Things are going from bad to worse for electric car startup Faraday Future. One of the company’s founding executives, former BMW designer Richard Kim, has resigned, reports The Verge. His final day is Friday, according to the news outlet.
Citing two unnamed people with direct knowledge of the situation, The Verge reports that Kim tendered his resignation on Tuesday.
“Richard gave his heart and soul to that company, and he tried to make it work. He’s been considering leaving for 2 to 3 months,” one of these former employees says.
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Kim was also one of five “founding executives” at Faraday Future — the first core group brought onto lead the company. With his departure, three of those five have now left the company in the last four months. Alan Cherry, formerly of Tesla, left his post as head of HR in August. Another Tesla vet, Tom Wessner — who led Faraday Future’s supply chain group — resigned in October. Nick Sampson (R&D) and Dag Reckhorn (manufacturing) are still with the company.
A Faraday spokesperson didn’t have an immediate comment when reached by Jalopnik on Friday.
Kim’s departure comes on the heels of two other high-profile resignations. Jalopnik first reported that former Faraday CFO Stefan Krause, who joined the company following stints at BMW and Deutsche Bank, left the company on Oct. 14. Ulrich Kranz, Faraday’s CTO, left the following day.
Verge’s report shows that Kim ran into some of the same problems as Krause and Kranz. Krause, for instance, prepared to file a bankruptcy petition on behalf of Faraday over the objections of Faraday’s main financier, Chinese tech entrepreneur Jia Yueting.
Worse, Verge got a hold of an email that showed Faraday’s running into serious problems following Krause’s departure. In particular, people just aren’t showing up for work anymore.
The Verge has obtained an email dated November 20th that was sent to Faraday Future’s marketing, sales, go to market, and service teams, where Allan Lu — the company’s new head of go-to-market operations — scolded employees over not showing up. He wrote that “only 2 people were in office” when Jia Yueting, the main financial backer and shareholder of Faraday Future, arrived that morning to meet a group of potential investors.
“I would like to make it clear that we will be on time to the work starting from 9:00 am every day and closing of business by 6:00 pm ,unless you have your managers [sic] pre-approval for late come or early leave,” the email reads. Lu writes that the company is “very close obtaining investment,” and encouraged employees “WE MUST go back to our “fight mode IMMEDIATELY!”
Only two people! Faraday said just last month that it still has 1,000 people on payroll.
And sources have told Jalopnik that Faraday still has intentions of going to the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. That’s in a month. What Faraday expects to show up with is a mystery.