The electric vehicle startup Faraday Future will be investing $1 billion into the creation of a US manufacturing plant, according to recent reports.
As far as where this manufacturing facility will be located, that has yet to be definitively revealed. Reportedly, the company is mulling possible locations in Georgia, California, Nevada, and Louisiana. A final decision on location is supposed to be reached within only a few weeks.
Interestingly, the $1 billion figure has been referred to as a “phase one” investment, so presumably there’s a lot more to come… Considering that the new startup (launched only a year and a half ago) is already home to 400 employees, including some ex-Tesla, ex-BMW, ex-GM, ex-Ford, etc, talent, the plans do seem to be quite solid. Worth noting here is that Richard Kim — partly responsible for the design of the BMW i8 and i3 — is apparently working for the company now. As well as Pontus Fontaeus — who previously worked for Ferrari, Land Rover, and Volvo.
“This is the job I’ve been training for my whole life,” Fontaeus commented on the subject. “There are some designers who need a brief, a foothold. And then there are designers like these who have a pioneer spirit and don’t need a safety net. We’re actually better when we can create from nothing.”
Forbes provides more:
“We are very excited to make our $1 billion investment in US manufacturing — and this is just phase one… Producing our forward-looking and fully-connected electric vehicles not only requires the latest technology, but the right community partner,” said Nick Sampson, senior vice president of Faraday Future, in a statement. Faraday reiterated that it expects to bring its first vehicle to market in 2017 and will explore “other aspects of the automotive and technology industries including unique ownership and usage models, in-vehicle content and autonomous driving,” the company said.
The funding “is going to come from a different number of sources,” Sampson told the Wall Street Journal, which said Faraday has started to order components already. Sampson was the “lead chassis engineer” for Tesla’s Model S before leaving in early 2012, according to the Journal. ”We are keeping our partners confidential,” he said. There are other recruits from Tesla as well as BMW and General Motors.
Interesting news. The more, the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. If nothing else, I suppose that perhaps we’ll stop getting so many complaints about covering Tesla-based news now that there’s a solid-looking competitor emerging. 🙂 Here’s to hoping that they are as open with their plans and inner workings as Tesla is (then we can cover them as much as Tesla).
Image Credit: Faraday Future
Looking forward to this story unfolding.
Pretty cool, though I can’t really imagine them doing anything other than another expensive luxury car, which still doesn’t help the EV revolution for the masses… If anything it might steal customers from Tesla and slow down Model 3, which would suck.