The EVolution #17: Hail to the Chief
Everyone's heard of Elon, but who are the other leaders in the EV world?
Insomuch as CEOs can be household names, some are standouts—Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett. People with reasonable familiarity with the tech world could rattle off a host of other names—Tim Cook (Apple), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), and more. When it comes to the niche world of electric vehicles, though, and despite all the attention this space has been receiving, can you name a single leader besides Elon Musk (Tesla)?
Few can. Hence I thought it’d be interesting to produce a catalog of the leaders of major companies in the US electric vehicle ecosystem. The gallery below depicts the 2-3 highest-ranking executives at each “pure play” company (primarily new entry auto manufacturers and charging network operators). This is typically the CEO and CFO, but where a COO is in place, I have included them, as well as a president when their role is distinct.
Executives at “Next-Gen” EV companies
Like in the broader automotive world, and big business at large, there are unfortunately few women or racial minority CEOs. (The heads of several other small EV companies—Canoo, Arrival, Lordstown, Workhorse, Nikola, and Hyliion—are all men, too.) EVgo notably stands out with women in both the CEO and CFO roles; its leader, Cathy Zoi, is an experienced energy executive and government official credited with pioneering the Energy Star Program in the 1990s.
Among the other interesting backgrounds of leaders in this space:
Peter Rawlinson (Lucid) was for a time Tesla’s chief engineer during the development of the Model S before peeling off to do his own thing. Musk and Rawlinson still squabble over the latter’s level of contribution
RJ Scaringe (Rivian), at age 39, has dedicated his entire professional life to his company, founding it in 2009 after completing his PhD at MIT and operating in stealth for nearly a decade
While not every married couple could handle working together, Henrik Fisker and Geeta Gupta-Fisker do just that at their namesake company. He (a legendary designer of vehicles like the BMW Z8 and Aston Martin DB9) handles product/engineering, while she (a Cambridge PhD-educated biotechnologist) oversees the business as COO and CFO
The OG Shot-Callers
Despite all my focus above on next-gen companies, it’s important to realize that leaders at traditional auto manufacturers pivoting to electrification will have more impact on this space than most of the names previously mentioned. The heads of America’s domestic “Big Two” are vocal advocates of this transition:
Mary Barra (General Motors) may be the most prominent woman CEO in the country, and made waves in Jan 2021 when she announced GM would transition to all-electric by 2035. Her work remains cut out given the company’s anemic EV sales and total recall of every Chevy Bolt, but hopes are high for an upcoming electric pipeline that includes the Hummer, Cadillac Lyriq, Chevy Equinox, and Chevy Silverado
Jim Farley (Ford) has not been shy about embracing electrification, formally splitting his company along those lines, with a well-regarded team including Doug Field and Darren Palmer. The Mustang Mach-E is the best-selling non-Tesla EV in the country (albeit at a considerable gap), and coming soon is the much-anticipated F-150 Lightning
Looking at the broader auto OEM world, the attitudes of the heads of major carmakers span the spectrum from enthusiasm to cautious pragmatism to vocal skepticism. In a future post on The EVolution we’ll go into more detail on how the likes of Volkswagen, BMW, Toyota, et al. are progressing (or not) on electrification.