Faraday Future to start testing self-driving cars in California

Fred Lambert | Jun 22 2016 - 5:31 am PT

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) confirmed that Faraday Future submitted an application to start testing self-driving cars in the state and that the application has been approved for public roads on June 17. The news comes just weeks after we learned that the electric vehicle startup applied for 3 licenses to test self-driving cars in Michigan.

Now it looks like the company is more likely to start its tests in California, where the startup is based.

Auto News cites an industry source claiming that the company plans to make use of the DMV’s approval by the end of the year:

“Faraday Future plans to begin testing prototype self-driving electric vehicles on California roads later this year after winning approval from the state, an industry source said on Tuesday.”

Earlier this year, we revealed that the electric car startup hired Bosch’s engineering director and leading automated driving expert, Jan Becker, to lead its own self-driving effort. The company has been building an impressive team of automated driving experts under Becker, including experts from Ford and more recently, the startup hired computer vision expert, Sangmin Oh, from Nvidia.

While FF has unveiled a concept at CES earlier this year, the startup has yet to unveil the first vehicle it plans to bring to production at its new plant, but it is expected to be a long-range all-electric luxury crossover and likely to have some autonomous features.

The company has been running tests on a few mules (pictured above) and it expects to have a prototype to unveil by the end of the year.

The DMV approved 14 companies for autonomous vehicle tests: