Peter Faricy today assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of Slate Auto, an American electric vehicle startup. Faricy takes over the job from Chris Barman, who will continue work at the company as its President of Vehicles.
Slate is expanding its leadership team and shuffling the organizational tree to match the next steps of its growth as it readies to convert reservations to orders by the end of the year.
“Slate was built with an obsessive, heads-down focus on reinventing the vehicle by rethinking the product from the ground up,” Slate co-founder William Barker exclusively told Newsweek. “This discipline is what got us here—and as we enter the next phase, with customers soon able to customize, order and buy their Slate, this is exactly the right moment for Peter to join. He is a pioneer of marketplace businesses and a highly strategic leader, and his experience will help us build not just a great vehicle, but a great long-term company.”
As part of that ramp up, Slate has just begun the process of engaging with potential aftermarket parts companies. The company previously announced it aims to have 4,000 service providers onboarded by the time the first truck is delivered.
Slate will not have dealerships, but instead sell vehicles via a direct-to-consumer model mimicking those successfully brought to life by Tesla and Rivian.
The Michigan-based automaker told Newsweek that is now has 160,000 vehicle reservation holders for its low-priced, blank Slate truck, which can be converted to an SUV for an additional cost post-production.
The company will have the capacity to make 150,000 Slates each year at its Warsaw, Indiana manufacturing plant.
Slate will announce the price of its truck, rumored to be around $25,000, at the end of June.
Who is Peter Faricy?
Detroit-based Faricy cut his teeth in the automotive industry working at Ford Motor Company during the critical Jacques Nasser era where the company worked to regain profitability and took over the ailing Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo brands.
From there, Faricy was employed as a vice president at Borders, the now-shuttered chain bookstore.
Faricy joined Amazon in 2006 as the vice president of music and movies. In 2009, he became the vice president of Amazon Marketplace, the portion of the e-commerce giant’s business that enables third-party sellers to sell new or used products alongside Amazon’s tradition new product offerings.
During his time at Amazon, he spearheaded the team building Marketplace from scratch. It eventually launched to support millions of third-party sellers across 14 countries. He also launched numerous B2C and B2B ventures that continue to fuel Amazon’s merchant ecosystem.
He held that position until 2018 when he left to lead Discovery’s global direct-to-consumer division. Since leaving there in 2020, Faricy has been on the board of directors of Blue Apron, the meal kit company, and served three years as the Chairman and CEO of SunPower Corporation before exiting in February 2024.
In July 2025, he joined Bessimer Venture Partners, a venture capital firm. He left that position to join Slate.
Faricy is an early reservation holder of Slate, and during his tenure at Amazon, worked for Jeff Wilke when Wilke was the CEO of Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer operations. Wilke, Barker and Miles Arnone are co-founders of Slate.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is an investor in Slate Auto.
New Slate Leader Responsibilities
Faricy will oversee Slate’s commercial, digital, finance, human relations, information technology, and legal divisions.
Barman’s new role will have her overseeing the creation, testing and manufacturing of vehicles including the engineering, design, manufacturing, program management, purchasing and quality divisions. Her decades of auto industry experience and expertise closely aligns with those departments. She now reports to Faricy.
No other executive team positions at Slate are changed with this hire.
