeff Bezos-backed company’s first official line of customizable electric vehicle (EV) trucks.

"Who could come in and fIll up a 1.5 million square foot plant? Slate auto," said Warsaw Mayor Jeff Grose.

Grose expressed his delight at the nearly $400 million investment by Slate, building their very first EV truck factory in Kosciusko County, just outside Warsaw.

"It won't be telephone books and magazines, it's going to be an electric car that's affordable," Grose said.

The campus, on West Old Road 30, used to be home to the historic RR Donnelly printing plant, which employed locals for generations. RR Donnelly shuttered in 2023; that was more than 500 jobs lost.

Less than a year later, Slate bought the plant, promising more than 2,000 jobs and its first ever line of EV pickup trucks.

"My father put his police badge down in 1967 when I was less than 6 months old, to come out to the plant to make a better living for the family. Steel-toed boots, 38 years," Grose said. "I'm hoping countless kids in our schools, people in the region, will have the ability to Come, just like my dad, ask for a job, make more than $2.35 an hour, and help raise their families."

Orders are already pouring in, according to Slate's CEO, Chris Barman.

"We announced slate in late April, and in a little over two and a half weeks, we had 100,000 reservations, and it's been continuing to grow from there," Barman said.

Slate Auto will produce affordable-- meaning under $30,000-- and customizable electric pickup trucks.

"We've gone back to basics with the vehicle, and we've taken out everything that's not a car," Barman said.

No paint job, no radio, crank windows.

"Just 10 percent of the parts of a typical truck to build the blank slate," she said.

At full production, 150,000 trucks will roll out of this factory each year.

"We haven't even started to see, I believe, the investment that Slate's making in Warsaw," said Peggy Friday, CEO of the Kosciusko Economic Development Corporation.

Slate's investment has an estimated economic impact of $39 billion over the next two decades.

Slate is promising more than 2,000 full-time jobs at this factory.

"Obviously, we want those employees to live here, as well as work here," Friday said. "So we are working very quickly on building housing."

The project creates for Mayor Grose what he calls "good" problems.

"It's just a great opportunity for us. As mayor, [we need] housing, schools, infrastructure," Grose said. "But you know what, that's a good thing."

Slate Auto will be operational by the end of next year, and at full production capacity by the end of 2027.