It Looks Like Faraday Future Will Soon Be A Thing Of The Past
Remember Faraday Future? The company that claimed it would be a Tesla rival as quickly as next year? The company we confidently predicted would get nowhere near its targets? Guess what. Faraday is looking increasingly like it has no future.
Not only have almost a dozen former employees spoken to The Verge to attack the company over its business practices and those of its chief financial backer, Jia Yueting, but now the tycoon has been placed on a Chinese government blacklist of credit defaulters. It seems he hasn’t been paying his debts, and we suspect the Chinese authorities are not people you really want to tick off.
Yueting reportedly has unpaid debts totalling about £53.6 million. Faraday Future, after technological gaffes at the seriously rapid FF91’s motor show appearances, seems to be collateral damage. Clearly, at the moment it has no money and can’t hope to finish the project. Yueting won’t be able to borrow more, either, after being placed on the blacklist.
This isn’t the first time Yueting has crossed the line financially. As recently as July 2017, a Chinese court froze over £139 million of his assets over unpaid interest on loans taken out for his tech conglomerate, LeEco.
As impressive as the FF91’s time at Pikes Peak was, we think we can pretty much forget about it ever making production until the company formally collapses and is bought out by someone who knows what they’re doing. We can imagine a few European firms who’d kill to get their hands on EV technology like that…
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Rip Faraday Future
More like
Tesla is the car of the future because it will be far into the future when people who have placed a deposit for a model 3 will receive their car.
A rival for Tesla? They must be trying to copy them because they are also collapsing
Another startup is dead. Makes me appreciate Rimac even more, since realistically speaking, it’s the only startup that currently has no problems. Yes, I’m looking at you Tesla
Nio (makers of the EP9)?
Except falling off mountains occasionally 😛
So it’s Faraday Past then
That’s actually sad for car industry. More competition is better for both consumers & makers (and for environment, if you ask for lower emission car). And whoever boo’s over the FF91, has a serious taste issue.
Pity to hear, this, but I think Faraday Future have made the same mistake as Tesla, and both will ultimately fail. You cannot make a viable startup selling practical, semi-mainstream cars. It would involve producing in large numbers to cover development costs and require you to add all kinds of luxury tech features in order to be able to sell your product. A Rimac Concept One or Nio EP9 can get away with not having these things because they are ultra-high performance cars that probably won’t be daily-driven. The cost of developing something that’s meant to compete with an S-class or Panamera is extremely high, and Faraday didn’t have enough to start off with when doing this. Tesla have largely been saved by Musk’s 10-figure bank account, but they’re racking up huge losses as well…
Score 0 for a Paypal billionaire, score 1 for a crazy Croatian guy.
Faraday Future in a nutshell. Looks okay on the surface but once you look into it…
I’ve only just seen this. I wish I hadn’t seen it at all.
This is very sad to hear. If more start-up are becoming successful, we would have more choices to buy.
But it looks like we will only have a handful of EV cars to buy, and none of them are affordable.
Truth be told, most of the electric cars in the future will come from industry giants like VW, GM, Toyota, etc. These startups have an advantage now since the major manufacturers are still catching up.
For now, it seems like a monopoly will be held on EVs, by companies like Tesla. However, like V-Tech and EcoBoost kicked in yo mentions, once the large companies catch up I am most certain we will see many more EVs at more affordable prices!
Were they ever present?