Faraday Future Finally Shows First Concept To The World… Again
We have been stalking Faraday Future since the early days — we’ve stayed on top of the rumors and weeded out the likely rumors from the unlikely — and the day has finally arrived. Faraday Future pulled the curtain back from the much anticipated first concept car tonight to let the world see the fruits of many months of secretive labor.
Arriving at the event early, I surveilled the premises to get a feel for what was in store. A large white tent sat in the middle of an otherwise vacant parking lot. It was buttoned up tight with few exceptions where stray LED light leaked onto the asphalt. At the front of the building, a double-wide door beckoned with the signature FF logo hovering overhead, beckoning me as if I were a child being lured into a mysterious circus tent.
As the time to enter approached, the anticipation grew amongst those gathered — though, the curiosity was tinged with the knowledge that a possible leak from earlier in the day might be what waited inside. It was nothing terrible or ugly, but it was not the sexy breakthrough passenger vehicle that many had hoped for. Perhaps we had imagined the utopian electric car that brought massive range, autonomous driving, and a revolutionary passenger experience — no driver needed, thank you very much.
As the clocks around the entry crossed the one-hour threshold, we grew restless and were soon let into the main room just as a new wave of rain ominously swept through town, chasing any stragglers into the dark tent. The main room was saturated by unnatural shades of purple and pink, with the tone fading awkwardly between the two in irregular frequencies. A stage sat in the front of the room with what was clearly the leaked vehicle under a sheet.
The show started with a replay of the “What if” teaser video that begged for… no — mandated — a fresh slate approach to passenger car design. The pace died down a bit when Nick Sampson, Senior Vice President of R&D and Product Development for Faraday Future, took the stage. He shared the four key pillars of what made Faraday & Future (as they were called in the presentation) tick… what called them from bed in the morning to head out to change the world:
- Amazing Team
- Transformative Vision
- Incredible Alliances
- They move very fast.
None of these themes are breakthrough. None of these are surprises. We have heard of the amazing team that has been assembled, though the updated employment numbers pin Los Angeles staff at 550 (vs. 400 in our last update) and other staff located elsewhere in the world at roughly 200.
The transformative vision has been the single main theme since the company came out into the public spotlight, a vision which boldly imagines a future beyond anything in existence today.
Incredible alliances were mentioned, though only an incestuous partnership with Letv was actually shared. This is hardly incredible, as Letv was similarly founded by FF bankroller Jia Yueting, making this more of an obvious fit — as if the firm were buying tires from a brother.
The last theme is interesting on a few levels, though not really new, as speed to market was a theme spotlighted in earlier updates, which featured a prolific use of augmented reality to shortcut product design. The company is obviously proud of what has been accomplished in a mere 18 months since inception, and now relies on this speed as a foundational value. Typically, in a project, there is a three-way balance between cost, quality, and timeline. If the timeline is being expedited, cost will inevitably go up (not good) or quality will suffer (worse). It will be interesting to see how this particular value evolves as the company grows into a production-volume automobile manufacturer.
Richard Kim, the Lead Designer for Faraday Future, then took the stage for the formal unveiling. After a brief intro, he queued some aggressive music and a projector light show started over the shrouded vehicle, painting images of spinning wheels while at the same time exposing the bones of the car from the chassis on up through the battery pack, until the car was fully fleshed out in the virtual world as well as the physical. The sheet was pulled back from the car gently as the video played as if shy about coming out into the light for the first time.
Richard also mentioned that Faraday had developed an entirely new, adaptable chassis that can stretch and adjust as needed, to the contours of the road around it. Similar to the Tesla skateboard rolling chassis, the batteries are in the center of the bottom — though, Tesla clusters them together. Additional battery strings — or single rows of batteries that span the width of the chassis — can be added (or removed) to accommodate larger (or smaller) vehicles.
The concept, named the FFzero1, looks like the Batmobile, plain and simple. We covered the leaked photos of this very same car just hours prior to the formal reveal and those images, it turned out, were spot on. It was exciting but depressing. Energized yet deflating. We had expected big things from FF. Most had expected a more traditionally designed sedan with room for 4–5 that may or may not have a steering wheel. It would be packed to the gills with futuristic technology and have chairs that swiveled around to allow the front seats to face the rear… but this was sadly not to be.
What greeted us instead was the Batmobile, fitted with racing clearance from tires to body, a single cockpit-style seat in the center and extreme design in the form of aero tunnels that stretched from the front to the rear of the vehicle, which supported aerodynamics and battery cooling to name a few things. Check out the gallery at the bottom for the goods and let us know what you think. Would you buy it? Would you be seen in it? Will they actually be able to make it?
This high-performance machine packs a punch with specs to make even supercar drivers jealous:
Powertrain
- 4 Quad Core Motors with over 1,000 horsepower
- 0-60 in less than 3 seconds
- Top Speed 200+ miles per hour
Interior
- Single-seat occupancy surrounded by newly developed high-performance materials
- A fully connected car featuring intuitive UI for integration between virtual and heads-up displays
- Smartphone-connected remote vehicle setup and anticipatory personalization; capable of live analysis of vehicle systems
Exterior
- Innovative carbon fiber and lightweight composite construction
- Custom-built high-performance racing suspension
- Advanced vehicle dynamic control and torque vectoring
- Radically reduced drag and battery cooling through aero tunnel design
Unfortunately, this most recent event didn’t really take us too far beyond where we were before. There was no mention of the CEO or owner of the mysterious startup. There was no mention of battery chemistry, price, or firm timing — with the exception of a single mention that they were “a few years from production.” Most importantly, this concept is not a car that the masses would get excited about or even want to buy. Ultimately, that means that Faraday & Future does not yet have a concept for a car that might meet those needs. The new concept is interesting, but not compelling. Fast, but no room for the groceries….
tl;dr — not much has changed since they last talked with the press. Oh, and there’s a car.
Check out the official reveal video below along with a few more new vids from FF:
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So disappointed…
(But looks like a fun car for a few people to enjoy on the weekend.)
Me, too. I would have thought they’d concentrate on volume markets first, or at least not limit their potential right off by trying an exotic.
I am more convinced than ever that they are not real. If they are serious about this as their offering, they have way too much factory and way too much expectations for vehicle volume. It might be a case of trying to out do Tesla. That is a serious mistake. They might want to note that Tesla does not have nearly as much future invested in the Roadster as they do in an SUV and a mid sized, mid cost sedan. A case of paying too much attention to the Ludicrous mode P85D and too little attention to the rest of the lineup?
Yeah, what else do you need a 1 billion dollar factory for, if not for mass production?
You stole my words! grrr. 😉
That was the first thing I thought too: what a disappointment.
After all the high words, they simply produce the umpteenth hypercar, only affordable for a handful of billionaires.
Well, let’s see here . . . 300 million people in the US. 1% of that population equals 3 million people. My dire prediction is that we will have 3 million hyper-boutique electric car companies eventually . . .
an electric car company for each one percenter!
The one seater concept suddenly makes so much sense 😛
Yes. And here I was lamenting the impracticality of falconwing doors just one short day ago. The idea of a Model X looks downright pedestrian next to the Faraday.
Here’s a two seater that’s almost as impractical as the Faraday, but so much more charming . . .
http://static4.venturi.fr/venturi/images/vehicles/astrolab/astrolab-overview-design.680.jpg
Actually, after I get my i-MiEV paid off, I’d like to find another one of those with a salvaged/wrecked body, but with a good drive train and battery. With the price of PV panels now so low, I could put a “PV Roadster” together for peanuts.
Yep, Venturi from Monaco has the last 10 years been trying to sell obscure hyper expensive electric cars. At least some their models have been sensible.
http://www.venturi.fr/vehicules/la-gamme-venturi
Venturi appears to be another of those companies that was around in the first decade of this century who were going to make all sorts of neat electric cars, but didn’t have the investment capital to really get going. Vintage web sites
still exist, though.
That solar panel one I posted the picture of? I think they wanted a mind-numbing $90K for it back in 2007. Batteries were supposed to be NiMH, which would have been fine for the time but are pretty much an anachronism today. The PV panels like shown – thin, with no glass or metal frames – were hideously expensive back then.
Today, all one would need is a salvaged i-Miev that got dinged in a front end wreck. There’s your rear motor, associated electronics and lightweight independent suspension – not to mention a 16kWh battery pack –
all for a couple thousand dollars
Next, build a tube frame, find a new front suspension and you’ve got a a pretty neat electric roadster. The crowning touch is that thin plastic-sealed monocrystaline solar panels can also be had for a fraction of what they cost a decade ago. I haven’t done any serious back-of-the-envelope calculations, but I’d guess the whole thing could be assembled for well under $20K.
Yep. Just another toy for those who can afford, taunting us slave workers for corporate America. I belong to wealth creator middle class and my wealth is being siphoned off by these few people and they spend their wealth on these things that really give the wonderful experience only for the very few. At least Tesla has better societal aims, to provide high quality affordable EV for the middle classes.
Its a single seater! 🙁 If you plan a day of 1000hp fun, don’t you want to bring along a plus one to share it with.
Faraday Future just went Electric Boogaloo!
On the plus side, at least we won’t see lots of people buying it and driving around autonomously. Their vision of a car as a place to relax worries me. In a few years we may see roads become more packed as people read online or play video games while the car takes them across the country… and all that takes power which will not be 100% renewable so quickly. If that trend happens widely it could significantly slow the move to 100% renewable. I know Tesla is headed in the same direction and it could be a very bad thing… or it could speed adoption of EVs… but at what cost?
Anyway, Faraday seems like it’s trying to be another Aston Martin rather than a world changer, but maybe they have the same goal as Tesla to build money from a high price, small production vehicle before going mainstream. They seem to have developed tech they think can be used in a variety of vehicles… At the same time, I don’t see that spending 10 or even 5 years following in Tesla’s footsteps is going to help the planet much or necessarily even be possible. Many companies are catching on to the desire for luxury EVs and building their own products, so Faraday will never have the market to itself as Tesla did and likely won’t find enough volume of customers to finance a huge factory and whatever else. I don’t really understand what they’re trying to do at all. I also don’t understand why they made it black and white with a disruptive pattern that makes it hard to look at, or how that long, low back end can avoid scraping on any significant valley… I like the batmobile and I like futuristic car designs but that prototype they’ve got is just… not great.
Bah. We’ll see what comes of it.
There’s a limit on how much time people spend riding. Most people have other stuff they need to get done. Far too much is made of the Jevons Effect.
I’m sure there’s a limit to people’s spare time but there is also a correlation with lower gas prices and more road trips. With Tesla offering “free gas” now and “free chauffeur” in the future, it’s going to push people to take the maximum number of road trips and that’s not a good thing.
Does it really matter? Will it really matter?
If we’re driving on renewable energy and driving cars built sustainably where’s the damage?
Yes, short term we’ll burn some extra FF. It will slow the move off FF a small amount, likely a very small amount. But I suspect the idea of unlimited free driving will move people to EVs faster.
Tesla is supposedly going to be sourced its Supercharger electricity from solar. I’ve heard no recent info on that yet, perhaps they’re waiting on SolarCity to get their factory up and running. Whatever the state I suspect that the much of the $2k that Tesla buyers pay for SC access is going to be used to build solar farms.
I tried to watch the presentation last night, but I couldn’t last past the 10 minute mark. My Buzzword Bingo card was full at that point, but no information had been conveyed yet.
I gave it another go this morning. They would have been better off without showing that concept, I think. The whole presentation was an unfocused mess.
I can see a Chinese billionaire having a billion less soon, with not much to show for it.
The hype made me think they were aiming at something significant for humanity. Turns out they want to make expensive toys that mainly appeal to 15 year olds.
Perhaps I’m missing something? Is this just a means to a future point at which they make something genuinely worthwhile? (Vaguely like Tesla’s secret plan?)
If you pause the first video at 1:11, You can see a larger glowing outline, taller than the concept design. I’m thinking this is what they will ultimately be developing.
With a “form factor” not unlike the Tesla Model X.
I was about to post the same thing. Yes, I agree with Brent that it looks similar to the Model X form factor. Hopefully a lower performance, lower cost, more accessible version of the X.
Thanks for the article. The complete opposite of what I was expecting, with all the advance talk of self-driving cars, doing work/changing/watching tv while commuting, etc.
Instead of dropping buzzwords and talking about their amazing team and alliances, it would be easier to take them seriously if they were open about what they’re trying to achieve with this prototype. Is the idea for this to be their “roadster”, with the factory then scaling up to produce a more sensibly proportioned family car? At the moment it’s difficult to regard them as serious long-term players in this industry when everything suggests vanity project/vapourware.
I don’t think every electric car company is going to follow Tesla’s model in introducing a roadster and following it with a luxury sedan and a crossover SUV.
Sure, I thought Faraday would be starting with some sort of sensible commuter car (albeit loaded up with technology). Just trying to work out what they’re thinking with this.
Clearly, from this presentation, Faraday seems not to be sharing what they’re thinking.
Be nice to learn of Faraday’s “secret plan.”
Are they going to produce that concept? That looks like it belongs in the tiniest niche imaginable.
Maybe a few ultra-rich would buy it for the novelty factor. But they need a compelling product selling at least tens of thousands if they want to create an automotive company.
Well, the complete impracticality of the thing should at least give those moaning about the Model X falcon doors something else to focus on instead 😉
haha, yeah, here’s some perspective to chew on. 😀
did they sneak in an outline of the actual vehicle?
Yes, For sure. I noticed that outline at the event though I also decided that serious companies shouldn’t play teenage flirty games ad naseum. The whole thing reeks of vaporware. Tease tease tease tease…
Make that expensive vaporware after poaching all those top gun employees from others. Young CEO or majority owner billionaire can burn their money at will. Wouldn’t invest a penny on this.
…at least not without some reasoned plan.
What Venture Capitalist would fund such an enterprise without a 5-year plan?
Why keep it a secret?
Is it because the money is expected out of the pocket of the billionaire starting it? If this was real, we would be seeing a financial model, with real startup investors, not a super car youtube video. There would be well known Silicon Valley investors with there names to it.
Rule number one in the auto biz. It may take a billion or two for an auto startup just to find out if it succeeds. The stake are incredibly high. The high cost for crash testing a prototype prevents many EV startups from even getting out of the gate.
Tesla got its factory for a song. If you had to buy one today, your piggy bank would be empty fast.
An EV company needs to build confidence. It needs to build financial confidence early. You can’t do that like this.
Wow, all of that anticipation. We were expecting more.
Indeed.
Okay… yes, very flirty. But I think you guys are missing the genius of a modifiable platform. If you watch the “Behind the Scenes” video above you will see that the “supercar” concept is essentially maxing out the performance segment of the design, just to show the upwards potential of the platform. If the guy was drawing a 4×4 short bed crew-cab truck with sliding minivan doors that could have very well been the first concept. I have often dreamt of a skateboard drivetrain that I could park under a truck body or a SUV kid-hauler body. To have that flexibility would be valuable for me, it would require some shop lift/winches though, and some assembly as well, but it would be hella cool.
Thing is, a modifiable platform only works to a certain extent. Beyond that, there’s a lot of work that goes into designing and producing a vehicle, and then making money on it. FF just looks a bit clueless by not presenting a viable mass-market vehicle and/or explaining its plans for being more than a niche niche short-lived startup.
Key: “…explaining its plans.”
Does anyone else feel like Faraday is just trying to show off their platform, factory, and “potential” so that they can be bought by one of the car manufacturing giants? I feel like Tesla has a very legitimate path to being a highly successful business. I just don’t get that same feeling with Faraday.
Granted, this is very early and we know very little about the company itself or its timeline for producing vehicles (or what those vehicles may be). Still, I can’t get excited until actually seeing real model designs, real delivery timelines, and real specs/prices.
Thoughts?
You nailed it.
The founder of FF seems keen on being a pioneer in this field. I think he chose people to do it, and they went in a dubious direction. But who knows? We’ll see what happens, but I’ve lost a lot of the enthusiasm for the company that I had.
I think the most deflating thing is it feels like they’ve spent so long “designing” that I was expecting them to reveal something that looked like what people would realistically want to buy. I’m hoping this year they reveal at least one more vehicle design.
Even when Tesla is blamed for missing deadlines, they’re at least very upfront about their path to profitability, model specs and cost, and they actually try to hold themselves to optimistic deadlines. They understand that “urgency” is required for a business to be successful and profitable. Faraday seems like they have been doing solid R&D work, but don’t seem to have the “urgency” required to be successful.
That being said, I hope I’m completely wrong and Faraday turns out to be a big success.
Yeah, no arguments here. I’m in your boat.
Problem is they don’t have a “Musk” with a proven track record. They could still surprise with a relevant high volume model but this initial presentation was quite disappointing with little substance to get excited about.
“TREXA” – were around a while back doing something similar, not sure what happened to them.
By chance, I landed on a web article regarding Trexa the other day and thought
“Hey, this looks really good.” Then in noticed that the article was dated 2010 and
said to myself “Hmmm . . . I wonder what ever happened to them?”
Their website is still active, though, and with a 2015 copyright date on it. So,
someone in an office or industrial park is still left to keep that aspect of it alive . . .
http://www.trexa.com
There was a lot of interesting and weird stuff going on with EVs in the 2006-10 time period (not implying that Trexa wasn’t legitimate, but mixed in with a whole bunch of other stuff in the same time period that might not have been, such as EEStor.) It’s when Tesla just another tiny company among the many and before we could really be sure that the major OEMs were going to actually give us Leafs, I-MiEVs and Volts. The EV1 had only been recently killed off and nobody seemed to know what was going to rise up and be the dominant technology to replace it. It was at the very end of what I would call the Premodern Era of EVs.
I still have a few copies of a curious newspaper-like publication of that period, called Electrifying Times, that featured bits of battery news mixed in with stories of non-petroleum liquid fuels, backyard investor geniuses and (I’m not making this up) backward engineered UFO technology. Even they seem to live on via the Internet . . .
http://electrifyingtimes.com
I researched soooo many electric car companies before I decided Tesla was the one legit one with a chance.
Aptera had an outside chance but they screwed up the business model and the aerodynamics. I still want an Aptera. 🙁
I followed the Aptera story as well. One of the things that killed it was on-again/off-again government support.
Aptera’s 3 wheel design was good enough one year to be a contender for a large grant. But granting eligibility was pulled just a year later because it didn’t have 4 wheels. Aptera then scrambled to make a 4 wheel design and lobby the Chinese for a manufacturing site, all of which, I’m sure, splintered its financial resources badly. Then, in 2010/11 or thereabouts, the government recanted and the original 3 wheeled design was allowed to compete for grants once more. But Aptera was pretty much gone by then.
Another sad tale of that period was the fake EEStor supercapacitor, which managed to kill off a promising
little Canadain EV concern, ZENN, by draining their funds
with false promises of obtaining the exclusive rights to an electric storage device that, in the end, was all smoke and mirrors.
This is a variable platform much like the GM skateboard design more than a decade ago. You can put whatever design you want on one, two, three or four motors.
It’s interesting back end resembles the Edsel. Not a good car to emulate.
Who let Homer Simpson into Faraday? Don’t they know what he did to his brothers car company? 🙂
The platform is reminiscent of a Tesla Model S or X but the chassis rails telescope in the FF design while they do not in the Tesla. That is all very cool but in the real world surly no one would want a vehicle that could change its wheel base (unless you could just as easily change the superstructure to match). If a standard universal platform but available in different wheel base lengths was desired it would make much more sense to fit fixed length rails of the appropriate length for the model being produced, during manufacture. Having them telescope seems to have no advantage beyond looking cool in a video of a 3d CAD package presentation.
Just who buys single seat electric sports cars anyway.
Hm.. not bad.. make the design as modular as possible, leverage reusable parts over all models you build to get the scale up fast – not even Tesla did that (they later wished they had).. they should be able to churn out new designs every 6 months with a small team of people if what they claim is done now.
Best of luck.
Seemed like vaporware all along. If they were headed there, they should have followed this lead.
Yes. At least its a two seater. But seriously. Its hard to follow the same biz plan that Tesla did. Its going to take better marketing than that, now that Musk has done it so obsessively. None of the major auto companies competes with Tesla head to head right now in the luxury/supercar segment. Thats an astonishing achievement. Its going to be difficult to duplicate.
Tesla is heading for 3 series BMW territory with the model 3. It has done seven 7 series with the Model S. What remains is 5 series. 3 series is still available, but the window of opportunity to be early is closing.
Conventional autos have a lot of catching up to do.
Putin might want one or two. Trump another.
I doubt about Trump, especially if the majority owner of FF is Chinese born.
Putin or Trump might want to buy the factory, not the car. LOL. Bob said it already. Maybe they are trying to build a factory to get someone to buy it.
Just like Tesla bought NUMMI from Toyota.
Only a racing team want’s a 1 seat car but reading this discussion I think they would have been in trouble no matter what prototype they showed up with. Just imagine them showing up with a 500e type and size car. They would have been buried in words with people saying that everyone is doing that! It’s funny I saw what could be also what might be. Maybe a Cad’s eye view but at least a good sense of what could be and what will be done! Did you really expect a full lineup of ready to go and in full production vehicles. Sad! Elon Musk must be thinking deja vu all over again.
This looks so Goofy! nothing can beat Tesla now!
Oh my God this smells of vaporware. A bunch of the things they’re advertising are, well, stupid? The supposedly adjustable-size skateboard… uh, no, that’s a manufacturing nightmare and a stability engineering nightmare. They’re going to end up not doing that.
Adjustable skateboards don’t make sense. Extra material and extra weight. Just run the line for a few hours/days producing one size and hit the software toggle that produces the other size(s).