The town of Lake Orion, Michigan – in a supplier’s park that is not described on the outskirts of Detroit, an emerging electric cars company supported Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos builds what he hopes to be the latest car maker in America.

The attachment is filled with dozens of preliminary models, tested vehicles, and a skeleton of the raw vehicle decorated with wires, and most importantly, a crowded “beta” collection line that has been building electric cars since December to start operating, Slate Auto.

Slate uses the site – the stone’s goal away from the huge General Motors The assembly factory – to produce more than 70 internal test vehicles, a certificate and everything else the company needs to prepare for the production and sale of vehicles in the United States.

The Beta production line is characterized by approximately ten stations that carry a mark of things such as the doors of the car, the dislocation and the front ends sitting in the boxes or on the surface areas made of parts of wood and steel.

Employees move back and forth between boxes, tables and assembly line such as songs like Whitney Houston “Saving All My Love for You” and Pat Benatar “Love is a Battlefield” throughout the vital facility.

Large manually designed compounds are a two-seat pick-up pick-up trucks that can also be converted into different patterns of SUVs, such as Fast-Fast-Fast-OP-EXPARED as Jeep Wrangler.

The vehicle vehicles made from the Virgin and Karnak windows have achieved no entertainment systems, and options to do so. The plan is that each vehicle outside the line is the same to reduce the complexity, before adding any additional features or different covers/tops.

Co -car officials have threw the idea of ​​this normative car that was stripped amid the appearance of communication and delivery interests, but so far the challenges have exceeded potential opportunities, or companies are struggling to maintain prices.

Slate believes that it can succeed as others failed through simple manufacturing and cost -lowering – two fields as other startups have failed in recent years.

“This will be different for several reasons.” “We have taken a family approach to the basics, our right, and we are in fact, we build a completely new group of the product.”

Slate came out of the “ghost mode” in late April by revealing its first cars-several small trucks of electric doors and transformed SUVs-which expect delivery operations to start by the end of next year. It is in the process of building a full production facility at the previous printing factory in Warsaw, Indiana, where you expect to have a capacity of up to 150,000 vehicles annually.

It is a hard time frame even for the well -known car industry, not to mention a new startup that creates supply chains, production and workforce, among other things. Hand building cars in a small facility one thing; Its production is another block.

“We have a really strong plan, and we are working on achieving the plan,” Chris Parman, CEO of Slit Parman, told CNBC. “This does not mean that we are following the plan exactly. We must determine when different information comes, but we understand what we must do in the end to reach the goal of having vehicles that meet all our requirements.”

Slate revealed its car that did not name it (the company requires customers to call themselves) to a noticeable uproar, and attracting more than 100,000 reservations require a $ 50 deposit. For other companies, vehicle reservations have decreased significantly from actual sales.

The company said that it is conducting a round of financing from the series C after collecting $ 700 million in its first tour of the financing. Techcrunch I mentioned for the first time The round of Series A in 2023 raised $ 111 million from 16 investors, including Bezos.

Other startups EV needed more funding and soon detonated through billions of dollars annually in an attempt to produce the car. But Salt believes that it can be much lower than the capital thanks to the engineering and production of the car.

Parman said during his appearance on April 24. “But with the development, it is a vehicle that people will actually love and proud of it.”

The company refused to discuss future goals such as sales and profitability, as well as the expected capital requirements, other than that it plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in its factory in Indiana.

Barman and Keipper – Old Warriors Stelantis The predecessor Fiat Chrysler met, among other companies – nearly three years ago to discuss the business plan in the car and Slate as the first employee to start.

The car – which has a targeted start price Less than $ 20,000 Credit up to $ 7500 – many spare parts are “outside the shelf” of suppliers, which reduces costs. Its body is also injected exclusively an exclusive compound instead of steel or aluminum, which reduces the cost and weight.

No “connection” does not display like a modem or large screens, only a small driver information screen. Instead of the central information and entertainment system, drivers can use their own devices such as a smartphone or the tablet and music tablet. Speakers are also optional.

Foreign women will not be drawn from menu vehicles. The company says it was designed to receive it with Vinyel, which eliminates the need for a tasted paint store – a tremendous investment for auto manufacturing companies.

The basis of the company is for consumers to be able to change the car themselves easily or add what they wish to do after buying by removing screws or adding screws. The company plans to provide some services such as car packaging, but customers are not required to do these things through Slate and they can buy additional jobs later.

Slit says the car-around two doors Ford Bronco – only about 2500 parts, including only 500 to 700 “final elements”, or parts, are characterized by final assembly. This compares with the estimate of a list of 2500 pieces of elements for other competitors and thousands of total pieces.

“Basically, there is no new technology because technology costs money to develop it,” said Jimmy String, who was previously with Karma Automotive and Stellantis/FIAT Chryer, who stands next to the experimental collection line.

Standring said that the initial idea is to have the car tire that was built on everything together – like a group of almost pans – to remove the need for a full body store, such as trying not to use the paint store. He said that the defects eventually outperformed the benefits.

The Slate truck is expected to be charged with a standard battery of 52.7 kW per hour with an estimated 150 miles, or a package of 84.3 kilowatts with a target of 240 miles of the range. Its battery resource is SK, according to the company. Its maximum speed is only 90 miles per hour.

Parman said: “I am really proud of how they really think outside the box,” Parman said. “We will have groups, and we do it in a way that also tends, but we want to offer people many options.”

on Company websiteThere are 11 customers for customizer with 160 common options, except for the external customer colors. This is a lot of options – starting from dozens of badges to lighting, sound, tires and wheels – until the customer and a company chooses to store and serve it.

Slate executive officials say that the goal of customization is that customers be able to make their car easily or change them when they want, but car analysts see it as one of many areas of possible problems.

In addition to traditional starting challenges such as capital, profitability and expansion, other obstacles include the following: a limited market for two -door vehicles, the slow expected dependence of EVS and the inception of organizational certainty in terms of federal tax credits on which they depend on the ability to withstand the costs of the car, among other things.

“They have an interesting idea.” “The question is, how many people who really want to do so, and what is the size of the adjustable market?”

The sale of a regular doors -door cabinet trucks such as the first Slate vehicle was not only less than 90,400 registrations in 2024. This compares more than 2.5 million cabins registered with four doors.

“The company wants to be sustainable, it will need to expand its products to four doors, which the platform seems to be able to support, as well as additional compounds in the future.”

“Just like each other starting start before that, its sustainability will not be determined by the first product in the first six months,” said Brenley. “Only the first product makes you in the door.”

A handful of startups such as Lordstown Motors, Electric Last Mile Solutions, Fisker, Canoo and Nikola all made it in various forms of production but are bankrupt. Even startups EV are the best like Rivian cars and A clear group I had to raise the capital to stay on his feet.

The industry also raised concerns about the ability to withstand the costs of the Slate vehicle by simply adding options or the highest new SUVs, which can be installed and unintended using bolts.

“I think it’s very interesting. The idea behind this, we talked about this idea one million times,” said Tim Konescis, CEO of Stelantis Ram Truck Brand. “Now, what he will already deal with in the market … when people start in cucumber, it will not be 20,000 dollars. It will be $ 35,000, and by the time when it reaches 35,000 dollars, it is in a medium -sized truck area.”

Slate has not announced the prices of allocations or careful pricing of the car without a federal tax credit that is exposed to President Donald Trump.

“Slate is an example of the cause and difficulty of producing cheap EV,” said Karl Praire, veteran car analyst at Isecars.com. “They produce an electric car with only two seats, 140 miles, hand windows, without a touch screen, and still 27500 dollars … It is not a competitive car at that point.”

Praire said that there is another EVS close to this price, as well as smaller capabilities such as Ford Marterick Hybrid with a lot of features that can be the best purchase of consumers.

Brauer and Brinley Slate Credit gave to try something new and try to address the ability to withstand costs, but the auto industry is not busy storming it, even when starting an empty menu.

“It’s normative. It is a great thing. It is a really smart idea,” said Brenley. “The question for me comes to the number of people who want to do this? We will discover that, but I don’t know it is as high as they think.”