Tim Stevens

You don't get any of that with the Slate.

And so really what Slate's hoping to do is really attract people who are going to be doing DIY, 3D printing accessories in their car, wrapping them in vinyl themselves, that kind of thing.

There have been some changes.

A couple of weeks ago, Slate got $650 million in funding, which they say will be enough for them to get it into production sometime later this year.

So things are looking all good on the finance side.

That's good news.

They did get a new CEO, which was definitely a big surprise to all of us.

Peter Ferrissey, who actually is a former Amazon executive, came on board to take over the company and basically bring them forward to production.

You know, when I visited Slade before they announced things, they were not really excited about talking about the Amazon connection.

They were kind of downplaying that as Bezos being an investor, but this not being...

an Amazon company.

Now with Ferrissey there taking over CEO, it's kind of hard to say that there's no connection between Amazon and Slate, but we'll see how that shakes out.

Chris Barman, who was the CEO, she is still at the company, but now she's basically overseeing vehicle development, design, and production, which is a role that she was pretty close to what she had back at FCA before.

So things are still looking good for Slate.

Really, the question mark is, are people going to be willing to spend that extra money to get it versus what they were going to be spending effectively before?

Right.

It definitely has.

There's a lot less enthusiasm around EVs than there was 12 months ago.

The lack of federal incentives is a huge blow to the company.

But ultimately, there's still a need for, I think, a cheap small truck.