Slate Auto changes CEO months ahead of affordable EV launch

Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by Jeff Bezos, has replaced its CEO months ahead of the launch of its affordable electric truck.

Former Amazon Marketplace vice president Peter Faricy is the new person in charge of the company, and he started on Monday, Slate spokesperson Jeff Jablansky told TechCrunch. Most recently, Faricy had been an advisor at McKinsey and Bessemer Venture Partners. Faricy left the role at Bessemer to join Slate, according to Newsweek, which first reported the hire.

Slate Auto’s first CEO, longtime Chrysler veteran Christine Barman, is now the President of Vehicles, according to Jablansky. Barman was Slate’s first hire. The company was still a secretive project called re:Car that was started inside a manufacturing incubator based in Massachusetts called re:Build Manufacturing, as TechCrunch first revealed last year.

Barman stood out not only because she was of only two women CEOs running a U.S. automaker, but she had become the face of the company since it emerged from stealth in April 2025. She was featured in many of the promotional videos Slate has produced in the past year, including one last month where she teased that the company would finally reveal the price of its basic electric truck in June.

In her new role, Barman is going to do “everything we need” to deliver its truck “on time and on budget,” according to Jablansky.

The company, which has raised around $700 million from Bezos and other wealthy backers, at one point promoted that its electric truck would start at “under $20,000” before Congress and the Trump administration took away the federal EV tax credit. It’s now targeting the mid-$20,000 range for the starting price of its truck. Buyers will be able to customize it in all kinds of ways, including converting it into an SUV, for more money.

Faricy has become CEO at a time when Slate is about to start converting its list of refundable preorders — which is now about 160,000 people long — into vehicle orders, according to Jablansky.

“Peter’s experience building Amazon Marketplace was really critical for us,” Jablansky said.

Changing CEOs so early in the company’s history may come as a shock, although it’s not surprising that the company tapped a former Amazon executive. Bezos helped fund the startup, as did former Amazon executive Diego Piacentini. Bezos’ family office head has a board seat. One of Slate’s co-founders is Jeff Wilke, who used to be the Amazon Consumer CEO. And the heads of Slate’s mobility, UX/UI, e-commerce, fleet sales, and HR teams all used to work at Amazon.