At 8:00 a.m. on February 24, Faraday Future Automobile Company (hereinafter referred to as "FF") held a new car launch conference at its Hanford plant in the United States, and the company's founder Jia Yueting and CEO Bi Fukang attended the conference and made speeches.
Bi Fukang and Jia Yueting at the press conference
The original 1-hour live broadcast was actually only about 25 minutes, and it did not last more than 30 minutes at most.
In fact, today's FF show is only a "quasi-production car", since the FF was listed in the United States in July 2021, they have come up with a "7-step mass production" plan, it is expected to achieve mass production of FF91 cars in July 2022, and they have now reached the 4th step (Jia Yueting called it the "fourth milestone").
According to FF CEO Bi Fukang, FF will officially mass-produce FF91 cars in the third quarter of 2022, and they are also preparing to produce FF81 cars in 2024, but the FF81 will not be produced at the Hanford plant in the United States, but will be handed over to a foundry in South Korea. Bi Fukang said FF's asset-light model helps achieve this.
He also expects FF to become profitable in 2025.
Jia Yueting said at the press conference that FF's stock code FFIE, the "I" behind it represents intelligence and the Internet, and "E" represents ecology and electric vehicles. He said FF will be a high-end car brand with all four elements at the same time.
In addition, Jia Yueting also personally participated in the test drive experience of the new car this morning, according to him, the FF91 car's 100-kilometer acceleration far exceeds that of the luxury sports car Maybach, and also exceeds some Ferrari models. He said he would go all out to promote mass production of the model and deliver the new car to the "spire users".
Jia Yueting experiences FF91
However, a few facts to point out are:
1. In August 2018, FF Company once rolled off the production line of a "pre-mass production car". Now, after 3 and a half years, they have launched a "quasi-production car", which is too slow to produce. And now it has been 8 years since the establishment of FF Company, according to the rhythm of general company car manufacturing, it is generally 4 years to achieve mass production from 0 to the first car.
The scene when FF's first pre-production car rolled off the production line in 2018
2, FF91 car paid orders are not much. In their 2021 listing prospectus, they said that they had "received more than 14,000 orders for FF91s", and after a recent investigation, they found that the actual payment orders were only a few hundred. More than 90% of the other orders are unpaid, which is called a fake order.
But FF does not think so, they explained: the reservation form issued by the company contains two types of paid reservation orders and free reservation orders, of which 14,000 orders have the information of all booking users, but this part is free booking data; and the company's public announcement of the global 300 invitation system limited edition FF 91, this part is a paid reservation form.
Netizens questioned Jia Yueting through the bullet screen
3. At present, the competition in China's intelligent electric vehicle market has become increasingly fierce, and it is difficult to say how competitive FF91 will be in the future. In December 2021, the monthly delivery volume of four new domestic car-making forces exceeded 10,000 units, namely Xiaopeng Automobile, Ideal Automobile, Weilai Automobile and Nezha Automobile. Among them, Xiaopeng Automobile, Weilai Automobile and Nezha Automobile are the same age as FF and were all established in 2014. Compared with the achievements of peers delivering more than 10,000 yuan in a single month, FF Company is still holding a "quasi-mass production car", which is really a bit embarrassing.
Everything needs to wait until July this year to see if the FF91 can be mass-produced.
Some people on the Internet also asked whether Jia Yueting would return to China in the near future. We estimate that this matter is likely to remain far away, because according to the Tianyan investigation, Jia Yueting has recently added 3 new pieces of resumption of enforcement information under his name, with a total of more than 2.5 billion yuan in the subject of enforcement, involving Jia Yueting and Ping An Securities, Huarong Securities and other related disputes, as of now, the total amount of Jia Yueting's execution has exceeded 5.2 billion yuan.