TL;DR on Sandy's interview with Zen Matoshi of Faraday Future:
1. Ones from backgrounds that faced adversity are more innovative, inventive, driven.
1.1. Sandy has an excellent illustration of corporate bureaucracy that crushes and uses vital lifelines as shim under a shaky tables (Starts at 6:45)
1.2 Managing politics, promotions, obligations kills the innovation programs, and the boards are the ones killing (e.g. EV1)
2. Legacy automakers are riddled with debt obligations, including to unions to the tune of multiples of their current valuations
2.1. They can't even walk away from their real estate, since they have to do reclamation, and downsizing costs
2.2. Such downsizing can happen really quickly, and Sandy witnessed that in the 80's, where Japanese automakers ate into big 3's what seemed like overnight
2.3. There are 600 native EV startups/companies
2.3.1. Xi directed to consolidate, Sandy expects to 150
2.3.2. They are trained by western specialists, so these are not going to be Yugos with panel gaps.
3. Faraday future looks like a new version of Maybach inside
3.1. They're looking forward to autonomous future
3.1.2. doesn't seem like they're working on that, so we may see a waymo-like atrocity on top, or whenever nvidia/mobileye come up with smth)
3.2.3. Their software is a version of Android
3.3.4. They are proud of their migrating profile that applies the settings from one car to another, and also from one seat within a car to another.
3.3.5. My conclusion - if they've got that figured out, with OTA, VW should just buy them, or keep building out the windows phone of cars : )
Full interview here
