The Best One Yet - 🎙️ “LIVE Interview with Slate’s CEO 🛻 Chris Barman’s EV Disruptor”

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

We brought a surprise guest to our LIVE TBOY show in Chicago: Chris Barman, CEO of the wildest (and newest) electric car brand.Jeff Bezos invested, and Chris is leading it. Slate’s not just building the lowest-priced electric truck on the market ($25K), it’s also the craziest: No radio, no touchscreen, no tech whatsoever. We (jokingly) call it the “Amish-Inspired Electric Car.” And she built hype for the launch by creating a bunch of fake companies (true story).So in today’s interview from our live Chicago show, Chris explains how it’s possible to build and sell a car for $25. She’ll tell us the craziest idea they *didn’t* launch, why they crash half their vehicles on purpose, and what she thinks of President Trump’s EV moves.Want to SEE the live show in action? Watch it on YouTube or check out the highlights on Instagram @tboypod.——————Want more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Pokemon 🐲Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yetis, Nick and Jack coming at you from the T-Boy Studio right now. We're about to play the interview part of our live show in Chicago, which is our interview with Chris Barman, CEO of Slate Auto. We think you're going to like it. We think you're going to love it. Jack, let's hit it. First, a quick word from our sponsor. Yeties, our guest tonight is the CEO of the busiest company in the busiest industry.

Slate Auto is building a pickup truck. That's half the price of pickup trucks. Their biggest investor, Jeff Bezos. Yeah, that Jeff Bezos. And their product, it's making Elon jealous. Because Slate's new car is electric, but that's the least interesting part of the car. She is building a car so low-priced you could just Venmo them for it. It looks like a real-life hot wheel.

Like, it kind of looks like a toy. Honestly, it looks just like the emoji for a truck. And it's got so little technology in it. It seems like it was inspired by the... the Amish. Now, Jack and I have said there is opportunity in extremes. Well, Slate is the most extreme car we've ever seen. It's the disruptor of dealerships, the tamer of Tesla. The biggest innovator in the car industry since Henry invented Ford. Chris Barman, the CEO of Slate Auto, is our guest tonight, and we're thrilled she's here. We covered when she launched this company out of stealth mode

back in April, and now we get to sit with her, and you do too. Yeti's give it up for Chris Barman. Chris, thank you so much for coming here. Chris, you can go right ahead. My mic? Yeah. Awesome. And we'll just, yeah, it's already on.

All right, perfect. Thanks for having me, guys. This is awesome. Chris, thanks for coming down. Thank you so much for coming. This is huge. Did you drive from Michigan? I flew in.

Okay. But actually, I'm driving back. So I'm going to make a stop at our production plant in Warsaw. Oh, wait. at the Slate production plant in Indiana. But I'm going to stop at our manufacturing facility on the way back and then end up in Michigan. Great.

Well, we wanted to ask you to kick things off. Every headline about Slate in the last few months, Chris, has been about the Bezos investment from Jeff. Someone called it the Bezos Mobile. How did you and your team convince Jeff Bezos to invest? So let me give you a little bit of history of like the idea of Slate, like the whole, how did it come to be? So the CEO of Rebuild Manufacturing, a gentleman by the name of Miles R.

Known, had this idea in the fall of 2021, like, where have all the affordable vehicles gone? Like, every new car was coming out, and he just looked at it, and he's like, you know, he loved when he was younger his Jeep Cherokee, like the old XJ, the boxy one, which was just a basic vehicle. And he started thinking about it. He's like, there's no VW bugs, like there's no Model T. Like, what happened to all of those vehicles? and started, you know, talking with the chairman, Jeff Wilkie and Will Barker, who, you know, is on the board and like, hey, this isn't here.

What about, like, why don't we do something like that? Something like the VW. Beetle or. Yeah, like a really basic. Super basic car. Back to the basics, like only the essentials. And so they hired at the time the executive chairman, Rod Copes. Rod's background was from Harley Davidson and Rivian. so a little bit of that accessorization of a vehicle

and bringing in some automotive. And then they went and did a search for a CEO. And I was contacted by an executive recruiter, and I read this document, and the first time I read it, I was like, like, this is insane. You know, who thinks that you can, like, really do this? And I had been in the auto industry for a number of years,

and I woke up the next morning, clearhead, and I was like, okay, set aside everything like that you felt encumbered. large automotive manufacturers and look at it through this lens of really can these things be done and started working through it And it was like, yeah, like there is something here that this can really be done and be possible So very fortunate they asked me to come on board and We built a small team in 2022 and proved out a business model and then at that point we had to go Get some people to support us now let's get to how you actually came to the market because it was insane before we describe the car, which you can see a picture of up here. But there were zero leaks about this.

Last spring, suddenly, these bizarre cars started driving around San Francisco with things on them like cat therapy business or more baby in our car and we'll drive them to sleep. What was going on with this mystery launch you guys did? So we had a great team of people that were working really hard on this because we had been in stealth for almost three years, like just working away on a car and we were ready to come out and tell everybody like, hey, like, we're out here and we're doing this car, but how do you go from like zero to like massive awareness in the minimal amount of time? And the team worked really hard on whatever theme they came up with it had to showcase the vehicle itself and what it did.

And so where you saw those different parity businesses, like every day there was a different version of the vehicle, be at the truck, be at the square back SUV, be at the fastback SUV that was wrapped differently and accessorized differently. But with these, yeah, fake businesses to get people like a little bit of mystery, a little bit of intrigue, a little bit of confusion, like what's going on? So every day on Abbott Kinney in L.A., we parked a different vehicle out there. So as you mentioned, one of them was cryshare. So if you have your crying baby and you really want somebody to just,

driving around for a while, they'll do that. But if you haven't seen the vehicle, it had, like, car seats on the top of it. And so it was to, you know, put a little bit of stretch in there, people looking at it, like, going, okay, this can't be real. But actually, like, we were kind of quietly had people monitoring, and, you know, people walked down the street, and they're like, well, I don't know. Maybe, like, babies like the feel of the wind in their face, and it could be really soothing. So, you know, it went, you know, from the...

there to cat therapy was one of them. And the one that we ended with was taxiderm, my family. So, you know, if you just don't want that family member to go away, you can taxidermy and have them stay with you. But in all of this, each one was wrapped differently and shown in different configuration, so that as we came out and announced the car, it was the basis upon which showing the scale at which

and the variety at which the vehicle can be changed. So I got to say, Jack and I were talking before the show, we love your legal team that they were okay with this. In fact, we were thinking you're going to be the first car company that has a Labou Boo Boo doll and an Errolon smoothie collab. So we covered the launch in April, and on our show we described it as the first car inspired by the Amish because it's an analog car.

There's a lot of technology we expect from cars these days that the slate truck does not have. It doesn't have a radio. It doesn't have speakers. It doesn't have power windows. It's not in... None of these are in the car. Why do you think that someone would like a car that's so anti-tech?

The way that we thought about it is one, we wanted to make sure we looked at price point. So we looked at anything that goes in the car has to, like, fight its way back in, that people really want. And some of it is also a little bit of people who are, like, getting a little bit of tech fatigue as well. but what's unique about what we're doing is we want the power of choice to be in the owner's hands. So it doesn't mean you can't have the tech, but you decide what you want to bring into the vehicle after purchase. So as you said, no radio. We've designed that if you want to bring a radio in, the design of the center storage bin area fits for a single din, so you can bring a radio in. But we've also developed an app.

Like most people today, you just use your streaming audio and your navigation and everything from your phone. Why try to replicate that? Like, there's a great source out there. If you want something bigger than your phone, we've got an accessory rail on the lower part of the instrument panel, and that's where you can bring in a tablet. Yeah, so you make it super easy to just put your phone in there. Exactly. Your phone, your tablet, and then what it does is it disconnects from the consumer electronics lifecycle.

So, like, you know, radios today, infotainment systems are embedded in there, and in a few years it's like totally outdated. This is like just unclipped the one you have and bring any way. My father-in-law has this like really expensive home surround sound set. Oh, like a lot of knobs. Yeah, but it's like it's so out of date. I just like aircast my Spotify and he hates it when I do that. Well, the funny thing Jack and I noticed was when you announced the car,

you said that it was not going to have a screen to change the temperature. You said it would have knobs and everyone applauded. Everyone applauded. And I get that. Yeah, I wish so badly I could change the temperature more easily. Instead I have to like tap the screen. screen for it. You're kind of taking the Mr. Potato Head approach to the car, or IKEA. I guess IKEA is the analogy here. You kind of are letting the consumer do it themselves. But that's why we

said in our introduction of you that the fact that this truck is electric is the least interesting thing about it. Because Nick and I on our show, you've heard us. We've described modern cars, especially electric cars, as iPhones on wheels. But you guys are like, you already have an iPhone. Why would I sell you another? Yeah. Really, again, we just want the basic transportation be there, and we want it to be safe, reliable, affordable. So we're going to design it to the highest safety standards, a new car assessment program five-star, IAHS top safety pick, one of the best warranties in the industry. And really the market that we're looking to go into where, like, most electric vehicles

have gone and where the whole industry has gone is really like upmarket in high end, we're looking to come in at that affordability price point. And so we think, you know, yes, we'll get new vehicle buyers, but we're looking at people who thought they could only afford a used vehicle. And now being in that price point where instead of, hey, my only option was that I had to get a car that was high mileage, had older safety standards, it's out of warranty, it might break down, you're getting the latest safety standards, you're getting one that's under warranty, being an EV, it's going to be a lower total cost of ownership for the vehicle.

and you can accessorize it however you want. So you can turn it into your own personal vehicle. So you basically, I want to talk about customization in a second, but you basically went full Model T in the sense of your assembly line has the same exact car rolling off of it. That's classic Henry Ford. It's a two-door pickup truck, electric in slate gray, or as you call it, a blank slate.

We do. We call it the blank slate. You can have any car you're going to. want as long as it's a blank slate. Great. So how what if people don't want a blank slate? Tell me more about this customization. So we're designing hundreds of accessories that can go on the vehicle so people can trick it out and make it their own. So one of the big ones is you mentioned it's only in slate gray. We recognize not everybody wants a gray vehicle. But we've designed it up front to be wrapped. So that's how you get your color. Like a Christmas

Not quite like Christmas present. But using the vinyl wrap that's used in the industry, I mean, cars today, if you get a car wrapped today, typically it's thousands of dollars and takes, you know, days in order to do it because it's not been designed up front, so you have to remove, you know, door handles and other parts of the car. And then there's these complex curvatures to it that, you know, give it a design that is what was the theme of that brand, but it's really difficult to wrap it. We started working. with one of the largest wrap providers in the early days, like in August of 2022, he came in and has still working very closely with us and advised us on, these are the type of handles

you want to use, and this is how you want to design your lights, and this is what you want to do for the curvature of the vehicles. So a lot of great input to our design team. Our design team really took it to heart. And then given the fact that we use composite exterior panels that are not sheet metal, we're able to actually mold in features. that allow you to take smaller pieces of the wrap kit and install them. So we're doing it with the mind.

We want it to be DIY. So if somebody wants to, they can actually wrap their own vehicle. We'll have Slate University where you can learn. If you're maybe not that bold and don't want to do it or you just don't have time, we'll have a network of service providers that can do that. Now a quick word from our sponsor. What's the craziest thing that you wanted to launch, but you didn't launch? And you can, no one here will tell anyone, I promise.

You can just share with us. But was there anything you guys really were like spitball and were like, hey, let's do that, but that didn't? We did. And this is, okay, so this is going to be like a little bit nerdy, like on the engineering side. But we up front spent a lot of time trying to understand how to do a bolted body instead of a welded body. Because when you put a weld shop in, it requires so much capital investment. We wanted to see, could we do it in a lower cost way? and have it all come together and meet all the right quality and safety and everything.

And like, we study that for a few months and we're like, okay, that's a bridge too far. I thought you were going to say we almost didn't have doors. No, no, but you can drive it. Not a bad idea. But you can drive it without doors if you want. Take it off. Yeah, you can take the doors off. I know there's an SUV kit.

There is an SUV kit. Do I install that myself? Does it arrive in the mail? You can do that if you'd like to you. So thinking about IKEA, we used inspiration from a lot of different areas. it comes as a flat pack. So you can actually install. Like what we have up here?

That's the truck. Like a pickup truck, right? Yep. So you get the pickup truck. If you want to be an SUV, you order the SUV kit. Two kits. It's either square back or fastback.

We'll mail you the kit if you want to install it yourself. And yeah, you put it together. So first you put in the roll bar. The roll bar has airbags on it because we want to make sure that everybody's safe. Next you put in the seat. You cannot put in the seat unless you put in the roll bar. bar. We don't ever want to see anybody driving around with a seat without having the ball bar. And then you can put on the cap.

Okay, but how, Jack and I were trying to run the numbers on this, $25,000. I mean, this is the most important part. This is the key part here. $25,000. Yes. I mean, Tesla's, you know, hasn't been making a profit. You have Rivians never really made money on their cars. What is it that's going to make you guys, as you said, profitable and able to sell at this price point of $25,000? How can you be profitable on a car? that's selling for half the price of the other cars? So, I mean, the business model that we took on this was where we talked about only the essentials, taking things out that we want to put the choice in the consumer's hands to do that.

So, I mean, to develop the infotainment system is extremely expensive, and those electronics are expensive. You know, we have manual window regulators. So you might think about... Crank them? Yeah, crank them. Crank them. I don't think Gen Z knows about the crank motion for a window. It's a forearm workout.

But as an accessory, you can choose to have power windows. But every one of those choices helps us to get cost out of the vehicle. Another example I can give you is if you look at the inside door rests, it's the same part on the left side as the right side. In doing that, it allows us to only invest in one tool. We buy more of those parts. The more volume you buy, the lower the cost is on that part, and that reduces the overall cost of the vehicle.

So you have to be very mindful about it. up front. We got to ask about the crashes. We were curious about the crashes. So you've made 75 of these cars so far, right? We have. Prototypes, but we've made 75 prototypes. We've built those ourselves at a small facility.

And half of them you crashed on purpose? We have. We've crashed half of them on purpose. It's really important us to do that. So, you know, we were in a phase in, you know, early 2024 where we were doing a lot. of virtual modeling. So doing a lot of, you know, work in math dating, CAD, and simulation, and designing the car. But at some point, you have to make sure, like, what you're designing there is reality. So we built 75 prototypes, and about half of them we've crashed into the

wall doing all the different tests that we do. And we're really pleased that they performed well. They've correlated back to our models really well. So now we've got insights that as we move forward in order to do the final production release. We've got confidence that it's going to perform as we expect. And Chris, you also happened to be the first car brand we'd ever heard of that had been invited to a wedding. Yeah. Which sounds like product market fit if we've ever heard of it. That is beautiful. So someone sent the company a wedding invitation? We received a wedding invitation from a couple out in the Long Island area. And it came to Slate. Not to anybody at Slate. It came to Slate. Slate's been invited to.

the wedding and unfortunately Slate is not going to be able to attend. You RCP, no. But we're going to send some nice kids. Good, good, good, good. So we are legally obligated to ask the next question. So this is a business podcast. AI is all that anyone talks about. Does Slate have an AI or autonomy game plan?

So we're really focused on this vehicle that's skew of one. We're not exploring AI right now. we're not exploring autonomy. There's a lot of smart people that are working on solving that problem. We're really working on solving the problem of the affordable vehicle. I feel like this is the coolest.

You're the only CEO we've ever heard of who is not pursuing AI right now, and I think you deserve credit for that. Yeah, that deserves a round of applause. But, Chris, are you buying Bitcoin instead? No. If you did pursue autonomy, I mean, you would have had to raise

10 billion extra dollars. You know? Like, that is just such an expensive thing to pursue. Yeah, I mean, again, there's been a lot of smart people who have been working on it for, I mean, decades, just trying to solve that problem. And they've made great strides over the years. But our focus, again, is, you know, the definition of what's affordable in automotive right now, automotive industry right now is broken. And that's where we want to come in and solve that problem. So, Chris, where do you see the car industry in 10 years? Like, Jack and I are picturing, we like to think, of industries in 2035. And we're thinking about our little sons, boys, babies. Are they going to have drivers licenses in 2035? Yeah. So it's a really interesting question. And before I

answer it, I want to ask you a question. Yes. I'd love to. Okay. So for both of you, what was the first car that you drove or drove when you got your license? Because we asked this question sometimes and some people maybe drove before they should have been driving. 1991 Honda Jack Tommy had to drive stick I was going to say stick shift 1991 accord Okay and what was there anything in particular

Like you liked about it You remember about it? It smelled like my grandfather Because it was his car and when he passed away My oldest brother Nick got it And then my brother Tuck got it and then I got it Okay And then Teddy totaled it Okay

I'm sorry about that Soonie Mine was a Toyota Land Cruiser That was white it was my parents. It was affectionately called the ice cream truck because it had too many seats and was too bright.

And so we actually would play ice cream music sounds when you were driving down the streets in New York and it was getting some attention. Mine also had one of those automatic seatbelt things. Oh yeah. You close the door and it's like, it must be nice.

I remember that. I remember that. But I think what's special about like asking that question is and as people talk about it And as I asked a question to both of you, like, you got animated and you talked about, you know, what you called it and everything. But I think the theme and the thread that runs through that is like there's a feeling of independence and a feeling of freedom. Once you get that first vehicle and you can start to drive. And I think even when you think about like 2035, people are still going to want freedom and independence and how they get around and what they do.

And so, you know, who knows what the form factor may exactly look like? Who knows where autonomy may be? but I think the ability to have independence and freedom to get somewhere will always be there. So there will be some way, shape, or form of a car that's going to be piloted by people. So, Chris, there's been a recent development that can't be good news for Slate. Since 2009, electric car buyers have enjoyed a $7,500 off coupon from the federal government as a financial incentive to buy electric cars. That ends in September because of the big, beautiful bill.

So Slate will be the first electric car company not to benefit from government support. If you could say one thing to the president about all this, what would it be? Yeah, we would say, no, we would say the same thing that we say to everybody. I mean, America just needs more affordable vehicles that are made in the U.S. Indiana. In Indiana. And Chris, last question before we let you go. You're running a startup in the most challenging

industry in the United States, pulling off a challenge of taking on Tesla and General Motors at the same time. It is so competitive. So competitive. And you've got this wildly cool-looking truck right here. With a business model, Jack and I said it was like Spirit Airlines meets JetBlue.

It is out there. Any advice you have for our ambition? it's millennials in the audience who are all building something right now. Could be a company, could be a career, could be your relationship. Yeah, I think it's, don't ever be afraid to take a risk. You never know what might end up coming from that. And even if it, you know, you stumble or you fail along the way, you're going to learn. And it's the learnings that are going to then propel you to just get better the next time you go at that next big dream or next big thing you're going to tackle. So there's a lot of fun in doing that. Chris, we were so excited to cover

of this in April. We think it's awesome. We're so glad you came here tonight. Full disclosure, I'm one of your reservations, and I convinced my father-in-law to do the same. But we got to ask you, before we leave, what's the takeaway from the CEO of Slate, Chris, on Slate? Yeah, so we build it, you make it. Go to Slate.com.com. Check out our Slate maker. And we hope that you reserve one. And actually, I was going to ask, so since you've reserved one, have you made one on the slate maker? I have. Yeah, I went. I went. I went pretty basic. I want a pickup truck.

I always need to haul stuff, and I don't have a flat bed. We're going to put a podcast studio in that flatbed. I haven't customized the colors, though. I'm not sure I have... Technically, that's a write-off. You haven't know.

Go customize colors. You can put a lift kit on it if you want. You can do different things. You can save it. You can share it with others. It'll be my first stop after the show. All right. Awesome.

Give it up for Chris. Thank you. Chris. That was wonderful. Thank you very, very much. Yet is Nick and Jack back with you from the T-Boy Studio. That was a hell of an interview and a hell of a live show. That was insane.

To anybody who came, thank you so much. To those of you who just listened today, thank you so much. And we may be coming to a city near you pretty soon. We've got some touring ideas. We're thinking of making this a monthly occasion. Don't hold us to that, but that's the ambitious goal. In the meantime, Bestie celebrate the win this weekend. Jack, let's grab some lozenges for this weekend,

and we'll see you Monday with our usual deep one.