A Chinese-backed start-up ‘Faraday Future’ has cropped up in California with the aim of building electric cars superior to Tesla Motors.
A Chinese-backed start-up ‘Faraday Future’ has cropped up in California with the aim of building electric cars superior to Tesla Motors. The company just got $1 billion funding from Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, founder of video site Leshi Television.
Faraday Future promises to “take a user-centric, technology-first approach to vehicle design with the ultimate aim of connecting the automotive experience to the rest of your life.” It plans to roll out its first vehicle by 2017 and will allegedly have a battery with 15 percent more range than the Tesla Model S 85kW-hr, or about 310 miles. The company is highly secretive about the CEO and has not given the name and face for this billion dollar start-up. “We are keeping our partners confidential,” the company told the Wall Street Journal .
The company only began operating out of a former Nissan research facility in California last year, but already has over 400 workers, and is aiming to have 500 by the end of 2015. Nick Sampson, former director of vehicle & chassis engineering for Tesla is the official spokesperson Faraday Future was quoted as saying, “With energy constraints, urban crowding, and the increasingly intrinsic relationship we have with technology, today’s cars simply do not meet today’s needs. Our range of 100% electric and intelligent vehicles will offer seamless connectivity to the outside world.” Sampson holds the post of senior Vice-President in this start-up.
Four of the five names listed on Faraday Future’s leadership team are former Tesla employees: Sampson; Dag Reckhorn, VP of Global Manufacturing; Alan Cherry, VP of Human Resources; and Tom Wessner, VP of Supply Chain. The fifth leadership member, head of design Richard Kim, was formerly the lead designer responsible for the BMW i3 and i8 concepts. This gives rise to speculation that Faraday Future is a front for Apple Inc. so that the company could roll out its car in complete secrecy. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors had recently said Apple has been poaching employees from Tesla.
As of now the company is scouting locations to set-up its factory. One of the sites in the states of California, Georgia, Nevada, or Louisiana would be finalized shortly. The company has so far only released a rendering of what its first car might look like.