When Faraday Future first entered the market, it was dubbed "The Tesla Killer" because of its potential and plans for the future of electric vehicles. Since then, however, the EV company has had to scale down on its plans as the weight of reality has sunk in. It has even been decided that the company will now work on just two models instead of seven.
According to Yahoo Finance, the product portfolio of Faraday Future has decreased significantly. The information was provided by two individuals who have direct knowledge of the company's plans. This might be largely because of the fact that the company is also scaling down its factory from what was initially planned.
The factory, which will still be built in North Las Vegas, Nevada, will be a much smaller auto assembly facility that was initially announced by the company. A city official confirmed the same on Tuesday when it was announced that the building of a 650,000 square foot facility would begin by the end of the year. The area where the facility is being built had an original plan for a 3 million square foot building.
And while this is a significant downsize, Faraday Future has been open about the same. Last fall, the company's founder, Jia Yueting, was open about how global operations were bloated. Former executives also admitted that the company was having trouble with cash flows. The EV manufacturer, however, was adamant that a larger facility would be built one day, but refused to give a timeline.
"We remain committed to the State Of Nevada," the company said in a statement. "[We] are continuing our US$1 billion investment in the region over the next few years." The project is supposed to create as much as 4,500 onsite jobs. How quickly this investment can be made will undoubtedly rely on just how well the company's electric vehicles actually do in the market.
Production, however, is still way down the line. Nick Samson, a senior vice president at Faraday and a former Tesla engineer, said as much on Monday night. "A couple of years," Forbes quotes him saying. But in the next few years, while Faraday Future works on releasing its first unit into the market, Tesla is expected to be reaping the benefits of a veteran EV and the introduction of a new and affordable Model 3.
Faraday Future will apparently be working on double time to try and curb the differences. The company has claimed that it will move quickly and will be able to release a wide arrange of vehicles based on its Variable Platform Architecture. The roster will apparently include FZero1-like cars as well as SUVs and possibly pickup trucks.
The VPA is the heart of Faraday Future's technology. It includes a battery structure, which arranged into strings. These strings, when added and removed, can theoretically control the amount of battery power found in one unit. It also allows modular motor and powertrain changes, which includes layouts of up to 4 motors and two or all-wheel drive systems.
Whether or not the VPA, with all its promises and potential, will beat out Tesla in the end and will remain a mystery until the time comes that the companies face off in the real market. Nevertheless, Faraday Future is not going to back down now. It has just decided to scale its services down - for now.
