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Faraday Future
- Thread starter hockeythug
- Start date
Nickdp
Member
Another article:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/05/autos/faraday-future-concept-car/index.html
the message I'm getting if billionaire investors are funding FF then rest of the ICE world need to wake up. The disruption caused by EV's has well-and-truly started.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/05/autos/faraday-future-concept-car/index.html
the message I'm getting if billionaire investors are funding FF then rest of the ICE world need to wake up. The disruption caused by EV's has well-and-truly started.
The VPA concept is interesting, but I can see some engineering problems. Car chassis need to be very strong and sturdy, they take a lot of abuse. To make the chassis stretchable, they need to modularize the chassis which may create weak spots and lead to premature frame failure. It isn't guaranteed, but I could see that happening. One thing fledgling car designers often fail to do is make things tough enough for the real world.
The VPA allows for different chassis lengths, but I don't see anything where they can change the width. Long narrow or short fat cars are weirdmobiles and potentially unstable (short fat primarily).
As Tesla learned with the Model X, having the chassis is one thing, but all the bits that go into the car above the chassis is a lot of work. I think I saw in an interview with Elon Musk that he admitted the biggest surprise for him with the Model S was just how much engineering had to go into all the bits above the chassis: body, interior, etc. Having a flexible frame to build the car on top of isn't a bad idea, but it's only about 20% of the job of making a car.
anticitizen13.7
Not posting at TMC after 9/17/2018
If the author of the article from thedrive is correct, Faraday probably made the biggest PR intro blunder in recent history. From scanning the comments on various car magazine sites, Faraday is getting absolutely trashed left and right by car enthusiasts. The news media has been relentlessly critical of the odd and impractical concept.
Range and charging infrastructure are big unanswered questions. Ugh.
ColinA
Member
Yes it has indeed.... This little video is interesting. Benz was too afraid to show his invention because the Kaiser loved horses, and not using horses was considered unpatriotic. Further, the Church viewed "horseless carriages" as the work of the devil. We are perhaps at a similar crossroads.
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JohnSnowNW
Active Member
This also doesn't sound exciting. An autonomous electric mini-bus. Wow...amazing!
Sounds like they are doing the same as all the others, without talking about what makes a shared car workable - a widespread charging infrastructure.
Its all just vaporware until they can tell us just how they propose to make it all work.
Skotty
2014 S P85 | 2023 F-150L
Look at the attack and departure angles on that concept. Try driving that up your driveway. I'm guessing the giant looking slot in the side is so that you can move it around with a forklift, as I doubt it can actually be driven anywhere. And what's with the funky plexiglass-looking fin thing on the back? I don't mean to be so negative, but I'm not impressed. It makes the Volt concept car look sensible. I'll have to watch the presentation to see if they have any promising tech, but the car looks a looooooooong way from being anything that could actually be produced.
green1
Active Member
From their website "Provides directional stability, improved aerodynamics, and a digital canvas to display vehicle charge level, driver name, and track position"
so... ummm... yeah....
James Anders
Member
VPA as a concept is fine. Lotus used a similar concept on the Elise, Evora, etc. I forget their acronym. The VPA part was the best portion of their dog-and-pony show.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
Woodrow Wilson (28th President of the US) called the motor vehicle a symbol of “the arrogance of wealth”. This New York Times article dated March 4, 1906, quotes Wilson (who was President of Princeton University at the time) as saying: “Nothing has spread Socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of automobiles. To the countryman they are a picture of arrogance of wealth with all its independence and carelessness.”
MOTORISTS DON'T MAKE SOCIALISTS, THEY SAY - Not Pictures of Arrogant Wealth, as Dr. Wilson Charged. MANY FARMERS OWN CARS " The Poor Man in His Runabout" and His Richer Brother Are Fellows, Mr. Scarritt Says. - View Article - NYTimes.com
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Nomad
Member
I don't understand the hubub about Faraday's lack of detail on a charging network. Although it's an absolute necessity to the advent of electric vehicles, it's not a secret recipe. And it's not a particularly expensive recipe either.
According to Tesla's latest 10-Q, Tesla's global network of 536 Supercharger stations, with an average of 5-6 chargers each, have a book value of $152.4 million. That's a drop in the bucket even for Faraday, who are breaking ground on a $1B factory this month.
I think the reveal was a PR blunder, but Faraday is a serious company with a large talent pool, and buku bucks. I wouldn't be surprised to see them miss significant deadlines, much like Tesla, but I think they're in this for the long haul. I'm excited for the next few years of development in the EV landscape, Faraday included.
According to Tesla's latest 10-Q, Tesla's global network of 536 Supercharger stations, with an average of 5-6 chargers each, have a book value of $152.4 million. That's a drop in the bucket even for Faraday, who are breaking ground on a $1B factory this month.
I think the reveal was a PR blunder, but Faraday is a serious company with a large talent pool, and buku bucks. I wouldn't be surprised to see them miss significant deadlines, much like Tesla, but I think they're in this for the long haul. I'm excited for the next few years of development in the EV landscape, Faraday included.
Building out a fast charging network is not that expensive compared to most of the other expenses. However, it does take a lot of effort and time to build out any kind of network. Tesla is the only company going to the effort of building out their own network. Other manufacturers are making the mistake of letting someone else build it and the stations being built are of variable reliability and few are running at the rated capacity because many locations aren't going to the trouble of securing the high power input the Tesla is getting.
While it's possible for anyone with some cash to build out a network as powerful as the supercharger network, but few have realized the importance of it yet.
FF may build a parallel network to the superchargers, but we'll see.
They might have a large talent pool, but they failed to reach into it developing this reveal.
It screams bad management. No talent pool can offset bad management.
We can build conspiracy theories how they are geniuses disguised as idiots to fool other companies, how they are not showing their 'real vehicle'... Wait, but why?
What is there to gain by painting yourself incompetent?
Occam says they are DOA.
It should be noted that having a lot of money doesn't mean you will have success. Fisker Automotive burned through about 1.5 billion before going bankrupt.
Considering that Faraday Future is spending 1 billion on a factory, it wouldn't surprise me if they burn through 2-3 billion before delivering any cars.
Considering that Faraday Future is spending 1 billion on a factory, it wouldn't surprise me if they burn through 2-3 billion before delivering any cars.
Nomad
Member
The bolded is a fair point, and it's what worries me most about the company. As for the other stuff, I don't think they're disguising anything. I think revealing a non-production concept was a huge mistake, but it's entirely too early to consider them DOA.
Agreed. I only brought up the money factor to demonstrate that the supercharger network isn't some insurmountable problem financially.
It is not a big financial problem but a big operational one.
Almost every single location of current 589 SC locations over the world had its own set of legal requirements, electric line conditions, location capabilities and requirements, language, culture, nature, safety, ... requirements etc. You need a core group that manages all those locations and a local people that know local peculiarities.
If it was only a financial problem, the network could be built up in a month as there was enough money for that.
Nothing is easy when one needs to meet politics and regulation.
It gets much harder when one must meet many different politics and many different regulations. Amount of money spent alone does not tell the complete story.
Peter_M
Member
First, thanks for the VFA overview link, I found that useful. Second, it wasn't an interpretation, it was a prediction. Look, if I were suddenly to get the reins of FF, I would go in this direction in a hurry. The fistful of auto companies that are Chinese would be able to design their own fiendish or garish consumer and light-duty commercial vehicles on the Faraday Future platform, which doesn't exist outside of design and simulation software.
Faraday Future could then build their skateboard powertrain assemblies and then ship them to other manufacturers for further assembly. I mean, why bother with this string variability if you aren't serving multiple consumer brands? Are they really going to build that many models?
Think about the oft-ignored CODA sold in limited parts of the world. It was an EV built on a glider chassis from the 90s.
The market demand I see is in building reliable vehicle platforms and then doing assembly on top of that. Think of the PC clone market, where you could build an "ATX Tower" however you wanted it, fully modular. Why isn't that the future?
Faraday Future doesn't have sufficient revenue models to sustain all the R&D they are doing and hit a production vehicle. They do have enough to go in the direction I am suggesting/predicting. From here on out, their leadership had better be buying a lot of golf rounds and steak dinners to sell their platform to existing, albeit single-market manufacturers. China is the bigger EV market, they have little choice to do or quite literally die of pollution poisoning.
fast charging network is the least of their challenges. if they are successful enough to get a product out that consumers are interested in, they can just join the SuperCharger network. they don't have the conflict of interest the legacy automakers have of not wanting to validate long range EVs and Tesla. a new entrant making 10K-50K vehicles per year would simply look practical and fortunate in joining the SuperCharger network.
as has been noted here a few times, their biggest challenge seems to be a lack of direction within the company. from the outside, their multi-billionaire founder seems to have gone into this for enduring reasons, but unlike Tesla, they don't appear to have a day-to-day focused and tireless general leading the way. In fact, a few months back, an article about the previously unknown CEO included this,
“Faraday spokeswoman Stacy Morris confirmed that Chaoying Deng is the chief executive but said that she wasn’t involved in the day-to-day operations of the auto company.”
Cracking The Mystery Of Faraday Future -- Concepts Revealed | CleanTechnica
maybe they think they have someone else who is the right day-to-day operations leader in lieu of the CEO performing that role, but the presentation made it seem like they just some how skipped that. perhaps billionaire founder Yueting is trying to lead on big strategic decisions from China... but if ever there was an organization that needs a strong day-to-day operations leader, it would seem to be a startup auto company. if this is what's happening it seems like a recipe for a tailspin, but they may well fix it before their opportunity runs away from them.
as has been noted here a few times, their biggest challenge seems to be a lack of direction within the company. from the outside, their multi-billionaire founder seems to have gone into this for enduring reasons, but unlike Tesla, they don't appear to have a day-to-day focused and tireless general leading the way. In fact, a few months back, an article about the previously unknown CEO included this,
“Faraday spokeswoman Stacy Morris confirmed that Chaoying Deng is the chief executive but said that she wasn’t involved in the day-to-day operations of the auto company.”
Cracking The Mystery Of Faraday Future -- Concepts Revealed | CleanTechnica
maybe they think they have someone else who is the right day-to-day operations leader in lieu of the CEO performing that role, but the presentation made it seem like they just some how skipped that. perhaps billionaire founder Yueting is trying to lead on big strategic decisions from China... but if ever there was an organization that needs a strong day-to-day operations leader, it would seem to be a startup auto company. if this is what's happening it seems like a recipe for a tailspin, but they may well fix it before their opportunity runs away from them.
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