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.
Last month we reported on Tesla’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Deputy General Counsel, James Chen, leaving the automaker. At the time, we were told that the executive was joining another company in the field, but we couldn’t confirm the news.
Now today both Chen and Faraday Future confirmed that the top lawyer is joining the electric vehicle startup.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Faraday Future is in the midst of developing its first production car set to be unveiled later this year and hopefully it will hit the market in 2017. It is reportedly going to be a luxury SUV, or maybe more of a large crossover, with supercar-like performance.
The well-funded startup hasn’t revealed much about the vehicle yet, but lately, it has been releasing glimpses of its mule program. One of the principal engineer behind the program is Matt Lubbers, Principal Engineer of Brake and Chassis Controls for FF, and today the company released a Q&A session with the engineer.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Now that everything appears to be set in motion for Faraday Future’s factory in Nevada, it would be convenient for the electric car startup to have a product to build in its $1 billion plant. While the company unveiled a concept earlier this year, the vehicle is not intended for production.
Not much is known about Faraday’s first production car, but it is expected to be an all-electric luxury crossover with a shape similar to the outline in the picture above. The company is not sharing a lot of information, but this week gave us a glimpse of its engineering mule tests.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Faraday Future’s manufacturing leadership is now headed by not one, but two former Tesla executives. Faraday’s Global Vice President of Manufacturing, Dag Reckhorn, was Director of Model S Manufacturing at Tesla from 2009 to 2013.
He was one of the early members of the electric vehicle startup set to compete with Tesla in the luxury segment, and now he apparently brought on board Andrew De Haan, Tesla’s Director of Global Supplier Industrialization, who we learn left Tesla’s Fremont factory last month to join Faraday as manager of its upcoming plant in Nevada just last week.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Electric vehicle startup Faraday Future, also known as FF, is moving forward with its $1 billion factory in North Las Vegas, Nevada. The company is holding an official ground-breaking ceremony with state officials today – you can watch the stream below.
FF also released several new details about the factory and its features, as well as the concept rendering seen above.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Electric vehicle startup Faraday Future (FF) confirmed today that it will be the title sponsor of the 2016 Formula E Long Beach ePrix race, which is now known as the 2016 Faraday Future Long Beach ePrix and will take place on Saturday, April 2, 2016. Gates open at 7:00 am with race start scheduled for 4:00 pm.
The company also confirmed that it will display its FFZER01 concept in the eVillage Fan Zone during the race weekend.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Electric vehicle startup Faraday Future (FF) applied for more than 100 patents over the last year and today it confirmed having been granted its first one. The patent covers a new assembly process for FF’s power inverter called “FF Echelon Inverter.”
The inverter is surprisingly small (see comparison pictures below) and FF claims it achieves 20-30% greater power density than their competitors’ applications. The company didn’t name any competitor in particular, but Tesla’s Model S inverter has a peak power capability of 320 kW.
Expand
Expanding
Close
From 9to5Toys.com:
As eBikes have gained traction over the last few years, a variety of styles have come to fruition through crowdfunding and startup companies. Initially we saw plenty of industrial designs but thankfully more traditional cruisers are hitting the scene.
Faraday has been cranking out electrical for just over five years. The San Francisco bike shop recently took to Kickstarter to fund its latest creation: the Cortland and Cortland S. With just a week to go, Faraday has flown past its crowdfunding goal. There’s still time to grab one before the campaign ends, but you’ll need to act fast as nearly every model has sold out…
When unveiling that all-electric RapidE concept last year, Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer announced that the automaker will take an investment from a China-based group to develop the production version of the RapidE concept.
Today, the company announced the creation of a partnership with Faraday Future backer LeTV, or LeEco or Leshi (the group goes by many brand names), to develop and manufacture the RapidE. The group says they are now focused on bringing the vehicle to market in 2018.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Only two months ago, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval approved a $335 million incentive package in a deal to secure that Faraday Future will build a $1 billion electric car factory in the state, more specifically in North Las Vegas. Now after the company reportedly broke ground at the site just a few weeks ago, we learn that Nevada Treasurer Dan Schwartz is questioning Faraday’s financial health after inquiries and a visit to China.
It looks like Faraday is subject to its fair share of scrutiny, especially after both Nevada and Tesla were criticized over the size of the incentive package the state agreed to give Tesla to build its Gigafactory near Reno. The package has been widely reported to be worth $1.3 billion and contributed to Tesla’s image as been dependent on government subsidies, but it’s important to understand that the incentives are spread out on 20 years and contingent on Tesla spending close to $100 billion at the factory during the same period.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Faraday Future lost its high-profile ‘Chief Battery Architect’ right before its CES unveiling last month, but today we learn the company scored a big hire for its battery team: former A123 Systems lead engineer Saeed Uzzaman.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Uzzaman was a research engineer before he joined Bosch’s NiMH battery manufacturing effort in 2005. He left Bosch to join A123 System in 2010, where he held several senior engineering roles.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Faraday Future says it started clearing up the site of its future $1 billion electric vehicle factory in North Las Vegas during the weekend. The startup needs to move quickly if it wants to deliver on its plans to bring to market its first vehicle in 2017.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Since its inception less than 2 years ago, Faraday Future managed some impressive high-profile hires for a startup still in stealth mode until very recently. From Tesla executives to successful designers and veterans auto industry engineers, we have been scratching our heads figuring out how the company is able to attract so much talent so quickly ($?), and it’s not over.
FF’s latest hire might be its most high-profile to date. Electrek learned that Faraday recently tipped Bosch engineering director and leading automated driving expert Jan Becker to lead the startup’s own effort in vehicle automation.
Expand
Expanding
Close
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.
Expand
Expanding
Close
We were kind of disappointed to learn yesterday that Faraday Future’s first big reveal is a concept race car, which will act as a “test bed” for the company’s technology, and not an early prototype of FF’s first production car.
But it looks like the company released a subtle glimpse of its first production car in the release video of its FFZERO1 concept.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Electric car startup Faraday Future took its biggest step out of stealth mode tonight by unveiling its first concept car at CES in Las Vegas. As much as we didn’t want it to be true, the leak we publish early in the morning turned out to be correct.
As it turns out, despite Faraday’s short timeline aiming to bring to market its first car in 2017, the company is holding on showing its mass market car, which was only briefly mentioned during the presentation, and instead shows a “test bed” concept to showcase some technology and “design DNA”: the FFZERO1.
Expand
Expanding
Close
We didn’t want to believe it this morning, but it looks like the concept car we saw in the iOS app leak (see above) is what Faraday Future is about to unveil tonight at CES in Las Vegas.
Nonetheless, the presentation tonight should give us more information about FF’s ownership model and if the concept car is mainly for design cues and showcasing the company’s technology, or if they actually plan on bringing to market something similar.
Expand
Expanding
Close
We recently wrote about Porter Harris for 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 since Harris joined the company as ‘Chief Battery Architect’ in November 2014, but today we learn via his LinkedIn profile (first spotted by Bloomberg) that he left the electric car startup just as it’s about to reveal its first concept.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Update: we added a video of the app below.
A Twitter user going by supererogatory claims to have leaked the concept Faraday Future plans to reveal later today in Las Vegas. He claims that Faraday accidentally released an iOS app, which was meant for the release of the concept and includes renderings as well as some information about the vehicle, but was quickly pulled from the app store last night.
Expand
Expanding
Close
We are kicking off the new year at Electrek with extensive coverage of everything electric vehicle related at CES in Las Vegas this week.
There might be a few surprises, but we made a quick list of the main events, especially the new electric cars debuting at the show, so you can have a good idea of what’s coming in the EV industry in the next few days:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Faraday Future is only 5 days away from unveiling its car concept at CES in Las Vegas. Electrek will be there and we can’t wait. Faraday seems to know that because they keep teasing us with these short videos.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Less than 2 weeks away from its big reveal at CES, Faraday Future released today a teaser video hinting at a new car ownership experience for its upcoming long-range electric vehicle.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Earlier this month, we reported on Faraday Future’s plan to build its electric vehicle factory in North Las Vegas. Now we learn (via AP) that during the weekend, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval approved a $335 million incentive package in a deal that will bring Faraday Future’s factory to a Las Vegas suburb.
Expand
Expanding
Close
According to a letter the company sent to Nevada officials Wednesday (via Auto News), Faraday Future says it plans to build its $1 billion electric vehicle factory in North Las Vegas.
Expand
Expanding
Close
