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Inside Faraday Future's Financial House of Cards (theverge.com)
Sean O'Kane, reporting for The Verge: When Faraday Future emerged from stealth mode in 2015, it promised to transform the car industry with an American-made luxury electric vehicle that would someday be fully autonomous, maybe even sold through a subscription service. As we learned at CES 2017, the company was taking aim at Tesla with a car -- the FF91 -- that was designed to dazzle, with a 0-60 time of 2.4 seconds as jaw-dropping as the proposed $180,000 price tag. Since then, though, Faraday Future has been more focused on survival than speed. The Verge has learned from multiple sources about the nature of the company's financial plight. While Faraday Future posed as the newest California electric car startup that attracted top auto industry talent, 10 former employees and one person close to the company say the behavior and business practices of its chief investor have brought business to a halt. Also read: Everything wrong with Faraday Future's "Tesla killer"
>> the company was taking aim at Tesla with a car -- the FF91 -- that was designed to dazzle
To be fair, Tesla's having trouble attacking major auto manufacturers too.
He pushed for a much bigger factory in Nevada, like Tesla — a company that Faraday Future’s executives viewed as a competitor, and one that it had poached talent from — and increased the production target to multiple models and 150,000 units per year. The finance team spent weeks recalculating for this change in scope, these people say, and eventually determined the necessary investment cost would be about $3 billion.
"Once he saw that plan, he was like, ‘Well if four models and 150,000 is good, then we ought to be able to go to 5 million cars. What’s it going to take to go to 5 million cars?’” recalls one of these former employees. “That’s the kind of guy that he was, it was like, ‘Okay, but lets even think bigger. I need to be at 5 million cars by the end of 2025. In 10 years.’”
The statement, above, speaks volumes about the problems this company is having. The owner has NO clue how to build a business from the ground up, and apparently thinks funding will just "happen" because his ideas are cool.
Who???
Who the fuck are they and why is this important?
I don't know who this company is but if you're making a car for twice the price of a Model S I would certainly expect it to be better. That's like "duh".
As far as I know, the goal of Elon Musk was to push other manufacturers into making electric cars.
I'd say he succeeded, at least partially.
#DeleteFacebook
Anyone else read this first as "Fontaine Futuristics"?
Faraday's cage?
This is more like Enron trying to make money off of the Level(3) business plan, but only buying Level(3) bandwidth and reselling to customers at a lower rate to 'pretend' they are a competitor while benefiting from the hype around the actual network at Level(3).
Unfortunately, like when Enron hit the skids, the stock shorts will use fear mongering to try and take down the company with actual value to it
READ MORE(links to youtube).
We don't want car that do 0-60 in 2 seconds, we want a normal sedan with 500 miles autonomy
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
As far as I know, the goal of Elon Musk was to push other manufacturers into making electric cars.
I'd say he succeeded, at least partially.
Google Fiber was trying mainly to spur competition using minimal funds and didn't care about market share or even long-term viability. In contrast, Tesla's survival depends on beating competitors. I doubt merely spurring competition was a real goal.
...the ``culling the herd'' feature of 0-60 in 2.4 seconds.
Is there any doubt about the number of rich pukes who fancy themselves as Formula 1 drivers will drive into bridge supports the first time they punch the accelerator on the thing.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The goal of Tesla is to prove to the world that electric cars do not have to suck. As in, you can only go to the store and you'll run out of battery. Or if you hit the accelerator pedal, the light would turn red before you got moving.
Tesla proved that, and more - they proved that electric cars are sporty and pretty much the future for performance cars because of the immense low-end torque available.
What Tesla did was prove electric vehicles are practical vehicles that families could use as their main daily driver and with the supercharger network, you could do some nice road trips, too.
Google fiber was a bust. They quickly realized there's no such thing as net neutrality when it comes to local utilities and obviously weren't interested in spending the many billions of dollars to try and take over.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
the "Also Read" link goes to a video. Nothing to read there.
Not once have I looked a single vehicle in the Tesla portfolio, save the defunct Roadster 1.0 and thought "sporty".. They're bland, uninspired and the interior is drab at best. I don't refute their straight line numbers, but that's all that's sporty about them.
Ready, fire, aim!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not once have I looked a single vehicle in the Tesla portfolio, save the defunct Roadster 1.0 and thought "sporty".. They're bland, uninspired and the interior is drab at best. I don't refute their straight line numbers, but that's all that's sporty about them.
I liked the look of the early Model S but after the redesign it's such a bland-looking car now as are the other two models.
If it's too bland pay for a custom paint job or something, perhaps with some hot lesbians on the hood.
But more seriously what car has ever had universal aesthetic appeal? The Model S is pretty much what I imagined cars of the future would look like as a kid. The body design is mostly functional, anything past that is superfluous. I'm not interested in paying thousands of dollars for something just because it looks cool unless it is actually a work of art.
No amount of paint is going to fix the fact that it looks like a 90s era Dodge Intrepid with slight changes and noticeably missing radiator inlet. I get that looks are subjective, but it's hardly a futuristic design and the future cars I've seen in sci-fi were much nicer looking than what they've made.
That's the PR statement. The actual aim is to make loads of money on the stock market.
I get the impression the company has no CEO or board of directors, it's being steered by the main investor, and CFO duties handed off to someone he found off the street who plays fast and loose with the cash and with the accounting. How would any outsider expect to get results for their investment from this fustercluck?
When Faraday Future emerged from stealth mode in 2015,
Who?
I'm just not seeing the similarities to the Intrepid. I mean sure it looks more like the Intrepid than my Fathers 1950's Pontiac Chieftain, but that's not saying a lot.