Slate poaches key Tesla manufacturing leader to build its electric pickup truck

it's going to be 50k$

I hope this truck is everything cyber truck was supposed to be.

No real impact to Tesla, they have nothing in the pipeline.

oh lord... really? I can understand it from a point of view of scrappily, quickly, ramp up SOMETHING. But you can't tell me you can't find some legacy talent that is more capable of producing quality... this sounds to me more like a commitment to mediocrity and willingness to accept quality just to hit price points and fast time lines, VS doing the right thing. but then again, don't know any of those people :)

I feel like taking my deposit back, lol. I don't want anything Tesla ever for any reason. I'd much rather see legacy big 3 engineers in there.

Tesla engineers without musk controlling them might operate totally differently. Musk apparently told them to take everything off a Tesla until it didn’t run and put just enough back on to make it able to drive to cut costs. LiDAR was one of the things they took off, proximity sensors too. Getting the first year of a new car is something I avoid though. Usually I wait for them to iron out the bugs.

I read Walt's book, too. I still would rather have real engineers than Elon sycophants building the truck I want to buy.

That’s like hiring an accountant from Enron.

Exactly who wants to buy something from the South African not

Lol I hope not. Right now it's checking almost every box for me. But if it's over 30k that's a deal breaker.

Slate price of 20k is pure fantasy. Between the tariffs and the end of EV credits the price is going to balloon like crazy.

Yeah

I believe the expected asking price has been raised to $24-25k now, thanks to Trump.

It'll go up some more they aren't even past the prototype phase.

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Probably. I’m wary of all car startups since I got burned by the Elio.

Low bar, I hope it’s great.

$20k was possible with a non-trump presidency.

I highly doubt that. The CT was supposed to have a 40k base model we've all heard this before... It's easy to make bold promises when you haven't even factored in the supply chain, and manufacturing costs.

It was supposed to be 27k and 20 with the rebate. And it didn’t have any stupid gimmick shit like an “exoskeleton” os stainless steel, double as a boat [anchor], bulletproof glass, etc. I would don’t forget the idiotic tariffs and trade wars

They are doing the Elon playbook to the T. They give an extremely optimistic product launch but they haven't even built the factory of secured the supply line.

It's definitely possible that will happen - still, the Slate is at least positioning itself as an anti-CT with a focus on bare bones simplicity. Between the lack of paint options, the roll-up windows, no self driving or sensors, etc - it's possible the Slate will fall less a victim to this than the CT.

Uh oh. Telsa quality is shit.

Elon didn't invent hype... It's certainly possible Slate will succumb to the same fate, but it's not set in stone. The whole idea is to be a bare bones truck -- if they fail to deliver on price then the whole idea evaporates, because no one wants to pay premium prices for a bare bones anything. Price and bare bones (but modular) - the whole thing rides on them delivering on that.

You believe in fairy tails.

You would have to be incredibly naive to believe that.

You mean fairy *tales*? We will see. All I said was it's not a given they will follow the same path as CT. Not exactly a bold prediction - more like common sense. I certainly won't be getting one if they end up being expensive (over 30k)

You have to be naive to believe what, exactly? I said it's possible you will be right, but it's not a given. And it's not.

Having known people who worked at Tesla - you don’t rise to a position of authority if you harbor a desire to do things the right way.

There’s a reason things like power windows have become ubiquitous in the automotive world, and it’s not because of feature creep. Sometimes what was considered a luxury item 40 years ago is actually cheaper and easier to produce at a good quality level than the basic option it replaced.

They would be better off hitting Nissan up.

I agree it's not feature creep - but a lot of things become ubiquitous over time not out of necessity - e.g. homes are much larger now than they used to be decades ago. We don't *need* larger homes, but people sort of expect them, so builders build larger homes. Everyone expects power windows nowadays, so that's why they are everywhere. From manufacturing cost standpoint, it is cheaper to standardize so you're right that bringing in a manual window option just doesn't make sense if most of your cars are power windows - cheaper to pick one and have a simpler manufacturing pipeline. The manual windows is perhaps not the best example, but it's just one example of the minimalist and utilitarian feature set and design. I'm totally here for it -- provided the car isn't junk and they keep it very affordable. Time will tell...

Those guys came from McKinsey

never ceases to entertain me that “SLATE” is just “TESLA” rearranged

They have big 3 engineers this is just one recent hiring from Tesla since they source talent from former Tesla and Rivian employees as well.

Most of their leadership team consists of legacy automaker veterans.

Yeah I feel you on that but Elio is also a good case study of signs to look out for. Which thankfully Slate doesn’t have. They are only asking for $50 refundable deposits and they’ve raised over $700 million in 2 rounds of fundraising (currently in their 3rd round). They aren’t hurting for money and trying to get people to invest in them without even leaving the prototype phase. They have 70 pre production prototypes and a factory they are continuously hiring positions for. None of this was true for Elio Motors. Then as a bonus their entire leadership team is consisting of auto executive veterans who know how to bring a product market and have pre existing connections in this industry. So always be a bit skeptical until they launch but out of all the startups right now I have the most confidence in Slate actually making it to market.

Won’t be surprised if they have hired or will hire someone from Nissan, they are hiring a lot of people right now from legacy manufacturers as well as Tesla and Rivian. Honestly don’t know why this one employee is getting so much attention.

Arthur Anderson (Now Accenture).

They were the auditors. Jeff Skilling and the magical accounting came from McKinsey.

Eh, back in the day VW poached the team that designed the Ford Focus suspension. As shitty as the Focus is, the rear suspension is genius and that team went in to build suspension for the Mk. 5 Golf, which also handles brilliantly. It’s about which engineers, what they did, what they will be doing, and who’s directing them.

Nothing at all. Just keep using the old worn out moulds to make worse and worse quality outdated cars.