In a new blink-and-you’ll-miss-it clip from the struggling Faraday Future, the company’s prototype electric vehicle, concealed in a dark cowl, toes the starting line next to high-performance vehicles from Bentley, Ferrari, and Faraday’s possible future rival, Tesla.
The 17-second video doesn’t show the results of the matchups – or, for that matter, much else about the Faraday prototype’s appearance or performance. Faraday is hoping the teaser will keep us all tuned in for what happens next and, ultimately, for Faraday’s full reveal of the prototype at CES in January.
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At most, the video confirms what market segment Faraday wants to play in—we probably wouldn’t be seeing it lined up against luxury performance vehicles if the company was introducing a $30,000 sedan. A high-end offering would suggest a market strategy similar to Tesla, which started with the high-margin Model S before working its way down to the Model 3, a consumer vehicle coming in 2018. The Guardian has previously reported that Faraday’s vehicle could cost upwards of $150,000.
Of course, it’s still not entirely clear Faraday will ever square off against its rivals in the race for real-world market share. As Inverse runs down, Faraday’s main backer has recently found itself short on cash. Faraday has failed to make payments to Aecom, which then halted work on Faraday’s huge Nevada factory.
And while Faraday has poached talent from the likes of Tesla, Apple, and Ferrari, it has lost several senior executives over the last six months.
According to the company, those departures were just a matter of typical industry churn. And any fan of advancements in vehicle tech has to be rooting for Faraday. But they’re off to a slow start.