Slate Auto will change CEO months before EV launch

Slate Auto, the electric car startup backed by Jeff Bezos, has replaced its CEO just months before launching its affordable electric car.

Former Amazon Marketplace vice president Peter Faricy is the new person in charge of the company, and he started on Monday, Slate spokesman Jeff Jablansky told TechCrunch. Most recently, Faricy was a consultant at McKinsey and Bessemer Venture Partners. Faricy resigned from Bessemer to join Slate, according to Newsweek, which first report hired.

Slate Auto’s first CEO, former Chrysler executive Christine Barman, is now President of Automotive, according to Jablansky. Barman was Slate’s first hire. The company is still a secret project called re:Car that was started inside a Massachusetts-based incubator called re:Build Manufacturing, as TechCrunch said. it was first revealed last year.

Barman became famous not only because she was the only two female CEOs running a US car manufacturer, but she became the face of the company since its exit in April 2025. She was featured in many promotional videos that Slate produced this past year, including. last month when he teased that the company will reveal the price of its electric car in June.

In his new role, Barman will do “everything we need” to deliver the car “on time and on budget,” Jablansky said.

The company, which has raised nearly $700 million from Bezos and other wealthy backers, once promoted its electric car. it would start at “Under $20,000” before Congress and the Trump administration eliminated the EV tax credit. It is now looking at the mid-$20,000 base price of its car. Buyers will be able to customize it in a variety of ways, including turning it into an SUV, for more money.

Faricy has become CEO at a time when Slate is about to begin converting its list of products to be returned — which now number 160,000 — to cars, according to Jablansky.

“What Peter did in building the Amazon Marketplace was very important to us,” Jablansky said.

Changing CEOs so early in a company’s history can be surprising, although it’s no surprise that the company hired a former Amazon CEO. Bezos helped fund the startup, as did former Amazon CEO Diego Piacentini. The head of the Bezos family office has a chair. One of the co-founders of Slate is Jeff Wilke, the former CEO of Amazon Consumer. And the leaders of Slate’s mobility, UX/UI, e-commerce, shipping, and HR teams all worked at Amazon.