2.2 million units, Jia Yueting released the FF91 new car, which started 9 years ago. Can the “new forces” work?

How long does it take to get something done? Jia Yueting said it would take 9 years.

The Slogan who "suffocated for the dream" shouted for 9 years. During this period, he couldn't count how many times Jia Yueting saved Faraday Future by picking up the PPT "oxygen cylinder".

But fortunately, Jia Yueting was persistent enough to resist the jokes of "returning to China next week" from the outside world. At the FF 91 & Faraday Future 2.0 conference, Jia Yueting brought the first mass-produced car FF 91 Futurist to us after 9 years.

Brand-new FF 91 2.0, three sentences are inseparable from AI

Do you think Faraday Future released FF 91 Futurist?

No, Jia Yueting announced at the press conference that Faraday Future has officially entered the 2.0 era. All models, including FF 91 Futurist, will be iterated to "FF aiHyper 6×4 Architecture 2.0", and "2.0" must be added after the name of the model. suffix.

According to Jia Yueting, the "6×4" new technology architecture platform is built by the vertical integration and horizontal integration of FF's six major technology platforms and four major technology systems. The new FF 91 will realize the power engine Hyper+ multi-vector and AI hardware capabilities Hyper and the AI ​​engine Hyper.

Six technology platforms:

• FF OpenApp
• FF aiOS 2
• FF aiHW 2.0
• FF Mechanical
• FF Cloud
• FF AI

Four technical systems:

• Magic All-In-One (smart magic carpet suspension)
• Hyper Multi-Vectoring (multi-vector enhancement technology)
• 3rd aiSpace (intelligent third space)
• FF AI Driving (FF automatic driving technology)

Jia Yueting believes that Faraday Future has accurately predicted the explosive development of AI nine years ago.

The emergence of AI can bring subversive changes to the automotive industry. Compared with traditional ultra-luxury car brands like Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, and Maybach, AI-Hyper Car will be the future of the automotive industry.

What is AI-Hyper Car? Jia Yueting gave his "exclusive explanation": AI-Hyper Car only serves 1% of the top users in the world. Such a car needs to have up to 1,000 horsepower, a price of over one million yuan, and a high AI 1 ON 1. order service.

Coincidentally, these screening conditions, FF all hit.

Ever since, today's protagonist has also changed from the FF 91 Futurist we imagined to Faraday Future's limited edition model FF 91 2.0 Futurist Alliance, which is limited to 300 units worldwide and priced at an astonishing $309,000 (approx. RMB 2.195 million).

The price of the original protagonist FF Futurist was not disclosed at the press conference. Jia Yueting claimed that it will be announced on Faraday Future's official website later.

With such a high price, what capabilities does Faraday Future give this car?

"You can see an elephant dancing", this is Jia Yueting's direct evaluation of FF 91.

The first is the excellent power performance. The FF 91 Futurist is equipped with three motors as standard, with 1050 horsepower, the total torque of the motor end reaches 1977 Nm, and the torque on the wheels reaches 13258 Nm, which is basically the maximum torque of the same level.

In terms of acceleration performance, it only takes 2.27s for FF 91 Futurist to accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (about 0-96 km/h) , and the top speed can even reach 155 miles per hour (about 250 km/h), according to the paper data Enough to bluff.

Secondly, the main focus of the FF 91 series is to have the ability to have three-in-one models (Hypercar, Sedan, SUV), and one car can take into account performance, comfort, and passability.

This ability to take into account comes from the FF Magic All-In-One (Magic Carpet) technology system.

Faraday Future has designed two versions of the Magic All-In-One technology-"steel coil spring suspension" and "air suspension". The two versions also represent a difference in the direction of the FF 91's driving style.

Models with steel coil spring suspension will have more performance and sporty performance; while models with air suspension version will pay more attention to balance adjustment, bringing users a better comfortable driving experience.

Interestingly, according to Faraday Future's introduction, AI DNA also exists in the "Magic Carpet Suspension" system. The AI ​​model carried by FF 91 will participate in the operation of the suspension and record the driving habits of the vehicle.

FF provides three driving modes to choose from – Racer (racing), Entrepreneur (boss mode), Adventure (adventure mode), which enhances the driving pleasure of FF 91. In the future, the magic carpet suspension will also continue to be upgraded and iterated through OTA .

It is worth mentioning that Faraday Future will be the first to deliver the sports-oriented "steel coil spring suspension", while the "air suspension" is still in the mass production queue.

Powerful performance requires a sufficiently reliable battery structure. Faraday Future brought a 142 kWh super battery to FF 91, which can travel more than 381 miles (about 613 kilometers) on a single charge, and officially announced the fast charging performance of FF 91, the whole vehicle can charge more than 500A, and Use a 15.3 kW charger for secondary charging.

The large-capacity battery also brings a rather exaggerated weight to this car. According to Jia Yueting's earlier disclosure, the weight of the FF 91 vehicle has reached 3 tons.

Interestingly, FF 91's Hyper Multi-Vectoring system plays the role of integrating hardware and software. Under the multi-vector technology, the system can independently control 3 motors to provide torque for the front and rear of the vehicle respectively, so as to maintain a better posture of the vehicle body.

In addition, the new FF 91 series models have also made great progress in the software and hardware of autonomous driving. The FF 91 vehicle is equipped with 1 laser radar + 12 ultrasonic sensors as standard.

At the same time, Faraday Future is the first automotive OEM in the United States to use high-resolution ultra-long-range lidar. With the support of Innovusion lidar and AI models, the FF 91 series can have the ability to customize high-precision maps.

A more interesting place appeared, the on-board chip used by FF 91, I think it may be very familiar to most Chinese people,
The new FF 91 uses the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chip with a computing power of 254 TOPS. This chip will be available on BYD in the third quarter of this year.

According to Faraday Future's delivery plan, the delivery of FF 91 in the future is divided into three stages. First, the co-creation delivery of the industry expert Futuristic Product Officer (FPO), then the actual vehicle delivery of the FPO, and finally transition to the FF 91 for all users. Mass production delivery.

The strange thing is that during the entire purchase and delivery process, Faraday Future only accepts the full purchase price of the car, and in the first stage of FPO co-creation and delivery, the car owner has to accept the official car training from Faraday Future, and cannot keep the FF 91. Ownership, vehicle ownership can only be truly unlocked in the second phase.

At the same time, the deposit price of FF 91 is expensive. FF adheres to the dual-home strategy of China and the United States. It needs to pay 1,000 US dollars as a deposit to order a model in the United States, while in China, the deposit has reached a high 50,000 yuan.

Despite this, Jia Yueting is still optimistic enough about the delivery prospects of FF 91. Jia Yueting revealed at the press conference that the annual delivery target of FF 91 models in the future is 55,000 units.

In addition, Jia Yueting also announced that the FFAI Co-Creation Day will be held on September 19 this year. At that time, Faraday Future will also release the latest implementation of the new FFAI strategy on the Co-Creation Day, and talk about FFAI's ecological planning.

Looking back at the entire press conference, Jia Yueting kept talking about AI. After nine years of "bounced tickets", FF 91 has already lost its competitive advantage. Jia Yueting may also know that AI is his last "life-saving straw".

Toggle Faraday Future's historical "revolving lantern"

Turning on Faraday Future's historical "revolving lantern", we can review the difficult "first half of life" of this "pure electric premature baby".

High-spirited, PPT has repeatedly succeeded

In 2014, Jia Yueting officially founded Faraday Future (Faraday Future) in Los Angeles, California, USA. In Jia Yueting's ideal brand conception, Faraday Future not only undertakes Jia Yueting's "ambition" of making cars, but also assumes the blue sky, white clouds and fresh air for mankind. A grand mission to contribute.

Jia Yueting's idea of ​​developing pure electric vehicles was considered forward-looking and determined at the time. However, Jia Yueting is not "the first person to eat crabs".

It was Tesla's Roadster that really made pure electric vehicles "famous" at the time. Musk once revealed to the outside world why Tesla launched the Roadster.

In the automotive market where ICE (internal combustion engine) is the absolute mainstream, people still have the impression that electric vehicles are "old and old, like slow golf carts". This model subverts people's inherent cognition, and the Roadster is born for this.

Interestingly, Jia Yueting clearly wants more than simply competing with the Tesla Roadster. Not only is it subverting the speed of traditional internal combustion engines, Jia Yueting also wants to achieve absolute luxury and comfort in pure electric vehicles.

In 2015, Faraday Future made an official brand debut at the US International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and announced with a high profile that it will build a car factory in Nevada, USA to mass produce its models.

In January of the following year, Faraday Future quickly followed up with its first concept supercar, the FF Zero 1. In December of the same year (2016), Faraday Future announced again that it would purchase additional land in the Las Vegas area to build a mass production plant.

In January 2017, Faraday Future appeared again at CES. After two years of preparation and warm-up, Faraday Future brought its first production model – FF 91 at the exhibition.

In the official introduction, the paper data of FF 91 is enough to bluff. FF 91 has 1050 horsepower, and the zero-to-hundred acceleration time is close to 2.4 seconds. While having good acceleration performance, FF 91 has a battery life of 700 km under ideal conditions.

In addition, the Faraday Future team also equipped this new car in "gestation" with the most cutting-edge comfort configuration. Inspired by NASA's zero-gravity seat, face recognition seamless cockpit entry, PDLC glass that can realize one-key privacy, etc., many comfortable configurations are quite competitive even if they are put into the present.

In Faraday Future's envisioned plan, FF 91 will officially enter the delivery stage in 2018. Although there are many voices from the outside world who question it as a gimmick, overall, the FF 91 depicted on the PPT looks good enough, and Faraday’s future delivery prospects do not look bad.

Deep in the "financial vortex" and "political struggle"

In fact, however, a top-down financial storm brought Faraday Future's production pace to an abrupt halt. In 2017, the construction of the Nevada factory was put on hold, which became the beginning of the repeated "horizontal jump" of FF 91 delivery, and Faraday Future began to fall into a "financial vortex" that lasted for 4 years.

2017 was the most violent year for LeTV’s debt disputes. In July of the same year, Jia Yueting resigned from the director of LeTV and became the chairman of LeTV’s global ecology. In late July, LeTV’s decade-long financial fraud was exposed. All shares in LeTV have been frozen.

Jia Yueting paid the price for his aggressiveness. Because of his poor personal financial situation, Faraday’s future financing plan was affected. In 2017, he was forced to shelve the construction of the Nevada factory, and Faraday’s future production capacity was basically cleared.

Under the crisis, Jia Yueting got on the line with Evergrande, and Faraday Future agreed to exchange 45% of the shares for Evergrande's capital injection of up to US$2 billion.

But unfortunately, the "marriage" of the two families turned into a farce in the end, and the complex equity dispute between Faraday Future and Evergrande went to court. Evergrande hopes to occupy more shares and replace Jia Yueting's control; but Jia Yueting's attitude towards absolute control is quite firm.

In the end, the two broke up at the end of 2018. Evergrande reduced its holdings to 33%, and Faraday Future did not receive all the financial support from Evergrande. The "breakup fee" of US$10 million barely supported the company. Crumbling startups.

The room leak happened to rain overnight, during which even former Tesla executive and Faraday Future co-founder Nick Sampson chose to “draw a line” with Jia Yueting.

The embarrassing situation has not improved in 2019. Although Jia Yueting has repeatedly emphasized that he will fulfill his promise to complete the delivery of FF 91, he can face continuous financial pressure, and the delivery of FF 91 has been delayed again and again.

Interestingly, Ding Lei, the co-founder of LeEco, once again devoted himself to the new energy vehicle business after parting ways with Jia Yueting. In this year, Ding Lei released the Gaohe Automobile under Human Horizons in a high-profile manner, and officially launched the first model Gaohe HiPhi X at the 2020 Beijing Auto Show.

The "twin brother" of FF 91 broke free from the shackles of PPT faster, and ran to mass production delivery without looking back. In comparison, Jia Yueting's Faraday Future has once again become an "after-dinner joke."

In 2020, Faraday Future, which has repeatedly hit the wall, decided to go public through a backdoor to complete the collection of funds for mass production. In the same year, Faraday Future acquired Property Solutions Acquisition Corp (PSAC) on the premise of a special purpose, and in 2021, it will officially ring the bell on NASDAQ.

The completion of Faraday Future's listing is a positive signal, which has raised enough funds for the quasi-production of FF 91. On February 24, 2022, the first quasi-production model of FF 91 officially rolled off the production line at the Hanford factory. Faraday Future announced that the mass-production model will be delivered in the third quarter of 2022.

The off-line of the quasi-mass-produced models does not mean that Faraday Future has seen the "future". After the successful backdoor listing, more people can clearly see the shocking losses that Faraday Future has suffered since its establishment.

In the third quarter financial report released in 2022, the delivery time of FF 91 is still unclear. Faraday Future’s operating loss in the third quarter reached 81 million US dollars, and the net loss reached 103 million US dollars. During the period, Faraday Future was also exposed to the company’s books Cash was once only 27 million US dollars (about 200 million yuan).

What's even crazier is that since its establishment in 2014, Faraday Future has accumulated losses of approximately US$3.3 billion (equivalent to approximately RMB 23.6 billion). It is no exaggeration to say that this loss is "burning money".

Faraday Future is in such a dangerous situation, and it cannot be separated from the founder Jia Yueting. In 2017, when Jia Yueting accepted an exclusive interview with "Prism", he mentioned his aggressive style many times and explained the whereabouts of tens of billions of funds after the reduction of LeTV shares.

• "Making mobile phones and making cars, these aspects have my own discretion. Because 99% of people use past successful experience to deduce the future, I define the present with what I think is the future."
• "It's still aggressive, the direction is right, and the ecological strategy is right, but the rhythm is completely wrong, and we should proceed step by step."
• "I would rather give up the position of major shareholder, but I will not give up the control of FF."
• "At that time, the shareholding reduction was for the purpose of building cars, and LeEco's non-listed system also had a lot of capital needs."

Faced with sharp questions from reporters, Jia Yueting said frankly that he was more focused on the future. Building a car was indeed an aggressive choice, but he did not regret it. Going to the United States will allow him to focus more on promoting the car-making business.

Jia Yueting revealed that Faraday Future has invested at least more than 1 billion U.S. dollars. In addition, he spent a lot of time "wooing" car-making talents from Tesla and General Motors.

It is worth mentioning that during the interview, Jia Yueting repeatedly emphasized the importance of controlling the board of directors, and his persistent pursuit of company control directly triggered the "political struggle" within Faraday Future.

Years of repeated "horizontal jumps" in delivery and a strong desire to control exhausted the patience of the board of directors.

Jia Yueting's frequent placement of "his own people" on the board of directors annoyed the board of directors. In 2019, the board of directors established a management team called FF Global Partners to disperse the ownership of the company. Jia Yueting, who held most of FF Global's shares, was forced to step down. CEO.

In addition, the board of directors also set up a special committee to conduct a strict review of Jia Yueting's financial status and personal connections.

At the beginning of 2022, the board of directors finally couldn't bear Jia Yueting's high degree of intervention, and completely "kicked" his "eyeliner"—Vice President Wang Jiawei out of the board of directors. Jia Yueting lost actual control over the board of directors.

After that, the senior management of Faraday Future continued to be in a period of turmoil, including in June 2022, Faraday Future reported that FF Global expelled independent director Brian Krolicki from the board of directors, and the internal conflict between the two factions intensified. In the serious stage, there have been "death threats" incidents.

Serious financial problems and complex "political infighting" continue to cast a heavy haze over the delivery of FF 91.

Grasp the dawn of mass production

The turning point occurred in September, when Jia Yueting brought Faraday Future nearly $100 million in financing. In exchange, the opposing factions Swenson, Krolicki and Vogels will voluntarily leave the board, and three board seats will be replaced by members of FF Global.

Obviously, Jia Yueting has become the ultimate winner of this "fighting internal battle".

During October-November, Faraday Future reached a credit agreement with an affiliated company of an investment management company. The investment company promised to provide at least US$200 million in financing for FF mass production, and Faraday Future has the right to choose to increase the financing amount. to 350 million US dollars to support the resumption of mass production of FF 91.

At the same time, on the other side, FF executives are also continuing to carry out drastic internal reforms.

After making a comprehensive assessment of Faraday Future's performance since its listing, the board of directors officially dismissed Breitfeld as CEO and appointed Chen Xuefeng as the new CEO. Faraday Future once again ushered in a Chinese at the helm.

According to the board of directors, the sudden change of coaches is to promote the delivery of FF 91 with low price and high quality.

With the arrival of new financing and management adjustments, Faraday Future began to return to the right track. During this period, Jia Yueting revealed that FF 91 has obtained a product performance test that exceeded expectations. After the production base landed, FF 91 was officially delivered. away".

Immediately afterwards, in December of the same year, Faraday Future internally announced the first batch of delivery schedules. The FF 91 Futurist is expected to be officially put into production at the California plant at the end of March 2023, and the delivery of mass-produced vehicles will be completed in early April.

However, Faraday Future also admitted that a key financing of US$135 million is still missing in order to carry out mass production of the FF 91 Futurist as planned.

What really gave capital confidence is that in January 2023, Faraday Future brought the planned mass-produced FF 91 Futurist back to the "place where the dream began". After 6 years, Faraday Future returned to the CES exhibition in the United States. A strong signal to go into delivery.

Basically at the same time, Faraday Future reached a non-binding cooperation framework agreement with the Huanggang Municipal Government of China to promote the implementation of the China-US dual home strategy. In the future, the Chinese headquarters of FF Automobile will be located in Huanggang City, and will also remain in Los Angeles. global headquarters.

What's more interesting is that Jia Yueting also staged a drama of "The Return of the King". On March 2, Faraday Future's board of directors officially announced that Jia Yueting will return to the future executive. Responsible and report to the board of directors together with current CEO Chen Xuefeng.

Under the systemic "ordering out of chaos", Faraday Future quickly raised US$135 million in financing. After receiving this key financing, Faraday Future officially took the step of "mass production".

On March 30 this year, Faraday Future ushered in a "historic moment". In front of the body frame of an FF 91 Futurist, Jia Yueting announced the news that the FF 91 Futurist had entered mass production.

To resolve years of internal strife and seize the hard-won dawn, Faraday Future melted the ice of "mass production" that had lasted 9 years.

However, it is not too early to be happy. Faraday Future's "fake" record still makes people scruples. In 2021, J Capital Research, a well-known short-selling agency in the United States, released a 28-page short-selling report, which "kicked off" Faraday Future's order scandal.

Faraday Future claims that FF 91 has received as many as 14,000 orders. However, in fact, J Capital Research pointed out that there are only 369 users who paid in real money. The difference in the amount is astonishing.

"Once bitten, twice shy."

We may also put a question mark on Faraday Future's prospects. Is a "liar" who has persisted in an entrepreneurial project for so many years building a car in good faith or creating the next AI scam?

I think it has to be tested by time and the market.

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