Jia Yueting

Let’s put this out there first: Faraday Future is not “vaporware.” This comes up every time we mention the company, and it’s simply not accurate. There’s no doubt that they are over-hyping their products for a company at this stage of development, but they also have over 1,000 employees–most of them engineers–working on real electric vehicle technologies, and that’s not vaporware.

We have reported on some top talent from Tesla, Apple and more traditional automakers going to the startup. Most of the power electronic team of the GM EV1 went to Faraday Future. All those people are developing real tech. It’s dismissing to call their work “vaporware,” but some clear mismanagement at the top is certainly putting their work at risk, and that’s a real problem for the EV industry.
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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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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.
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