In an interview with TechCrunch’s Matt Burns, Faraday Future SVP Nick Sampson had an honest moment and admitted that unveiling the FFZERO1 concept instead of their production car was to get people talking about the company and create a buzz.
In my opinion, Burns did a wonderful job with the interview. He conveyed the disappointment some of us were feeling after FF created all this hype for finally unveiling the shell of a concept race car, which will probably never make it to production. All the while, the company claims it has working prototypes of its first car intended for production, and Head of Design Richard Kim even said that the design is done on the vehicle.
They made a mistake. They should have unveiled what they are calling their “first production car”. It would have given them way more credibility. I firmly believed that FF is not vaporware. We reported on Faraday’s team and I doubt a vaporware company could have attracted so much talent.
But yet everyone I’ve been talking to about the event since Monday is telling me it looks like a “vaporware company” and I have to admit, it’s exactly how it looks. Lots of hype for 20 minutes of congratulating themselves and showing a product no one will ever use. The EV industry has already seen a lot of hype.
“We’re not Tesla. But we’re not Fisker either. We’re not fucking around.”
That’s almost the first thing a FF representative said when the company took its first step out of stealth mode last summer. Right now, they look more like Fisker than Tesla.
I’m confident that this week’s unveiling was only a misstep and that we will soon see more interesting things from FF.
The whole interview is worth watching. Hats off to Matt (but don’t read the Youtube comments):
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They have lots of potential but thing is, Tesla set the bar pretty high for any EV company wanting to compete. If they succeed, Musks’ goal of accelerating the pace of sustainable transportation is going in the right direction.
I could be completely nuts here but FF I believe is vaporware, in its current form (name) at least. It seems like the perfect cover. What i’m referring to is
* Who has the clout to (supposedly) amass such diverse, high profile team
* Sampson seemingly doesn’t take seriously his own BS seriously aka “UFO Line?”.
* He keeps dropping hints, i.e t=9:26
* …and the biggest, cleverest hint off all… What big tech company was exposed today for a registered internet domain name. Take a look at FF’s logo. Do you see FF or Ac?
i could go on…
their car is atrocious and impractical. apple would never put something like that out into the public. this aint vaporware. this is the sad truth… their actual car probably sucks so much that they had to whore for attention to keep people interested
There’s no way this is Apple. Unless they are some sort of masters of deception, I don’t think putting a stuttering, pie-in-the-sky and slightly offended Sampson in front of TechCrunch’s snark is a great strategy to set up their future offering. Seems like an out of touch Chinese billionaire trying to spend his way into a race that they’re already way way behind on, nothing more. At least Telsa will have another battery customer until the money runs out, and hey, maybe they can get another factory for a song while they’re at it too.
I think the situation about the design is quite simple. They still aren’t ready with their production car, and that’s fair. They have just started. So they put together an extravagant chassis just for the show. Is it so difficult to understand? Where is the problem? Will this stop them for having a great car in a couple of years? How many car companies show terrible concepts that will never ever see production, except after heavy modifications?
Faraday Future said it expected to launch its first fully electric vehicle in 2017 – that now seems impossible if they cannot even get a pre production mule ready. It took Tesla 4 years to get from the mule of the model S to the first production car (2008-2012), at this rate we are unlikely to see any FF on the road until 2021.
F**king around is exactly what FF did at CES… this is just a bunch of billionaire trolls having fun