Faraday Future

A lot of automakers have been on the brink of bankruptcy. Some recover, some don’t. The most recent ones are Nio, Fisker, and Faraday Future. Nio launched a few vehicles, including the ET7 which was launched a few weeks back and has received raving feedbacks. Fisker launched the Ocean SUV last year and it looks like a winner already. But, Faraday Future hasn’t been able to turn around its fortunes.

The Faraday Future’s story has all the elements that could make for a nice movie. The latest chapter says that the company is planning to reach out to the public to pool in the money. How, you ask? Three alphabets – IPO.

Faraday Future has had what has to be one of the hardest walks of life since its introduction. If you look back at our Faraday Future page, for example, you’ll see all kinds of stories about the company’s financial troubles, all of which came around the same time the first pre-production build of the FF91 came to life. After that, Faraday Future starting laying off workers which was followed a month later by the company’s co-founder leaving in haste. It got even worse as the company started a GoFundMe campaign just to lay off more employees a month later.

Faraday Future’s CEO, Carsten Breitfeld, might be pulling the company together a little better, with his main focus being on the FF91 and bring it to market – maybe by the end of 2020. However, during CES 2020, he expressed interest in several other cars and didn’t exactly rule out a Tesla Roadster competitor either. Here’s what we learned

Faraday Future is ringing in 2019 with some much-needed good news. The beleaguered electric car maker that turned heads at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show announced that it had reached an agreement with investor Evergrande Health to let bygones be bygones, effectively ending a legal battle between the two sides stemming from Faraday’s accusations that Evergrande was withholding payments to the electric car maker in an attempt to gain control of their intellectual property. The agreement, which Faraday posted on its Twitter account, will “terminate the previous investment contract, withdraw and waive all litigation and arbitration proceedings, and release all security including the asset preservation pledge and equity financing rights.” As it is, Faraday Future is now free to pursue new financing as it desperately tries to remain afloat in the industry.

Faraday Future is being ripped apart piece by piece as it dies a slow, agonizing death. After running short on funds in October this year, Faraday’s downfall began as it announced a number of layoffs and financial setbacks. After living under the rock for a month, when it was assumed that Faraday may come back with some sort of positivity, the company decided to play the blame-game and lay-off more employees.

The state of Faraday Future has officially turned depressing. It’s bad enough that the company has fallen on hard times and is desperate to raise more money to keep operations afloat, it’s another level of misery when its employees resort to setting a fund-raising campaign on Go Fund Me just to keep their own families afloat. The $50,000 campaign was started by Hector Padilla and Asim Sher, both of whom work for Faraday Future. At the moment, the page has raised over $17,000 since it launched on November 1, 2018. The goal, according to the campaign, is to “help all of those Manufacturing Team members that are in need of financial support because of lay off or mandatory furlough.”

Nick Sampson, one of the three co-founders of Faraday Future, has quit the company. Sampson’s departure comes a day after Peter Savagian, the company’s senior vice president of technology and product development, made his own beeline for the exits. If these departures aren’t bad enough, Faraday CEO Jia Yueting announced the anyone who started working for the company after May 1 would be placed on unpaid furlough. According to a report from CNBC, the furloughs begin in November, becoming the latest in a series of layoffs and salary cuts that have happened in recent months.

Faraday Future’s struggles are showing no signs of slowing down. The beleaguered electric car maker is again laying off its employees and cutting salaries by 20 percent in an effort to keep the company alive. The latest development could throw a monkey wrench on its plans to roll out the first production versions of the FF91 SUV later this year. The layoffs take into effect next week as the company continues to desperately look for funding to keep its operations from completely falling apart.

After a rough couple of years, Faraday Future appears to have finally completed its first pre-production FF91. Thanks to the recent cash inflow, Faraday has made some progress with the electric vehicle. The car has been assembled at the company’s factory in Hanford, California. Faraday plans to start delivering production models of the FF91 in the first half of 2019. The company celebrated the milestone by sharing a picture of the build, where we also get a slight sneak-peak of the factory.

Faraday Future took a bold step last week when it reportedly gave a preview of its second model, called the FF81. The reveal occurred at a supplier’s meeting the company hosted in its California headquarters. Not much is known about the car, but it is expected to be a smaller SUV compared to the FF91. The concept is being lined up to make its debut this year, and signs point to it taking place at the 2018 Beijing Motor Show in China this April.

Just prior to the kickoff of the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show, Faraday Future hosted its own party to bring in the new year with its first production model, the FF 91 (pronounced “nine one” not “ninety-one.”) It’s essentially an electrical beast on wheels that promises decent range, an ultra-luxurious cabin, and a nice helping of intelligent technology. FF hasn’t spilled all of the beans yet, but we do know that the 91 is rated at 1,050 horsepower, offers an EPA estimated range of 278 miles, has autonomous capabilities, and has a charging speed of “more than 500 miles per hour.” According to Faraday Future’s press release, this electric supercar can hit the 60 mph sprint in a heart-stopping 2.39 seconds.

All of this sounds really good on paper, but one couldn’t blame you for being skeptical after all of the drama surrounding Faraday Future in the past. But, if you’re willing to take a chance, the reservation books for the FF 91 are officially open at FF.com and requires a fully refundable $5,000 deposit for your marked interest. Furthermore, the first 300 potential customers will have the option to upgrade their reservation to be on the official list for a launch-edition model that’s being dubbed the Alliance Edition. The option to do so will become available as early as March of 2017, so if you’re one of the first few to make a reservation, it’s something you might want to think about.

The FF 91 is set to go into production sometime in 2018, which means deliveries should commence in either late 2018 or sometime in the first half of 2019 at best. Then again, with a rocky past, you might want to expect delivery closer to 2020, just so you don’t find yourself let down. But, before that happens, let’s dive on in and take a good look at Faraday Future’s first production car.

Continue reading to learn more about the Faraday Future FF 91.