Faraday Future, a Chinese tycoon’s ambitious (and troubled) electric car venture

Faraday Future is a California-based electric car company run by Chinese businessman Jia Yueting. It aims to challenge Tesla, but has so far struggled to begin production.

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Faraday Future, a Chinese tycoon’s ambitious (and troubled) electric car venture

Xinmei Shen

Published: 8:11pm, 30 Aug 2018Updated: 8:08am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Among all the “Tesla challengers”, Faraday Future is one of the more unusual ones. It was co-founded by Chinese businessman Jia Yueting, best known as the founder of the rapidly growing (and quickly sinking) firm LeEco. Founded in the US, Faraday Future has repeatedly run into financial troubles and struggled to survive, despite plenty of high-profile publicity.

Four years after the company was founded and 19 months after it first showed off a much-hyped prototype, Faraday Future finally showed the world its first pre-production electric car in August 2018: The FF 91, an “ultra-luxury intelligent EV.”

Controversial CEO

Jia Yueting first came to prominence as the founder of Leshi, which eventually became one of China’s most popular video streaming services. Jia then led Leshi’s parent company, LeEco, into a huge variety of businesses, from smartphones to entertainment.

But that grand march into new sectors was built on a shaky financial foundation. Starting from the end of 2016, LeEco started laying off staff to cut costs, scaling back its business in the US.

In the middle of LeEco’s troubles, Jia moved to the US and worked on Faraday Future to “focus on his electric car dream”, and also stepped down from executive positions at LeEco.

While Faraday Future has said it’s a separate entity from LeEco, both companies reportedly have deep ties with each other, sharing staff and funding -- according to a lengthy report from The Verge.