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"

Comments

To be fair Tesla's having trouble as X killer too

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> 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.

Sounds like a dreamer, not a businessman

[King_TJ]

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.

Re:Sounds like a dreamer, not a businessman

[Rei]

While Faraday has no future, the house of cards I'm really looking forward to dying is Nikola Motors. At least Faraday isn't making promises based around numbers that are physically impossible, and even changing their plans for what sort of energy source their vehicles will use at regular intervals.

Re:To be fair Tesla's having trouble as X killer t

[DontBeAMoran]

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.

Wrong path

[Frederic54]

We don't want car that do 0-60 in 2 seconds, we want a normal sedan with 500 miles autonomy

Re:Wrong path

[torkus]

The 0-60 time is a byproduct of EV design as much as it is an inherent feature of high power, high efficiency electric motors.

EVs get significant boots to efficiency by being able to reclaim energy while stopping. Car brakes are typically significantly more powerful than the engine...so if you want to rely on electric braking to the equivalence of physical brakes, you need a generator (motor) capable of that level of power. The cost is moderate to small while the benefit (range) is a fundamental, key selling point of your vehicle so of course you do it.

The incredible 0-60 times are a *byproduct*, but make a much more flashy and easy to understand selling point than '500kW peak engine braking power to maximize battery range'

Re:To be fair Tesla's having trouble as X killer t

[tlhIngan]

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.

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.

Re:Best thing about this car would be...

[stooo]

>> rich pukes .... will drive into bridge supports

No problemo
Bridge supports are build well enough for this.