Mysterious electric car startup Faraday Future hints at future plans

LeEco, Faraday future's financial backer, introduces autonomous concept car

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Faraday Future is an electric car startup that remains shrouded in mystery.

The company has provided almost no information on the type of car it plans to build or when consumers will be able to purchase its first vehicle. To get some insight, The Verge interviewed Faraday's VP of global manufacturing, Dag Reckhorn, who offered up some details about the $1 billion factory the company is building in Nevada, along with other company plans.

The company is developing a "variable platform architecture," a foundation that it could scale up or down depending on a car's model and size. It could then place different battery or power train configurations on top of that foundation in order to let it rapidly manufacture new models.

Faraday is aiming for a battery range of 20-30% greater than its competition. For a point of reference, Tesla's Model S has a range of more than 200 miles on one battery charge.

Reckhorn did not give a specific timeframe for when Faraday's first car will hit the market. He did say, however, that the company is almost finished with designs for the Nevada factory, so construction should begin shortly.

The factory will exist on 900 acres of land near Highway 15, a major roadway to Southern California. This means the company could attract large crowds for tours to increase brand awareness.

LeEco, the so-called "Netflix of China," financially supports Faraday, but it also recently released a concept for its own autonomous electric vehicle called the LeSEE. But Reckhorn made clear that the LeSEE will have no bearing on Faraday's designs, but Faraday would try to incorporate LeEco's app ecosystem into its cars.

It's just a matter of time until self-driving cars flood the streets, but the road to get there will be filled with regulatory hurdles and technological challenges.

John Greenough, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, has compiled a detailed report on self-driving cars that examines the major strides automakers and tech companies have made to overcome the barriers currently preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the market. Further, the report examines global survey results showing where fully autonomous cars are highly desired.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Three barriers have been preventing fully autonomous cars from hitting the road: 1) high technological component prices; 2) varying degrees of consumer trust in the technology; and 3) relatively nonexistent regulations. However, in the past six months, there have been many advances in overcoming these barriers.
• Technology has been improving as new market entrants find innovative ways to expand on existing fully autonomous car technology. As a result, the price of the components required for fully autonomous cars has been dropping.
• Consumer trust in fully autonomous vehicle technology has increased in the past two years.
• California became the first US state to propose regulations. California's regulations stipulate that a fully autonomous car must have a driver behind the wheel at all times, discouraging Google's and Uber's idea of a driverless taxi system.

In full, the report:

• Examines consumer trust in fully autonomous vehicles
• Identifies technological advancements that have been made in the industry
• Analyzes the cost of fully autonomous technology and identifies how cost is being reduced
• Explains the current regulations surrounding fully autonomous cars

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