UPDATE: Slate Auto confirms Warsaw as site of new production facility

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A former printing press in Warsaw will officially become the new home of the Slate Truck.

After a week of unconfirmed reports, startup EV manufacturer Slate Auto confirmed that it is bringing production of its flagship product to the former LCS Communications plant on the western edge of the Kosciusko County city.

In its release sent to multiple media outlets, Slate said it plans to bring over 2,000 jobs to the factory and that it hopes to be making the first Slate Trucks at some point in 2026.

Slate bills its Slate Truck as a battery-powered pickup with a bare-bones design that buyers can customize with more than 100 features. Slate has said the truck will start at about $28,000, but when a buyer claims the current federal EV tax credit, the sticker prices essentially drops to roughly $20,000.

The property card for the site lists about 1.4 million square feet of space in the building, which was built in 1958 and was the longtime site of a printing press for RR Donnelley & Sons. Magazine and catalog printer LSC Communications acquired the plant in 2016 and closed it in 2023, laying off over 500 workers. 

But the site—which is currently just outside Warsaw’s city limits and a few minutes south of U.S. 30—will be revitalized with the arrival of Slate in the near future.

In February, Kosciusko County Economic Development Corp. President Peggy Friday told local media the KEDCO had signed an incentive package for the site. As of Wednesday morning KEDCO has not publicly revealed the incentive package.

Slate Auto was founded in 2022 as a project housed in an incubator run by former Amazon executives. The company is now based near Detroit but only recently came out of “stealth mode” with an announcement about its first product—the Slate Truck.

Multiple media outlets report the company raised more than $100 million in Series A funding, including investments from several big names like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter.

In its announcement video, Slate CEO Chris Barman described the Slate Truck as a “radical truck platform so customizable that it can be transformed from a two-seat pickup into a five-seat SUV.”