Faraday Future gives up on its $1 billion EV factory, says it’s looking for something else

After months of financial difficulties stalling the project, electric vehicle startup Faraday Future issued a statement today announcing that they are abandoning their $1 billion EV factory in Nevada… for now.

As you would expect, they are not actually saying that they are “abandoning” the factory but putting “a hold” on it – though it’s all the same when you read between the lines.

Stefan Krause, FF’s chief financial officer, said in the statement:

“We have decided to put a hold on our factory at the Apex site in North Las Vegas. We remain committed to the Apex site in Las Vegas for long-term vehicle manufacturing. We at Faraday Future are significantly shifting our business strategy to position the company as the leader in user-ship personal mobility — a vehicle usage model that reimagines the way users access mobility. As a result of this shift in direction, we are in the final stages of confirming a new manufacturing facility that presents a faster path to start-of-production and aligns with future strategic options.”

How does the user access model affect the needs for a manufacturing facility for the actual vehicle? Beats me.

Anyway, they told the Nevada Independent that they plan to keep the land and build on it later, but they are now looking at other locations in California and Nevada in order to get to production faster.

As we recently reported, Faraday Future’s investment in the project reached $174 million earlier this year before its main investor, Jia Yueting of LeEco, saw its assets being frozen in China.

It’s not clear how starting over at a new location would help after having spent all that money on the Apex project in North Las Vegas.

Most of the money went to designing and planning for the giant factory (pictured above). As of earlier this year, there was nothing done aside from grading, but they insisted that they were moving forward with construction at the time.

Since then, they hired former BMW/Deutsche Bank CFO Stefan Krause to straighten up their finances and now it looks like he is shutting it down.

We recently reported that Faraday Future’s FF91 is an impressive electric vehicle, but can it make it to production? It looks more and more unlikely.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.