Faraday Future – the missed opportunity.

When the first leaked pictures of the Faraday Future (FF) model made the rounds yesterday, I doubted whether it was really worth watching the presentation at CES this morning. And to say it right away, the doubts were not wiped away. But first things first.

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

20 minutes of blah-blah

The first 20 minutes of the presentation consisted of a lot of noise and relatively little signal.

Obviously trying to differentiate themselves from the other manufacturers, this was the big issue at first. FF name four distinguishing features:

“Amazing Team”

The now 750-strong team is a bunch of “brilliant, like-minded individuals, thinking big – acting fast”. They come from everywhere: BMW, Mercedes Benz, GM, Ford and Tesla, Tesla again and again. Unfortunately, there was not much more to learn. “Amazing teams”. At least in my mind, they are defined by 2 characteristics: They create great things and they have a great team spirit. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of either to be seen today.

“Transformative vision”

Probably the most interesting topic was practically not dealt with. It was rightly pointed out how outdated and slow the existing car industry is and that mobility needs to be redefined. But there was nothing beyond that. Except perhaps the reference at the end that the iPhone was introduced exactly 9 years ago (to the month) and that everyone still had old “dull” cell phones back then. The comparison between the car industry and the cell phone industry was made a few times. The car industry “is improving the landlines when they should be creating the new generation of smartphones”. Probably true. But it’s been repeated a hundred times.

What is missing is a tangible vision. Unfortunately, we can only see the beginnings of where this could lead here:

 

“Incredible Alliances”

The third distinguishing feature is the “Incredible Alliances”. These were led by the state of Nevada, which makes the factory in North Las Vegas possible, and LETV. LETV, which is cited as the Netflix of China, is intended to help bring content into the car. As no concrete statements have been made on this, it remains vague here too. And “Incredible” seems rather exaggerated.

We are moving very fast

The final abstraction is speed. Faraday Future have built up 750 employees in 18 months. The foundation stone for the factory will be laid in a few weeks. The first “production car” will arrive in just a few years (literally). And then again the comparison to Tesla, which took 9 years to bring the first mass-produced car onto the market. The comparison is, of course, very flawed, as Nick Sampson, who was at Tesla himself, knows very well. What Tesla did, apart from solving financing problems, was basic research, so to speak. And Faraday Future is now building on these foundations, among other things. Despite all the speed, quality should not be neglected: “We will only deliver when we know that the (mass) product is superior (to the market)”. We will see whether this attitude continues at the same pace.

But the “highlight” of these first 20 minutes was Ding Lei from LETV. Lei, undoubtedly an authority in the automotive industry, came across as a slapstick interlude. He simply didn’t speak English well enough and his childish waving as he entered the stage came across as clownish. That probably does him an injustice. At an event where it’s all about credibility, someone from FF should simply have summoned up the courage to say that’s not on. And should have removed him from the program without replacement. His contribution was the undisputed low point of the presentation.

Variable Platform Architecture (VPA)

What came next, however, seemed brilliant. Nick Sampson, Senior VP R&D and Engineering, presented the Variable Platform Architecture.

The FF vehicles consist of a modular chassis that enables different wheel spacings, battery combinations and engine configurations (1-4). This means that literally any type of car can be built on the basis of this platform. From 8-seater SUVs to small city runabouts. That was an aha moment, a premonition that FF would probably not be launching one car, but several models at the same time. And it made the concept car appear in a different, better light.

ConCept-Car FFZERO01

And this is exactly how Richard Kim, Head of Design, announced it. The VPA could be used to build any kind of car, including something as extravagant as the FFZERO01.

Well, the car looks like a kind of modern Batmobile. It also integrates the smartphone as part of the operating concept, is equipped with everything it needs for future autonomous driving, combines augmented reality with operating and navigation elements and is generally “an extreme tablet on wheels”.

Unfortunately, this is only vaguely hinted at in a video. FF fails to provide a concrete product demo that would have done so much.

Well

At times during the presentation, I felt like I was watching Vooza, that fake startup that posted videos over a long period of time where you didn’t really know at first whether it was a spoof or not. This was due to two things: It lacks a leader figure. Nick Sampson is obviously something like the leader at FF. But he doesn’t have enough editing (yet). FF has almost constantly compared itself to Tesla and Apple. Today, however, they presented neither the charismatic leader nor the groundbreaking products of Tesla. And there is a lack of results: The event was presented like a product launch, but was actually not much more than a status update.

The missed opportunity

And so many people are rather disappointed. Credibility has fallen further and expectations have risen further. This makes it much more difficult to convince people with the actual products. In this respect, this is a missed opportunity to really present new concepts and features in detail to the (incredibly) interested public. Everyone would have accepted that many things are still in the beta stage. What was announced as a “glimpse into the future” degenerated into a rather mundane launch show. Simply without a product.

That’s a shame, because what FF is doing is by no means bad. The world needs new players who use technology in a radically different way, especially in existing sectors such as the automotive industry. We can only hope that FF will change its communication, be a little more understated and deliver a little more. Today, a few, emphatically normal, prototypes and much less blah-blah would have done the trick. They can still unpack the really big tennis, even technically speaking, when Nick Sampson leaves the hall in a finished, moving car. With his hands in his lap.