A mysterious electric car company is attracting billions of dollars in investments and posing the first real threat to Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors.
Faraday Future, named after famed British scientist and electrical pioneer Michael Faraday, is stealing some of the top minds from Tesla, BMW, Ferrari and Space X to build a cutting edge electric vehicle. They are keeping their product under a veil of secrecy, with the only details at this point being that the vehicle will have a battery 15 percent more efficient than the Tesla Model S, reports The New York Post. They are also refusing to release any information regarding who the CEO is, adding to the intrigue.
“We’re in stealth mode where we’re not revealing ownership,” said Stacy Morris, spokeswomen for Faraday. “There’s a significant investor who wants the company to stand on its own merit before being associated with it.”
Faraday Future has been on a hiring spree, aiming for around 500 employees by year’s end. Former director of vehicle and chassis engineering for Tesla, Nick Sampson, was named senior vice president and is acting as the face of the company. According to Business Insider, Faraday wants to revolutionize the way people see cars and has ambitious plans for a vehicle release by 2017.
“People’s lives are changed by their mobile devices, the way that we interact,” said Morris. “The car industry hasn’t caught up sufficiently. The car still feels like a place where you’re disconnected.”
Speculation has been running rampant about who is behind this billion dollar effort to challenge Tesla for the electric car market. Faraday could be run by Apple, the New York Post reports, done in secret to hide their own mysterious electric car plan that aims to enter the car market within the next five years. This also aligns with news that Apple has been poaching Tesla engineers.
A prevailing consensus seems to be building that the money behind Faraday Future comes from Jia Yueting, a Chinese businessman known as the Steve Jobs of tech in Asia. Business Insider reports that legal papers from Faraday’s original incorporation have ties to a Chinese holding company founded by Yueting.
When Faraday VP Nick Sampson was pressed on the source of their funding, he told reporters, “We are keeping our partners confidential.”
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