Slate Hires New CEO Peter Faricy. Ex-CEO Chris Barman appointed new role

[ElectricShitbox]

Bezos is worth north of $240B. In 2025 he dropped $100M on his girlfriend just to get married and fly her into space. He gave $100M to Eva Longoria. He drops gifts of $100M all over the place to people.

Funding should not be Slate's issue with Uncle Jeff around.

$1 billion to sydney sweeney's lingerie startup, lol

 

[1974D2004X4]

None of this can we control or change.

 

[Saint Alban]

“Reason for the Change
Slate Auto restructured its leadership to support growth as it shifts from development to production and sales of its affordable electric pickup truck. Barman now focuses on vehicle creation, testing, manufacturing, engineering, design, and quality assurance—areas aligning with her prior expertise from Chrysler and other roles.

Company Context
This move comes ahead of Slate’s plans to convert reservations to orders by year-end 2026 and begin production in Indiana. No personal reasons were stated; it’s framed as strategic for scaling operations, supply chains, and commercialization. “

 

[Letas]

This is a demotion for Barman, from CEO to President. If she was effective as CEO she would have picked and hired the President of Vehicle Implementation.

The news reports are just spin.

Sad news IMO.

Yep. The polite thing to do is spin it as a positive for the demoted, but it is a demotion regardless. Slate's end goal was always to make it to 6 figure production annually, this isn't a major business change from the plan. You wouldn't hire your first CEO to be an interim CEO.

Regardless, not necessarily bad for Slate, just not a huge positive either.


My take- the Slate just got a whole lot more expensive and less consumer friendly, although, that probably happened when the company sold out to PE.

 

[AZFox]

I understand you might not intend it this way, but it sounds unnecessarily harsh.

Definitely lacked nuance.

Here's what I meant by that:

Chris Barman was brought in because she has experience making cars, not making companies.

Here's a quote from the Newsweek article Women Are Running America's New Electric Vehicle Company:

Barman had a different path but with similar interests. "I had a very interesting career at a large original equipment manufacturer ... When I was an intern, I worked on the original Viper as a trainee. I worked on the Prowler as a vehicle line executive. I worked on helping to bring the second-generation 300, Charger and Challenger back... very exciting programs," she said.​

This is impressive experience from working in a giant corporation, but being CEO of what will become a multi-billion-dollar startup also requires some experience at growing a company.

That's exactly the kind of experience Peter Faricy has.

He currently serves as a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, working with growth-stage and enterprise clients across the technology, energy, and consumer sectors—bringing an operator’s perspective to strategic, scaling, go-to-market, and digital transformation challenges.​

He's a heavy hitter at growing enterprises. He presumably knows how to do what Slate needs to do in order to be successful.

Faricy will oversee Slate’s commercial, digital, finance, human relations, information technology, and legal divisions.​

So Barman's new role as President of Vehicles trims away the roles that she presumably found most challenging and puts those roles in Faricy's expert hands.

Now she, Eric Keipper, and Tisha Johnson can laser-focus on making the Slate 1.0 and their future models as good as they possibly can be.

All in all, I see it as encouraging news.

 

[ElectricShitbox]

He currently serves as a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company​

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

 

[FC49er]

Im not sure if this is a good thing or not but the optics look very bad this close to the alleged release

 

[AZFox]

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

Oh my...
https://search.brave.com/search?q=why+are+some+people+suspicious+of+McKinsey+&+Company

 

[AZFox]

With Chris now reporting to Peter, I found this video with 739 views from 4 months ago.

Thanks @motorolas!

Here's where she talks about her background:

 

[ElectricShitbox]

Oh my...
https://search.brave.com/search?q=why+are+some+people+suspicious+of+McKinsey+&+Company

Personally, I like the time NYC paid them $4 million to say "maybe you should put your trash in cans"

When people talk about government waste, they mostly mean consulting firms, even if they don't know it.

 

[E90400K]

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not but the optics look very bad this close to the alleged release

Agree 100%

 

[E90400K]

Definitely lacked nuance.

Here's what I meant by that:

Chris Barman was brought in because she has experience making cars, not making companies.

Here's a quote from the Newsweek article Women Are Running America's New Electric Vehicle Company:

Barman had a different path but with similar interests. "I had a very interesting career at a large original equipment manufacturer ... When I was an intern, I worked on the original Viper as a trainee. I worked on the Prowler as a vehicle line executive. I worked on helping to bring the second-generation 300, Charger and Challenger back... very exciting programs," she said.​

This is impressive experience from working in a giant corporation, but being CEO of what will become a multi-billion-dollar startup also requires some experience at growing a company.

That's exactly the kind of experience Peter Faricy has.

He currently serves as a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, working with growth-stage and enterprise clients across the technology, energy, and consumer sectors—bringing an operator’s perspective to strategic, scaling, go-to-market, and digital transformation challenges.​

He's a heavy hitter at growing enterprises. He presumably knows how to do what Slate needs to do in order to be successful.

Faricy will oversee Slate’s commercial, digital, finance, human relations, information technology, and legal divisions.​

So Barman's new role as President of Vehicles trims away the roles that she presumably found most challenging and puts those roles in Faricy's expert hands.

Now she, Eric Keipper, and Tisha Johnson can laser-focus on making the Slate 1.0 and their future models as good as they possibly can be.

All in all, I see it as encouraging news.

All good, but then she shouldn't have been named Chief Executive Officer. If she never had the chops to "build the company" they should have left the CEO position open or unnamed and had Burman as Chief Operating Officer, since that seems to be her actual scope of performance.

With her experience with the Viper, that being Bob Lutz's baby, perhaps she was a golden child that Lutz took under his wing. That was my thought anyway.

 

[AZFox]

Im not sure if this is a good thing or not but the optics look very bad this close to the alleged release

Optics look very bad how?

 

[AZFox]

I think the optics are pretty good, folks.

Faricy will do a good job increasing confidence in the company's likelihood for success up to and beyond what @FC49er is cynically calling the "alleged release".

It's hard to beat putting the Amazon Marketplace guy in charge of your logistics, and for Slate Auto logistics are a thing. Same with legal. Probably finance too.

Chris Barman's passion seems to be developing vehicles. She and her scrappy team of engineers, designers, and production people will work wonders doing what they do best.

If Slate Automotive were a truck they just got another motor and AWD.

 

[E90400K]

I think the optics are pretty good, folks.

Faricy will do a good job increasing confidence in the company's likelihood for success up to and beyond what @FC49er is cynically calling the "alleged release".

It's hard to beat putting the Amazon Marketplace guy in charge of your logistics, and for Slate Auto logistics are a thing. Same with legal. Probably finance too.

Chris Barman's passion seems to be developing vehicles. She and her scrappy team of engineers, designers, and production people will work wonders doing what they do best.

If Slate Automotive were a truck they just got another motor and AWD.

I see that position of logistics, legal, marketing as reporting to the CEO, not being the CEO. I liked that Slate was being run by a car geek engineer at the helm. That's what made it different.

The Dude's a Suit...