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CES 2017 - Faraday Future and the FF91

Faraday Future (FF) unveiled their FF91 electric car at CES 2017 in Las Vegas this past week.



Some of the highlights from their presentation:
  • 2.39s 0 - 60 mph, faster than the Tesla Model S P100D
  • 130 kW battery (Tesla's largest is 100 kWh)
  • Autonomous driving. And they demoed parking in this video:

Here is their booth on the floor of the show:


There were quite a few FF employees attending the show. Normal attendees were kept away from the car but some people were let inside of the area and able to get up close and take a look at it.

My take on Faraday future

I'm an engineer and an owner of a Tesla Model S. I'm also an investor in Tesla. I'm not skeptical of FF because they are competing with Tesla or claim to be building a better car. There is plenty of room in the EV market for well built vehicles. Due to the growth in the EV market FF could sell tens of thousands of vehicles per year without much impact on Tesla's sales. I'm a fan of EVs, especially great ones, but the FF91 is almost entirely vaporware.

Today batteries represent a significant cost of any EV. How are they able to achieve their claimed battery density improvements? Global battery sales are in the tens of billions and huge amounts of money have and continue to be spent on improving battery technologies. FF is working with LG Chem on their batteries but so far the details of their battery density claims have been sparse.

The 0-60 mph numbers of the FF91 seem pretty clear, FF has shown video and in person demonstrations of the FF91 going up against several very fast production cars on a drag strip. Are they changing the motor gearing, sacrificing top speed for better 0-60 numbers? Is the car's weight representative of the production vehicle or are they improving performance by removing parts of the interior or other car systems? Are they pushing the batteries to levels that could impact long term reliability?

Self driving is becoming an almost must-have feature for a car company to be working on. FF showed some self driving capabilities at CES, having their car drive and park itself. There haven't been any on-road demonstrations of their systems. They also had an issue with self driving during their CES presentation. The company ended up dimming the lights on the stage and having a person get into the car to drive it. The FF91 being shown is a prototype, a glitch during the show, while embarrassing, isn't entirely unexpected.

I'd recommend being skeptical of FF's claims at this point, and like the story below, I'd recommend NOT giving FF a $5,000 deposit. We should know a lot more in a years time. Their factory should be under heavy construction, some details of how they are achieving their improvements may start to become public, and they may start to let people drive and review prototypes of their cars.

Another great take on FF

The video as a part of this article is an excellent overview of the recent history of the company and some of its trouble.


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