AI Auto Podcast Apr 6, 2026

S7E24: Why Slate Auto’s Head of Design Tisha Johnson Calls It Her Dream Job

Annotations will appear as you listen

0:00

12:30

Concept

pickup truck

A pickup truck is a car with a cab up front and an open cargo bed in the back. It’s designed to carry stuff, so the shape and layout are different from a sedan or SUV.

Company

Slate

Slate appears to be the brand/company behind the vehicle being discussed. In this segment, the host and Tisha frame the car as “Slate” and discuss design decisions made by Slate’s design group.

Concept

Personalization refers to letting customers modify the vehicle’s look or configuration after purchase. In design terms, it changes how you plan surfaces, mounting points, and access so different options can fit cleanly.

Concept

access points around the vehicle

“Access points” suggests the vehicle has designed-in locations where owners or installers can attach or integrate accessories/parts. This is a key enabler for modular customization because it standardizes where changes can be made.

Concept

SUV kit

An “SUV kit” sounds like an add-on package that makes the truck look or function more like an SUV. It’s a way to change the vehicle without starting from scratch.

Concept

add the back row

“Add the back row” means adding rear seats so more people can ride. Changing seating layout can change the interior space and how the car is designed.

Concept

palette

A palette is just the list of colors they offer. Expanding it means more choices for customers without having to start from scratch every time.

Concept

accessorize

Accessorize means adding extra features or style items. In this case, it includes things like wrap colors and other personalization choices.

Concept

delivered to you

Delivered to you means the car can arrive already wrapped in the color you picked. That way you don’t have to arrange the wrap yourself right away.

Concept

service provider

A service provider is a shop or installer that can do the work for you. If you don’t want to wrap the car yourself, they help handle it.

Concept

affordable

They’re saying the car is designed to be affordable when you buy it and to stay affordable as you own it. It’s about keeping costs under control over time.

Concept

first principles

“First principles” means starting from the most basic goals and building from there. In this case, they’re saying affordability is a core goal they designed around from the beginning.

Concept

unexpected high ticket or high cost items

They’re talking about not wanting big surprise expenses. The goal is to keep costs predictable so you’re not hit with expensive add-ons later.

Term

car wrap

A car wrap is a sticker-like film that covers your car’s paint. People use it to change the color or style without repainting the whole car.

Concept

reliable mobility

It means having transportation you can count on. The speaker is emphasizing that people need cars that won’t constantly cause problems or unexpected expenses.

Concept

affordably personalize your car

It’s about making your car feel more like yours without spending a ton of money. Instead of big upgrades, you use smaller add-ons that still make a big visual difference.

Concept

accessories

Accessories are extra parts you add to your car to change how it looks or works. They’re usually easier and cheaper than major repairs or performance changes.

Part

side mirrors

Side mirrors are the mirrors on the outside of the car that help you see behind you. The host is saying swapping them can make the vehicle look different without doing anything complicated.

Term

headroom

Headroom is how much space you have above your head when you’re sitting. More headroom usually means fewer people feel cramped.

Concept

EV platform

An EV platform is the basic design of the car built for an electric drivetrain. It usually helps the cabin feel bigger because there’s less stuff like an engine taking up space.

Concept

modular interior

A modular interior is built so parts can be changed or swapped. That lets you customize the car—like turning storage areas into speaker locations or changing seating.

Term

bin doors

“Bin doors” are the doors/panels for built-in storage inside the vehicle. In this concept, they can be changed to do other things like audio.

Term

speaker mesh

Speaker mesh is the protective grille you see over speakers. Here, it’s used so the storage area can become part of the car’s sound system.

Term

sound bar

A sound bar is a long speaker setup that helps spread sound across the cabin. In this case, it’s integrated into the front dashboard area.

Term

rear bulkhead

A rear bulkhead is a divider wall behind the main cabin. If you remove it, you can open up space and change how many people can sit in the vehicle.

Concept

five seats comfortably

“Five seats comfortably” means the vehicle is designed to carry five people in a way that’s meant to feel roomy. It’s part of the customization story.

Term

rear bench

A rear bench is a seat in the back that can hold more than one person. Here, it’s how the vehicle changes from two seats to five seats.

Concept

reserve one

Reserving a vehicle typically means placing an order/deposit before production or final configuration is complete. The speaker ties this to the delivery timeline, implying a staged rollout.

LIVE

Well today we're sitting here in New York in the new Slate. It's a pickup truck originally

and we're with Tisha Johnson, who is the head of design and Tisha, I haven't seen you in

I don't know, 10 years, 8 years? I know it's been so many years and it is great to see you and I'm

really excited to be talking to you today about this vehicle because I know what a true car

enthusiast you are. Yeah exactly and not only me but like a lot of people thousands of people

actually are very interested so I'm gonna play the audio from the walk around you gave us here

in New York and obviously this is audio only but you're gonna hear all the details about this

project which is fantastic and a lot of people are excited about it so thank you very much for

your time and for sharing all this information with us. Thank you gosh thank you so much for your

time I'm very happy to be able to share you know this story with with people so thank you. Let's

hear let's hear what she has to say about it. My name is Tisha Johnson and I'm head of design.

We are here in a wonderful space in the East Village.

My name is Tisha Johnson I'm head of design at Slate very excited to talk to you today we're in

the heart of New York and we are very excited to be sharing our vehicle with you.

So the vehicle you know the really exciting thing about it is that it is such a really simple

statement and it is our blank slate and it's ready to be personalized creating something that's

really desirable and also very simple is probably the hardest challenge that we as the design group

have ever faced. Normally the way that you might go about designing for desirability is to add

content and embellish but here we went the other direction we said people will love this if we

keep it truly simple. What we have done is we've created access points around the vehicle so that

people can really get their hands in it and they can make their slate whatever they want it to be.

As we put the vehicle online and through the maker encouraged people to begin to

really create whatever they wanted to from the blank slate we certainly expected that people would

be interested in the SUV kit and we did see that we saw a lot of people beginning to look at the

design add the back row and start to change the shape of the vehicle. The thing that's really

surprising is how much interest there was in color and I mean a lot of color exploration. So the big

story of course is the vehicle comes out of the factory it's just one color always and we've designed

it so that it can be easily wrapped in fact it's the first vehicle to ever be designed to be wrapped

and we knew this is DIY we wanted to make sure that people could then wrap it themselves with

their own hands easily but again what we didn't realize is how much differentiation people would

want through color meaning we see people looking at future wraps and purple wraps and blue wraps

and all of that color became learning for us so we listened to what the market was telling us

and we began to add colors to our palette so we'll be offering over a hundred colors and of course

you can always go as custom as you want to so that will help you realize any dream that you have.

As the vehicle is moving through the factory it is always this slate gray that you see however

you can order the vehicle you can accessorize it with any color wrap that you like and there you

have options you can decide to have the car the vehicle delivered to you in whatever wrap that

you specify or you can wrap it yourself and we really believe that people will want to

to do that there's a lot of advantages to you know one direction or another but being able

to wrap it yourself at at home is going to be interesting to people so one of the important

things for us to achieve is we've we've really made sure that you can get all of the accessorization

that you want the way you want it in other words if for you it's best to have a service provider

that takes care of adding any of the accessories including wraps will support you through that

process and make sure that you can have access to that if you prefer to have it yourself wrapped

then you can do that in any number of ways so you know yes a really good question why are we

offering all of this personalization to people and making it easy for them to do

certainly we know that it sparks creativity and that people people really hunger for the ability

to be able to make things themselves make their own statements and this vehicle is affordable

and the first principles of the vehicle are around making sure that the vehicle is affordable

at the time that you purchase it it remains affordable as you own it and our accessories

are also accessible they are also affordable so we're not going to surprise you along the way

with very suddenly unexpected high ticket or high cost items and and so that's why we know

what is the least expensive way for you to be able to get color it's to have a wrap that you

can wrap yourself there there really could be no less expensive way to have a beautiful outcome

that you can afford my background is a pretty good fit for for this vehicle program and for

sleep i have been since 1999 in my senior thesis as a design student wanting to deliver

affordable vehicles to the market uh to those folks that are wage earning individuals that

are working hard and need to have good reliable mobility so when i found out about this project

i knew this was the one that i absolutely had to do now throughout my career i never

met my goal i never met my goal i had in fact as my senior thesis i described an individual who

was hardworking she was a single mom with two kids and she needed to be able to get to her job

with reliable affordable mobility a car and having never been able to deliver that i even

left the auto industry and really looked at other ways that i could help average people

get a hold of good good design but this question was never answered for me this this goal was never

achieved so when i found out about this this project i knew this was where i wanted to be

and i would also like to share with you some personal consumer experience that i have that

also relates to this idea so i thought the idea of being able to affordably personalize your car

through accessories we have seen that in another place and it's in particular it's in the motorcycle

industry i ride motorcycles i ride them because of the joy of riding i enjoy riding motorcycles

but i also love what they represent a motorcycle is something that just about everybody can afford

and one of the first things you usually do with a motorcycle is you begin to personalize it i like

very very simple things myself and you know one example is i will instantly put on new

side mirrors for the motorcycle and i just by putting that accessory on i visually

make the the motorcycle look lower i've done nothing heavy duty there it doesn't cost me

much i can take care of it myself then i go beyond that to other accessories so when we began

talking about this project i thought here we go we can do it so this is our interior environment

you can see that there is a lot of headroom it's a very comfortable open environment and we're really

able to leverage our EV platform in order to create lots of interior space and from here it's

more of the story about how we can help people personalize it can be things like these bin doors

which you could if you want to you could replace them and you could put in a full sound system in

this area with speakers on the bin doors and um actually i'm going to back up and just make

sure that was clear sorry so let me try that one more time okay so on the interior it's

you know more of the personalization story so in this area you have these bin doors

which leads you to more open storage but if you want to you could replace the bin doors with speaker

mesh and behind that you'll have full speaker sound system so your instrument panel can go

from being what you expect in an instrument panel to a true sound bar for your vehicle

but again that's really up to you it's what you want to do and from there i think we can talk

a little bit about the other things that you can do here so the truck is a true two-seater but when

you go to the suv setup then we pop the rear bulkhead out and you're able to put in a rear bench

so that you can have five seats comfortably so this is the blank slate and you might be wondering

how you can access one you definitely want to go to slate auto and there you can begin to

personalize your own vehicle you can reserve one and we will begin deliveries at the end of this year

that's it for today's a i auto podcast with Javier Moda hope you enjoyed the ride as much

as we did tune in next time for more on how ai is steering the wheel of tomorrow's autos drive safe

stay curious and catch you later

About this episode

Design head Tisha Johnson talks through Slate Auto’s “blank slate” pickup/SUV platform, built to stay simple while letting owners personalize it. The key idea: instead of adding styling, the vehicle uses access points and an easy wrap-first design—factory-built in one slate gray, but engineered for DIY wrapping. Johnson says color demand surprised the team, leading to a palette of 100+ wrap colors and custom options. She also connects the mission to her long-standing goal of affordable, reliable mobility, sharing how she’d personalize motorcycles with low-cost accessories. Interior and seating configurations expand with the SUV kit.

accessories accessorize access points around the vehicle add the back row affordable affordably personalize your car bin doors car wrap delivered to you EV platform

Original notes

In this episode, we’re in New York visiting Tisha Johnson, Head of Design at Slate Auto, an emerging startup preparing to launch an affordable, ultra-versatile electric pickup. Tisha shares why this role represents her dream job, offering insight into Slate Auto’s design philosophy, the challenges of building a new automotive brand, and how innovation is shaping the future of electric vehicles.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI Auto Podcast

Javier Mota

View classic page →

0:00

12:30