Faraday Future's Formula E Team Isn't Affected By The Company's Ongoing Money Problems: Report
Here's one positive blip on the radar for Faraday: The all-electric Formula E racing series heads this weekend to New York City, and ahead of the event, it wasn't clear if Faraday Future's money problems would impact the Dragon Racing Team. According to Faraday and the boss of the Formula E team though, that's not the case.
Days after Faraday announced it was halting plans to build a $1 billion factory in Nevada, team boss of the Faraday Formula E team, Jay Penske, told the reporter that nothing's changed for the team.
Asked Jay Penske, team boss of Faraday Future's Formula E team, if FF's troubles have affected the racing. "We haven't seen any change" pic.twitter.com/0Ev3bdL5dM
— Sean O'Kane (@sokane1) July 14, 2017
That jibes with comments from Faraday earlier this week. A spokesperson for the company told Jalopnik that Faraday is the "core technical partner" and title sponsor of the Dragon Racing team, and the company apparently has plans to continue working with the team in the coming years, even as it struggles with what appear to be significant financial issues.
"As a technical partner for season 3 (2016/17), we work together to develop key technology hardware and software solutions to maximize the powertrain and vehicle performance and efficiency," FF spokesperson Morgan Theys said in an email. "During season 4 (2017/18) and beyond, FF will expand its relationship as a technical partner to supply hardware and software to help maximize drivetrain performance and vehicle efficiency."
"In season 5 (2018/19) and beyond, we will implement various FF powertrain components, software, firmware and other hardware as the team sees fit," Theys went on. "This could include Faraday Future motors, gearbox, and the FF Echelon Inverter."
A good question is whether or not Faraday's throwing money at Dragon, which already has BMW and Audi on the works team. For now, that's unclear—but with a consistent stream of bad news surrounding FF, it's one minor sign of hope to hang onto, as we head into the last half of 2017.
We'll be bopping around the race on Sunday, when things are supposed to kick off at 1 p.m. If you're around, track us down and say hi. Don't be nice to Ballaban, though.