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Chinese-Financed So. California Startup to Challenge Tesla

posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 06 2015, @06:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the elon-musk-is-not-gonna-like-this dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @11:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2015, @11:12PM (#259723)

    As far as In know the NiMH battery patents either have or will soon expire. They are heavier than Li-ion, but you can run them a little harder (ie: use 15%-20% reserve instead of 30%-40%)

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:04AM

    by Username (4557) on Saturday November 07 2015, @05:04AM (#259824)

    Can always use preexisting forklift batteries too. There is already an industry build around them and they come with standard sizes, voltages and chargers. Can start new brands of battery with Al tray instead of steel, and acid/NiMH/Li cell versions at different price points. If the cars fail, you can at least sell lightweight forklift batteries.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @06:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2015, @06:58AM (#259851)

      Lead acid is fine in fork-lift applications because you want the vehicle to be heavy. The batteries also last longer when you are limited to 12km/h.