// WIRED US/UK — MODA & SOCIETÀ
There’s a Very Simple Reason Why You Love the Slate Truck
Tisha Johnson is a rare anomaly in the car world: a design leader for an automaker who is not a man. In a resolutely testosterone-fueled industry where, traditionally, women have seemingly been given positions of authority in design labs as long as they focus on interiors, colors, or material selections, very few have been afforded free rein on the most important visual element of the car, the exterior, let alone promoted to run the entire aesthetic show. Johnson has.
As head of design at Slate, this gender-specific fact might be why the world has fallen in love with the Jeff Bezos–backed truck. Casual observers might put the Slate EV's popularity down to its low price. Starting at $24,950, the Slate arriving later this year won't just be the cheapest EV on the US market; it will also be the cheapest pickup truck of any power flavor.
But people buy cheap all the time. Be it a pickup or portable speaker, cheap doesn't mean they love the product; it usually means a compromise. And it's hard to love a compromise. The real trick is in creating something beautiful and accessible.
It's a hard task—ask Jony Ive, who has fashioned the best-looking automotive interior in decades for the $640,000 Ferrari Luce. Even though you could buy 25 (and a half) Slate trucks for the same price as a Luce, the Ferrari's exterior has been met with a frosty reception, to say the least. The budget Slate, meanwhile, has won multiple awards for its looks, not just for how much it costs. Johnson and her team have nailed beautiful and accessible. The TL;DR secret sauce? Ditch the testosterone and bring in a woman's perspective, and, perhaps more importantly, lack of ego.
Johnson has been working toward getting people to love the Slate for 27 years. Her final-year thesis at California’s Art Center College of Design in 1999 focused on the genuine need for a useful, affordable, and hopefully desirable vehicle for a single mom. It has taken two long spells at Volvo (a 17-year tour in total), with stints in between as head of design at Whirlpool and Herman Miller, to realize her vision.
Toward the end of this year, Slate's first customers will get behind the wheel of Johnson's dream of an astonishingly affordable vehicle—one that can transform from an electric truck to a traditional “squareback” SUV to a jeep-like “fastback” SUV, thanks to a genuinely ingenious modular design. Complete color changes will be possible in two days and cost just $500. Panels can be swapped out; decals, roof racks, and $60 grille plates can be bought from Slate or, as the company is going to publish a load of its 3D files, tweaked and printed by owners themselves. Many companies talk about genuinely democratic design; very few deliver.
I sat down with Johnson to discuss this rare and laudable woman-centric approach to the Slate, and exactly how it's brought about an EV that the design world, auto trade, and the general public (180,000 preorders and counting) all love.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
JEREMY WHITE: Pickups are trapped in a hyper-masculine, aggressive design language. Giant grilles, towering fronts, hostile postures. As a woman leading the truck's design team, was stepping away from that intentional pushback against car-guy tropes or a byproduct of creating a utility vehicle with empathy and affordability?
TISHA JOHNSON: We were always intentional in what the expression would be. There were definitely things that we didn't want it to be. We didn't want it to be a jerk. We literally said that. First and foremost, we wanted the vehicle to be truly approachable. Friendly but very confident. We all attach to the vehicles we drive. They represent our personality, our self-expression. This vehicle, the ability to personalize, is a cornerstone of the thinking here.