Arnone shared his idea with Jeff Wilke, the company’s chairman and a former Amazon executive, and eventually, a small team was formed. The group hired Barman, who spent most of her career as an engineering executive at Fiat Chrysler, now part of Stellantis.

Barman told Reuters recently that Slate will be able to absorb the loss of the $7,500 tax credit because the truck’s price still will undercut competitors.

The company plans to build the pickup at an old catalog factory in Warsaw, Indiana. Executives are taking steps to hold down costs, starting with a simplified design that uses about 500 parts in the truck’s assembly, compared with a few thousand for a traditional truck.

The plan to build all of its trucks in a basic package – what the company calls a “SKU of one” – allows customers to choose to add a stereo, center console, special lighting, and other features later.

The pickup will be built with composite body panels in gray, with an option for a vinyl wrap. That will sidestep the need for a paint shop, which is one of the most expensive investments in a typical car factory.

Slate’s minimalist approach is a leap of faith that Americans will forgo creature comforts they have been increasingly willing to splurge on. Last year, U.S. buyers spent 33% above the base price on average, springing for higher-end trim packages and extra features, according to . That was up from 28% in 2014.

But there is mounting evidence that new cars are becoming out of reach for many Americans. That could worsen under the effects of the Trump administration’s tariffs, which threaten to increase prices on popular budget cars imported from Mexico, Korea and elsewhere.

From that standpoint, Slate’s price-conscious pickup might be hitting at the right time, said Paul Waatti, director of industry analysis at AutoPacific.

“There’s a growing appetite, especially among younger drivers, for vehicles that are more honest, more modular and less over-engineered,” he said. “Slate taps right into that.”

Traditional automakers and startups have found mixed success rolling out larger electric pickup trucks in recent years. Now, startups like Slate and California-based Telo are focusing on smaller electric pickups.

In a town hall meeting in early May, Ford CEO Jim Farley and Executive Chair Bill Ford told employees they admired the company’s customer-centered ethos and focus on affordability.

Tim Kuniskis, Stellantis’ head of American brands, called Slate “super interesting” at a June event, while also questioning how affordable it would be for some shoppers once they added all the options they wanted.

“The idea behind it, we’ve talked about that idea a million times,” he said. “It’s a cool idea.”

(Reporting by Kalea Hall and Nora Eckert in Detroit; Editing by Mike Colias and Anna Driver)