Inside Faraday Future's Financial House of Cards (theverge.com) 44
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"
To be fair Tesla's having trouble as X killer too (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, Tesla's having trouble attacking major auto manufacturers too.
Re:To be fair Tesla's having trouble as X killer t (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
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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.
Re:To be fair Tesla's having trouble as X killer t (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Ready, fire, aim!
Sounds like a dreamer, not a businessman (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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The plan sounds grand, but are there buyers for 5 million cars?
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Not at $180,000 per car at least.
Are there buyers for 5 million ~$40k EVs? Absolutely...and that's what Tesla is aiming for now.
FF seems to have missed the intermediary steps where you build a brand, a production line, a customer base...and grow them because that's how you fund more of the same.
Re:Sounds like a dreamer, not a businessman (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Opaque sources of funds, keeping the financial people in the dark, complex corporate structures, etc.
At some point FF will disappear, and so will YT and his friends. They probably have boltholes already someplace else.
Faraday Future? (Score:1)
Who???
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Well it does have more horsepower (1000+!) and a better range. The interior seems eccentric but nice. It's slightly more expensive than the top version of the S. The company seems financially fucked but the car could very well be awesome.
Bioshock flashbacks... (Score:2)
Anyone else read this first as "Fontaine Futuristics"?
What's do they call this car? (Score:1)
Faraday's cage?
Wrong path (Score:3)
We don't want car that do 0-60 in 2 seconds, we want a normal sedan with 500 miles autonomy
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>We don't want car that do 0-60 in 2 seconds, we want a normal sedan with 500 miles autonomy
Well, I DO want my car to accelerate rapidly enough that the guy behind me at a freshly green light isn't honking for me to get out of his way. I really don't see how an electric vehicle is going fail to meet my standard given how good electric motors are at accelerating from zero.
The range thing... definitely. I can easily go 400km in my gas-guzzler with safety margin in case I end up sitting in bad traffic. W
Re:Wrong path (Score:5, Insightful)
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'
Best thing about this car would be... (Score:2)
...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.
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>> rich pukes .... will drive into bridge supports
No problemo
Bridge supports are build well enough for this.
also read? (Score:2)
the "Also Read" link goes to a video. Nothing to read there.