Is the future getting nearer? Faraday Future will finally unveil its first production electric car at CES in January — and to whet appetites, the company just released a short teaser video.
And tease it does.
The new video shows a heavily camouflaged vehicle driving on a test track for about 15 seconds. The text accompanying the footage isn’t much more revealing. It just makes a point of how quiet the car’s electric powertrain is. By now, the fact that electric cars don’t make engine noises is fairly well known.
Faraday has been very coy about what its first production model will be like. At CES 2016, it showed the FFZero1 concept car, but that was built purely for show, and won’t transition to production. Based on teaser images shown by Faraday at various times over the past 10 months, it’s possible that, instead of being a sleek supercar like the FFZero1, the production model will be an SUV.
Read more: Mercedes-Benz confirms production site for electric SUV
This model will use the same Variable Product Architecture (VPA) platform as the FFZero1. Faraday has said the VPA platform will be flexible enough to serve as the basis for a variety of models. The company will get lithium-ion battery cells from LG Chem, which already counts 25 carmakers among its clients.
Faraday’s first electric car will be built at a new $1 billion factory in North Las Vegas, Nevada. Faraday broke ground on the site in April, but recent reports claim that construction of actual buildings hasn’t begun yet. In an October 10 letter, lead contractor AECOM said Faraday was late on a $21 million payment for an escrow account to cover material costs and contractor work.
Despite the issues getting its factory up and running, Faraday plans to put its electric car into production within two years. That’s a pretty aggressive timeline even for established automakers, let alone a startup that has never built a car before. We will at least get an idea of what that first car will be like at CES 2017 in January. Stay tuned.
