Faraday Future is an electric vehicle startup based in California. It was founded and it is being primarily financed by Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting.
Founded only in 2014, the company already has around 1,000 employees and reportedly raised 100s of millions.
It started construction on a $1 billion electric vehicle factory in North Las Vegas and plans to bring its first vehicle to market with the next 2-3 years.
A year after almost unanimously disappointing every EV enthusiasts at CES by unveiling the shell of a concept car, Faraday Future (FF) now aims to redeem itself at CES 2017 by unveiling its first car that it intedns to bring to production.
CES starts during the first week of January.
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Last month, we reported on Faraday Future reportedly signing a massive $2.4 billion supply contract with LG Chem for battery cells. Today, the startup confirmed the supply agreement with LG without talking about the actual size of the contract.
Though the electric vehicle startup did release new details. For example, they say that they “worked closely with LG Chem to develop unique chemistry requirements for FF products”. They claim that the result is “the world’s highest energy density [cell] for a production automotive battery.”
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Faraday Future is working on its own maps engine technology for self-driving vehicles and this month hired a top expert from Apple to assist, Electrek has learned.
After reports in June that Apple had hired Sinisa Durekovic, a veteran software engineer that led development of satellite navigation systems used by BMW and others, now we learn that Durekovic this month joined electric vehicle startup Faraday Future.
Durekovic notably joins the team at Faraday Future working on a mapping engine for self-driving vehicles, according to sources. His move to Faraday Future comes after just one year at Apple.
Every time we publish an article about electric vehicle startup Faraday Future, the first comment is always a variation of “where is the car?” or “vaporware”. That’s because EV enthusiasts were mostly disappointed after the company stumbled out of stealth mode at CES 2016 by unveiling the not-really-meant-for-production FFZERO1 concept.
They want to see an actual car they can potentially buy and we can now report that the company is closer than ever to show what it is really working to offer to consumers.
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When Faraday Future announced its electric vehicle factory in Nevada, it confirmed that it will be building the vehicles down to the battery pack with its EV platform called VPA, which is short for ‘Variable Platform Architecture’, but it also confirmed that it will import the battery cells.
Now a leak coming from LG Chem, one of the biggest supplier of batteries for electric cars, suggests that Faraday Future not only selected the battery cells from the Korean battery maker, but that they signed a supply deal worth 2.7 trillion won (US$2.40 billion).
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Having invested in both Faraday Future and Atieva, Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting is becoming an important player in the electric vehicle field. But his latest project directly under his main company, LeEco, could actually end up having the biggest impact in the short-term thanks to a recent investment.
The company disclosed today having raised $1.08 billion USD to finance the effort to bring the LeSee, the tech company’s all-electric and autonomous sedan, to market.
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In order to convince Faraday Future to build its $1 billion electric vehicle factory in Nevada, the state gave the startup an incentive package worth $215 million in tax credits and abatements, and $120 million in infrastructure improvements at the industrial park where the project is underway.
The Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) is keeping an eye on the project since FF needs to keep up its investment and hiring in order to get the incentives. Today, the GOED released its first report on FF’s progress, which it judges to be satisfactory.
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For a while now, we have been fascinated by Faraday Future’s impressive hiring effort despite having yet to bring a vehicle to market or even officially debut a car they plan to produce – though a prototype was recently spotted. We often scooped some top hires like Tesla’s “head of data science” and a computer vision expert at Apple, but now the latest significant hire comes directly from the startup.
FF announced this week that it hired Joerg Sommer from Volkswagen to lead the “product marketing and go-to-market planning”.
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Of course, sound doesn’t travel in space, but I’m talking about the sci-fi representation of “spaceship sounds”. While some petrol-heads can only enjoy the roar of an engine, a lot of race fans are appreciating the much quieter all-electric Formula E.
The noise levels are approximately 80 dB, which is actually a little higher than the average gas-powered car, but much lower than the Formula One’s 128 dB noise level. And the sounds are pretty cool too.
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Data science is an increasingly popular field being recognized in more and more industries. More so than ever in the auto industry as automakers progressively focus on software as an important part of their vehicle platforms.
Tesla makes extensive use of the interdisciplinary field through its complete feedback loop from service to engineering. Thanks to its business model of owning sales/service centers and it’s always connected fleet of vehicles, the company is never short of data.
Now Electrek has learned that Tesla lost this week its ‘Head of Data Science’ to Faraday Future (FF).
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After unveiling a concept car not meant for production earlier this year, Faraday Future (FF) disappointed a lot of electric vehicle enthusiasts. But make no mistake, the company is developing a vehicle to bring to production and we have our first look at it today – albeit heavily camouflaged.
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As we previously reported, Faraday Future is serious about developing its own self-driving and advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) as evidenced by the company hiring Bosch’s engineering director and leading automated driving expert, Jan Becker, to lead its own autonomous driving effort, as well as several other experts in the field.
Those experts are in demand since almost most major tech companies are building teams to develop their own autonomous driving technology.
Now Electrek has learned that Faraday Future hired away from Apple one of those experts in demand, self-driving and computer vision expert Bart Nabbe.
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Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting is better known in the US for financing Faraday Future, a California-based electric vehicle startup, but in China, Jia is known as the founder and CEO of LeEco, an important media and technology company. While LeEco and Faraday Future have a partnership, LeEco is developing its own electric vehicle, LeSee, for the Chinese market.
We were at the unveiling of the LeSee earlier this year, you can read our full report: LeEco shows off its ‘LeSEE’ all-electric car concept [Gallery]
Now we learn that the company is going ahead with an important factory to manufacturing the vehicle in volumes.
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Electrek has learned of yet another important hire at electric car startup Faraday Future (FF). The company has been successful in convincing an impressive number of auto executives to join the effort since its inception only 2 years ago, from Tesla manufacturing leadership to former Ferrari CEO, and now we learn that the company managed to poach electric propulsion expert Peter Savagian from GM.
The General Director of Electric Drive Systems and New Products Development joined FF as Vice President of Propulsion Engineering earlier this week. He will be leading powertrain engineering operations at the California-based startup.
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Back in June, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) approved the electric vehicle startup Faraday Future for self-driving car testing in the state. Now it looks like the company’s first test mule was spotted and the company is using a Lincoln MKZ.
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Electrek has learned of an important hire for the electric vehicle startup Faraday Future (FF). The company, which has been growing its design team while working on its first production vehicles, hired Jin Won Kim, a 15-year veteran of Toyota’s Calty Design Research studio, as its new Exterior Chief Designer.
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While electric vehicle startup Faraday Future (FF) has yet to unveil its first vehicle meant for production, the aspiring automaker has two important things going for it: it’s attracting a lot of top talent and it reportedly secured a lot of funding.
Now FF says that it is about to announce a “meaningful” funding round from “Asian investors” in the coming weeks, which will help pay for the $1 billion factory under construction in North Las Vegas.
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As we predicted yesterday, electric car startup Faraday Future announced today a partnership with Dragon Racing, an existing team in the Formula E championship, to create a new race team now called ‘Faraday Future Dragon Racing’, which will compete in the Formula E’s next season starting in October.
With the announcement, the team revealed a few images of the vehicle they will race in the championship.
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Faraday Future, an electric vehicle startup, is about to make an announcement tomorrow ahead of the Formula E event in London. It will likely have to do with the all-electric racing championship, which will hold the last races of the season over the weekend.
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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.
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You might remember Porter Harris from our piece on SpaceX’s battery development ‘Tesla is not Elon Musk’s only company developing high-tech battery packs‘ – and also when covering Faraday Future (FF) since Harris joined the company as ‘Chief Battery Architect’ in November 2014 – and then one more time when he suddenly left the company just before it came out of stealth mode.
Electrek has now learned that he co-founded a new startup to compete with FF and Tesla with new battery pack designs for electric vehicles, and even to compete with ‘Tesla Energy’ in stationary energy storage products.
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Electric vehicle startup Faraday Future (FF) announced today the hiring of Marco Mattiacci, former President & CEO of Ferrari North America (2010 to 2014), as Global Chief Brand & Commercial Officer. Mattiacci is only the latest in a series of hires from legacy luxury automakers to lead Faraday’s marketing department.
The strategy gives a glimpse at the image the company, which as yet to present a vehicle aimed for production, will likely try to project in the EV market.
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Earlier this year, we revealed that electric car startup Faraday Future (FF) hired Bosch 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.
Now we learn that just months after starting the project, Faraday Future is about to start testing self-driving car prototypes in Michigan.
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Faraday Future barely broke down on its $1 billion electric vehicle factory in Nevada, yet it is now reportedly in negotiation to acquire lands in Vallejo, California, in order to build another production facility. As if we needed more links between the electric vehicle startup and Tesla, it looks like both companies are now aiming to each have factories in the Bay Area (Vallejo for FF and Fremont for Tesla) and Nevada (North Las Vegas for FF and Sparks for Tesla) – something unusual for car companies.
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