A Chinese-backed electric car startup by the name of Faraday Future will make its first public showing at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show next January. The company, which operates from a facility located to the south of Los Angeles, will roll out a concept car said to be inspired by its “design and engineering vision.” Unfortunately, that brief descriptor and this single teaser is all we have on the concept right now.
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It’s still early days for Faraday, whose name is borrowed from British scientist Michael Faraday who in the 1800s made many developments in the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. You probably all remember those crazy Faraday Cage experiments.
The modern Faraday says it wants to offer electric cars fitted with “smart and seamless” connectivity options. But rather than just focus on building and selling cars as its business model, Faraday is also developing other aspects of the automotive and technology industries, including unique ownership models, in-vehicle content and autonomous driving.
One of the key people behind Faraday is Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting. He runs a technology company by the name of Letv, which is like a Chinese version of Netflix, and has previously hinted at introducing new connectivity technologies for cars. One of Letv’s partners is Aston Martin.
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Faraday has also managed to snag a number of executives from established automakers such as BMW and Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA]. For example, Faraday’s head designer Richard Kim previously worked for BMW’s i division, and the company’s R&D boss Nick Sampson was a senior engineer at Tesla. Other ex-Tesla staff include the company’s respective heads of manufacturing, human resources and purchasing.
Faraday is aiming to launch a single model in 2017 but is looking at as many as seven different cars at the moment. The company has also said it plans to invest as much as $1 billion in a new plant located somewhere in the United States.
The 2016 CES runs from January 6-9 in Las Vegas. Hopefully we’ll have more details on Faraday’s concept before then. For more from the show, head to our dedicated hub.
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