Faraday Future is a Masterpiece of Nonfulfillment, Achieves Even More Debt

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky

When Faraday Future showcased its new car at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, everyone temporarily forgot the company was a structural and monetary dumpster fire. A large portion of that amnesia was the result of the extremely impressive presentation put on for the FF 91’s unveiling. Some of the visual effects used by Faraday in its presentations and propaganda marketing have been so impressive, it left me wondering who the company has trusted with those projects.

One company Faraday outsourced to was The Mill — a New York-based video production company that is suing Faraday for 1.8 million dollars over failure to pay it for a graphic presentation commissioned in September.

This is an exciting return to form for Faraday Future, which announced at CES that the construction of its Nevada factory — stalled due to similar payment issues — should continue shortly.

According to court documents obtained by Jalopnik, Mill gave Faraday an estimate of $1.82 million to produce a “graphic presentation with virtual reality, augmented reality and holographic components” for CES trade show.

Faraday allegedly agreed to a final agreed upon price of $1,822,750 in three installments. The Mill claims it received a single $20,000 payment for work completed, despite repeated requests for more money.

This is the status quo over at Faraday. The second half of last year saw mounting lawsuits from numerous unpaid service providers and vendors.

Despite all of the negative attention leading up to CES, Faraday netted 64,124 reservations for its highly-impressive FF 91 sport utility vehicle. Assuming everyone payed the $5,000 for priority reservations, the company should easily be able to pay off the majority of its debts. However, since there was also an optional free reservation, there is a chance Faraday doesn’t have millions of extra dollars just laying around.

Inside sources have placed the number of paid reservations at around sixty. That amounts to $300,000 which, incredibly enough, is just enough money for Faraday Future to go out of business.

The FF 91 is anticipated to start production in 2018, provided the company building it hasn’t been sued into a black hole.

[Image: Faraday Future]

Matt Posky
Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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  • Dukeisduke Dukeisduke on Jan 25, 2017

    So "Elizabeth Carmichael" *is* still alive, and "building cars". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Century_Motor_Car_Corporation

    • La834 La834 on Apr 27, 2017

      Wow that Wiki page is loaded with inaccuracies. Dale Clifft did *not* design or engineer the Dale; he was a motorcycling enthusiast and tinkerer who built himself a 3-wheeled car by removing the front wheel from a motorcycle and replacing it with two wheels, adding a homemade body over it. Liz Carmichael saw it and preposed setting up a factory to make a car based on Clifft's design. In reality Carmichael was a longtime scammer who had successfully dodged the FBI on counterfeiting charges for the last decade, and her only real interest in Clifft was to lend an air of credibility to the project to attract investors' money. The Dale that emerged was designed by others and had little resemblance to the car that Clifft built. Clifft signed onto Liz's company in its early days as an engineer and consultant after being promised royalties from having his design licensed. He soon grew tired of the increasingly outrageous claims made for the Dale car as well as her secrecy with the corporate books and began to question her motives and honesty. Clifft either quit or was fired after making only $1,000 and spent the rest of his life trying to dissociate himself from the car named for him and the swindle it fronted.

  • Brett Woods Brett Woods on Jan 25, 2017

    It has been said. Faraday Future is a fake business shell posing as a Tesla competitor with the intention of borrowing money solely for the enrichment of the directors. Tesla is the only real constructor in Nevada. By mirroring Tesla (a mimic) it can tap into the lines of credit and investment opened up by Tesla.

  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh A prelude is a bad idea. There is already Acura with all the weird sport trims. This will not make back it's R&D money.
  • Analoggrotto I don't see a red car here, how blazing stupid are you people?
  • Redapple2 Love the wheels
  • Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
  • Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.
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