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from the elon-musk-is-not-gonna-like-this dept.
A California-based electric car manufacturer named after a towering scientific genius from the nineteenth century, mobilizing to disrupt the auto industry. You guess it - Faraday Future, a 400-person company based in Gardena, CA (a Los Angeles suburb), led by former executives and designers from Tesla and the electric car operations of BMW and General Motors. Nick Sampson, the former Director of Chasis Engineering at Tesla (he left in the company in 2012) is now Senior Vice President at Faraday Future, while Richard Kim from BMW and Porsche heads up design.
Sampson confirmed that the vehicles under development will be 100 percent electric, and may include some autonomous driving functions (Tesla reportedly has similar plans). The company's business model could be a hybrid of product (like Tesla) and service (Uber); for the latter, the cars could drive themselves to customers, and then presumably be driven manually or automatically.
Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting is reportedly bankrolling the company via the media company Leshi Internet Information & Technology; a Leshi executive named Chaoying Deng has been installed as Faraday's CEO. Faraday is reportedly ready to invest $1 billion in a factory, with locations in California, Georgia, Louisiana and Nevada under consideration. The company hopes to put its first vehicle on the market in 2017.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday November 06 2015, @07:36PM
"Computers used to only be toys for the .1% too..." [citation needed]
They were never rich people's toys. There were affordable computer kits in the 70's and they were in the $1500 range in today's money. Things were different back then so it's not like every kid had one like ipad and laptops today. The big iron, mainframes, werent toys you'd find in someone's mansion. Even lower end PC's were affordable and I knew plenty of kids who's parents were regular joes running PC's. Hell, my friends PC was a second hand 286 my father sold him after he replaced his work pc with a 386.
We have affordable electric cars already. The nissan leaf and now the chevy spark are two. Both retail for less than $30k USD. Luxury is typically >30/40k. The tesla just has better batteries and does things normal people don't need like being a sports/race car. People just want to get to work and pick up groceries.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 06 2015, @07:51PM
The big iron, mainframes, werent toys you'd find in someone's mansion.
But you did find them in some 0.1 percenter's business.
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Friday November 06 2015, @08:23PM
Sure did. But it was a tool. Not a toy.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 06 2015, @08:20PM
The early 8 bitters were in the $700 range (in 1982 money), and would be $1500 by the time you added bells and whistles like a monitor and 100K floppy drive.
My "feel" about 1982 money vs 2015 money is that _most_ things have inflated about 4x in the meanwhile. So, 14 year old me basically spent my life savings to buy a "computer" with 16K of RAM and a cassette tape storage. My 14 year old doesn't have anywhere near $6K in his life savings account, lucky for him iPads are less than $500.
By the time I bought the floppy drive, I had more invested in my PC rig than my first car would cost.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Friday November 06 2015, @08:39PM
They were never rich people's toys. There were affordable computer kits in the 70's and they were in the $1500 range in today's money.
Modern digital computers were invented in the 1940s, 30 years before hobbyist kits became available. They were very expensive and used for matters of national defence and scientific research.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday November 06 2015, @09:15PM
Right. They weren't toys.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday November 06 2015, @09:37PM
I dare say that if I'd been very rich and crazy in those days I'd have tried to buy one... Or build one in my secret dungeon lab.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].