FARADAY FUTURE SHIFTS FOCUS

OUTLOOK MURKY, BUT ELECTRIC- CAR COMPANY EYES 2018 ROLLOUT FOR FF 91

GARDENA, CALIF. The headquarters of Faraday Future is a hive of activity, 1,000 workers buzzing away on a powerful electric car that seems to have more in common with a private jet than anything on the road.

But the coming months will show whether this company has produced the next automotive milestone or if it stands as an example of yet another tech start- up that promised more than it could deliver.

Between plans to cancel a billion- dollar Nevada factory build- out and increasing competition in the electric- vehicle space from start- ups and auto manufacturers alike, the signs are ominous.

Three years ago. Faraday Future launched with a vow to pick up where Tesla left off, offering a 1,000- horsepower beast that could cruise up to 400 miles between recharges, at an undisclosed price.

Backed by Chinese tech billionaire Jia Yueting, FF started hiring engineers from BMW, Tesla and other rivals, rolled out a sleek if puzzling race car prototype at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show and announced it would spend a billion dollars to build a sprawling factory in Las Vegas.

Monday, the company announced it would scuttle that factory build and instead was on the hunt for warehouse space in California or Nevada where it could begin manufacturing its first car, the FF 91, in time for a 2018 rollout.

“Our focus now is on one single car and its success,” Peter Savagian, FF’s vice president of propulsion, told USA TODAY during a headquarters tour this week.

Savagian, an 18- year veteran of General Motors, admitted that recent times have been tough, largely the byproduct of the faltering financial foundation of Yueting’s LeEco tech empire.

Last week, Chinese authori- ties froze nearly $ 200 million in assets belonging to Yueting and his wife because of unpaid loans. There have also been reports that FF has been missing vendor payments.

And some high- profile hires have not stuck around, including former Ferrari North America CEO Marco Mattiacci, who left his chief branding officer post at FF after seven months on the job.

For Savagian, FF represented a place to lead a bold experiment without endless bureaucracy. On the flip side, where a GM venture would be met with cash and staff, Savagian has had to rely on the enthusiasm, goodwill and creativ- ity of its employees to make a technological breakthrough.

“Scarcity brings a focus,” said Savagian, explaining how a small FF team worked nights and weekends to prepare a FF 91 prototype for the grueling race up 14,000- foot Pikes Peak in Colorado. “That taught us that we could push our batteries to the limit and not have them overheat. It was invaluable, and we’re grateful people gave up their free time for it.”

But free time and youthful enthusiasm do not a global automotive powerhouse make. And the clock is ticking.

Global CFO Stefan Krause, for- merly of BMW and Deutsche Bank who was hired in March, is currently on a world tour to try to secure $ 1 billion in Series A funding from wealthy individuals willing to roll the dice on FF’s mobility vision.

“How do we get FF 91 to market by 2018 — that is the lens through which we have to view all of our management decisions,” Krause says. “Using that approach, identifying an alternative that provides us with the ability to be up- and- running, fast, was the right decision to make.”

Krause has pit stops planned for China, the Middle East and Europe, and the goal is to raise $ 500 million by the end of September and the other half by early 2018.

The money would go toward moving manufacturing equipment into whatever building it finds in the U. S., continuing research and development on the FF 91 and, ideally, building a factory in China, according to FF officials.

But while an FF 91 would be a bit of a rival to Tesla’s Model X SUV, the company may not actually be focusing on producing cars for individual ownership. Instead, officials say they’re intrigued by a subscription model that would find consumers renting time with an FF 91.

That mobility reality, however, is a long ways off, says Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Cox Automotive.

“In many ways, being too far ahead is far worse than being behind, and I don’t see any situation where car ownership goes away anytime soon,” he says.

For Brauer, FF’s story has echoes in other Chinese- backed auto ventures that often are big on hype and short on execution.

Currently, that list would also include NIO, formerly NextEV and helmed by former Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior and Lucid Motors, whose Air sedan aims for the same luxurious footprint and wicked speed as FF 91. ( FF has not said what a top- end FF 91 would cost, but the Lucid Air is slated to cost around $ 160,000.)

“We may see great things from Faraday in the next months, or this all could be a sign of an unraveling,” Brauer says.

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