Things look increasingly grim for the mysterious Chinese-backed Faraday Future auto startup as it has stopped working on its billion-dollar megafactory in Nevada, its construction company told Jalopnik.
Jalopnik first heard that work had stopped from an anonymous tip from someone outside of Faraday Future but close to the actual construction work. We then reached out to AECOM, the construction company responsible for the factory, who gave us this affirming official statement, emphasis ours:
Faraday Future commenced work on its $1-billion state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in North Las Vegas earlier this year. To date, we have completed grading and foundation prep work.
At this time, Faraday Future is temporarily adjusting their construction schedule with plans to resume in early 2017. We remain fully committed to our client and our employees working on this project, and we look forward to the facility’s successful delivery.
So it’s clear that work has stopped, and this is supposed to be a temporary stop, but none of this news is encouraging. We reached out to Faraday Future for comment, but a spokesperson last week had no knowledge of the matter. The company itself has not issued a statement.
Only a few weeks ago did we hear that Faraday Future was $21 million behind on payments to AECOM.
That news came not long before we found out that six top staffers at FF had jumped ship.
Moreover, it was only last week that FF’s Chinese backer announced in a troubling memo that he was shocked at how expensive his auto startups were and that he’d be re-focusing on his core tech business back in China, the so-called Chinese Netflix that made him his billions.
http://jalopnik.com/the-chinese-billionaire-behind-faraday-future-just-got-1788657774
Faraday Future made its surprise debut to the world about a year ago and has had trouble in the media ever since. At first, the problem was that it claimed it would show a production version of its all-electric, fully-autonomous car in development, but it only debuted a nonfuctional concept vehicle instead. But always we anticipated the production of its gargantuan factory in Nevada.
The Tesla-aping facility that has already received $335 million in tax credits from the state of Nevada is supposed to be the company’s billion-dollar foothold in the United States. It should be the linchpin for Faraday Future’s business.
If you are familiar with any other stoppages at Faraday Future, please get in touch. You can email me at raphael at jalopnik dot com.
UPATE: A spokesperson for Faraday Future has confirmed that work has stopped at the factory, and it’s still negotiating with AECOM to re-evaluate its schedule for next year. The spokesperson was adamant that Faraday Future is completely focused on getting ready for its upcoming reveal at CES at the moment, and all effort is on that.