Faraday Future Insider: 'If CES Goes Badly, It's All Over'
Faraday Future's story starts with a disappointment: FF implied it would show its first electric production car at the last CES only to rush out a nonfunctional concept that cost the company $2 million. Now they've promised a production car again, but it looks like it's in trouble too.
Faraday Future may be delaying its very first production car, as a report from The Financial Times indicates. Faraday Future promised to debut its first buyer-ready car at CES in January with production starting some time later in 2017, but an insider speaking to The Financial Times aimed to lower expectations:
After promising two years ago in interviews that its first cars would be on the road and available to buy by 2017, a target it reiterated in January, that deadline now looks unachievable, according to people close to the company, given financial difficulties at its main investor, the Chinese entertainment and technology group LeEco, and the halt to construction on its Nevada car factory.
One former Faraday employee reckoned that a 2017 delivery was "not possible", even if it does show off a working prototype at CES.
"If CES goes badly, it's all over," this person said. "It will be a long while before there is a production car."
This is a worrying statement to my ears, as we at Jalopnik got a different note from a Faraday Future insider with the worrying message, "Don't expect to see as much as you'd like at CES."
So things don't exactly look great for Faraday Future. At least one PR person at FF has told Jalopnik that the company is "full steam ahead" for CES, even at the expense of its factory that has currently stopped construction. If there's a disappointment at CES, then, or a further delay with its production car, there's really not much else to look forward to from the auto startup.
We have reached out to Faraday Future for comment, and if you have any information you would like to share, please email me at raphael at jalopnik dot com.