Chinese tech mogul YT Jia may have ran into some very unfortunate problems getting his company’s futuristic Tesla-fighter actually onstage today for its American debut, but he did drop a bit of news about another Chinese-backed company looking to make inroads into the U.S.: Faraday Future. Thanks to Jia, we know when we might see a car from them.
Speaking through a translator in San Francisco, Jia said that “strategic partner” Faraday Future will “perhaps” show off its first production car at CES in January:
Perhaps! That’s encouraging. Kind of.
If that proves true, it will be a full year after Faraday Future made big headlines with big promises as about a world-changing (and Tesla-killing) autonomous electric vehicle, only to be widely panned for unveiling a futuristic race car-looking concept at CES that they don’t plan on making instead of an actual vehicle.
This, after Faraday Future somehow secured $335 million in state tax credits and public funding for a Nevada factory to build the cars, based on... nothing? We don’t know yet.
Since then we haven’t seen much from Faraday Future, but we have seen a heavily camouflaged minivan-like prototype running around testing in California.
LeEco, the tech company that had its big U.S. unveiling today for its LeSee autonomous vehicle, is backing Faraday Future financially. As The Verge noted a while back, although Jia referred to them as strategic partners, their exact relationship seems a bit unclear; sharing engineering know-how seems likely.
Great. Neat. I look forward to the day we see something real and tangible from Faraday Future, not more hype and rocket cars.