Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Cars
  3. News

Armed with a $1.5 billion lifeline, Faraday Future plans a second electric car

Ronan Glon
By
Faraday Future FF91 Laguna
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Faraday Future often makes headlines, but not for the reasons executives and entrepreneurs are looking for when running an ambitious startup. This time, the story sounds a little bit brighter. Sources close to the electric car company report that it has secured a $1.5 billion lifeline from an anonymous Hong Kong-based investor.

The California-based, Chinese-backed automaker already received about $550 million of the cash injection, the amount needed to begin paying its loans and stave off bankruptcy, which Faraday has gone to amazing lengths to avoid. Business Insider reports the investor will give the company the remaining $950 million when it reaches project milestones, which haven’t been made public yet.

Recommended Videos

Faraday Future already knows how it’s going to spend the money. First, it will fully refurbish the factory it’s leasing in central California. The project will include installing the assembly line equipment it purchased for the massive factory it walked away from on the outskirts of Las Vegas.

Related

“We are well into the process of design and permitting and have begun planning our recruitment cadence. As of February 1, the property has been completely vacated, so we will move forward on construction and equipment by the end of the quarter,” Dag Reckhorn, the firm’s senior vice president of global manufacturing, wrote in a statement.

Faraday never planned on remaining a one-model company. It will use a sizable part of its lifeline to develop a second, more affordable model positioned below the FF91, the flagship SUV (pictured) it introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2017. Faraday showed an early design sketch of the new model to a room of representatives from more than 100 suppliers. It depicts an ultra-futuristic, SUV-like vehicle that seemingly borrows a handful of styling cues from the FF91. It’s tentatively called FF81, and is being billed as a mass-market vehicle. We could see it at the upcoming Beijing Auto Show, or Faraday could choose to hold a stand-alone, Apple-style event.

We’ll have a better idea of what the future holds for the company in the coming months, especially after the FF81 makes its debut — assuming it actually happens, and happens on time. Faraday Future insists it remains on track to deliver the first examples of the 1,000-horsepower FF91 by the end of this year.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Ronan Glon
Ronan Glon
Contributor
Ronan Glon is an American automotive and tech journalist based in southern France. As a long-time contributor to Digital…
How much does an electric car battery cost?
Two Electrify America Charging Stations.

Electric cars are often hailed as being cheaper to operate and repair than gas-powered cars. It makes sense — on the operation side, you only need to pay for electricity (not gasoline), and on the repair side, there’s no motor or transmission to deal with.

But electric cars have other costly repairs, and while in total they do generally cost less than repairs for gasoline cars, it’s worth knowing about the potential costs ahead of time. Perhaps the most obvious, and one of the most costly, has to do with an electric car’s battery. After all, while all cars have batteries, those in electric cars are far bigger and more advanced — and thus can cost quite a bit to replace.
How much does an electric car battery cost?

Read more
Ram EV concept previews truck brand’s electric future
The Ram 1500 Revolution BEV concept was designed around an electric powertrain.

Electric pickup trucks are a hot trend in the auto industry, and Ram is late to the game. So the truck brand of massive automaker Stellantis needed to work hard to stand out.
Unveiled at CES 2023, the Ram 1500 Revolution BEV concept shows what Ram has in mind for its first production electric truck, which is scheduled to arrive in 2024. This concept version combines some features we’ve already seen on other electric trucks with a few clever new ideas. So while it may be revolutionary for the Ram brand, which is new to EVs, it’s more evolutionary when compared to other electric pickups.

Unmistakably electric
The Ram 1500 Revolution has the bulky appearance of a traditional truck, but with proportions that clearly mark it as an EV. With no need to accommodate an engine, the hood is much shorter. This allowed designers to make the cabin four inches longer than today’s internal-combustion Ram 1500 without shortening the bed, Ram claims. The grille is also smaller, although Ram compensated for this with a giant light-up logo and headlights with the same “tuning fork” elements as its current gasoline and diesel truck grilles.
The roofline is a bit lower and sleeker, which probably helps with aerodynamics, but like a traditional truck, the Revolution rolls on massive wheels and tires. The 35-inch tires are wrapped around 24-inch wheels with smooth covers and light-up elements. The charge port, meanwhile, is located in the driver’s side front fender. It makes a noise when the truck has started charging and blinks to show that charging is ongoing.
Like rival truck makers, Ram incorporated a frunk where the engine would normally be, plus the RamBox storage bins from its current trucks. Nearly every opening, including the tailgate, frunk, and charge port, is also power-operated.
Underpinning all of this power-operated convenience is the STLA Frame dedicated EV platform, one of four such platforms Stellantis plans to use for future EVs across its many brands, such as Chrysler and Jeep.

Read more
VW previews its next electric car in trippy camouflaged form
Front three quarter view of a camouflaged Volkswagen ID.7 prototype.

The Volkswagen ID.7 is VW's next electric car, and while it won't be fully revealed until later in the year, the automaker provided a sneak peek at CES 2023.

VW said the production ID.7, which will be revealed in the second quarter of this year, will be influenced by the ID.Aero concept first shown in China in 2022. The camouflaged prototype VW brought to CES has the same general shape as the ID.Aero. It's a streamlined sedan that VW claims will have up to 435 miles of range as measured on the somewhat lenient European WLTP testing cycle.

Read more