After 8 years, Faraday Future (hereinafter referred to as "FF"), founded by Jia Yueting, finally ushered in the most critical time node since its establishment at 8:00 a.m. Beijing time on February 24, which was called the "fourth milestone" by FF.
At this point in time, FF officially released the quasi-production car of the FF 91 that has just rolled off the production line from the California factory in the United States. In the coming months, FF will also manufacture more quasi-production vehicles for final engineering verification and certification work.
In addition, FF CEO Bi Fukang said that the quasi-production car released today has been basically consistent with the final mass production version in terms of design and configuration. From this perspective, the FF 91 is indeed one step closer to the final mass production.
It is worth noting that since FF's factory in California is still in the construction stage, the FF quasi-production vehicles displayed at the press conference are only painted at the factory. This means that the assembly of this quasi-production car and the previously released pre-production car are manually assembled.
7 years late FF 91 mass production is obsolete?
Among the three new car-making forces, the ES8, the first mass production car of NIO Automobile, took only 2 years and 5 months from the establishment of NIO to the official mass production of the production line, the first mass production car of Xiaopeng Automobile, the Xiaopeng G3, took 3 years to go offline, and the ideal ONE took 3 years and 10 months.
However, it has taken 7 years and 10 months since the establishment of FF 91, and it has not even been assembled by the factory so far. From this point of view alone, Xiao Lei believes that how many "milestones" FF 91 still needs from the official mass production delivery is still a mystery.
You know, FF has consumed far more than just huge amounts of money over the past seven years, but also seriously delayed the best fighters. In Bi Fukang's view, this model that should have been thought twice as early as 2017 still has a strong market competitiveness even today, and the FF 91, positioned as an ultra-luxury electric SUV, has two major characteristics: performance and excellent riding experience.
Bifukang believes that the FF 91 based on modular variable electric drive chassis processing has a horsepower of up to 1050 horses, a peak torque of more than 1800 N·m, and an acceleration time of 0-60 mph only takes 2.39 seconds, which is far more accelerated than Maybach and surpasses most Ferraris.
In Xiao Lei's view, the performance benchmarking object that FF 91 found in the promotion has revealed that it is not confident. First, Maybach is all about luxury, not performance. FF takes a high-performance electric vehicle with a horsepower of up to 1050 horses, and it is a bit ridiculous to compare it with the main luxury car.
Secondly, even if it is a benchmark Ferrari, FF still finds the wrong benchmarking object. You know, most Ferraris are fuel vehicles, and using electric vehicles to benchmark fuel vehicles is obviously not fair to fuel vehicles. Xiao Lei believes that if a fair duel is to be played, then Tesla is the best performance benchmark for the FF 91.
The acceleration time of the FF 91 0-60 mph for more than two million yuan is 2.39 seconds, while the acceleration time of the Tesla Model S Plaid version of 0-60 mph, which is priced at more than two million yuan, takes only 2.1 seconds, and the acceleration time of the Tesla Model 3 Performance Edition of tesla Model 3 performance for only 339,900 yuan takes only 3.3 seconds.
It is worth mentioning that if the time is put back to 2017, the acceleration time of 0-60 mph for the Tesla Model S 100D Performance Edition will be 3.2 seconds. At that time, FF 91 was indeed the most powerful player. However, the performance of Tesla models is improving every year, while the mass production plan of the FF 91 has been slow.
Nowadays, more than 200,000 yuan of independent brand new energy vehicles, without the acceleration ability of 0-100 km / h within 4 seconds, are embarrassed to advertise their performance. Obviously, after 5 years of waste, the performance in Bifukang's mouth can no longer become a strong competitiveness of FF 91.
The FF 91's biggest highlight in terms of riding experience is the rear row, where rear passengers can be relieved of stress by zero-gravity seat massage, and its legroom can reach 48.9 inches. In addition, the rear is equipped with a 27-inch display with a patented connection module, so passengers can have a video conference or entertainment in the back seat.
In Xiao Lei's view, these slightly flashy comfort configurations are not high in technology, can not become the core competitiveness of FF 91, and can not support the high-end positioning of this model. You know, as long as any car company is willing, it can reproduce most of its functions and make it lose its competitiveness in an instant. In addition, in Xiao Lei's view, FF's performance in endurance and automatic driving ability is also somewhat outdated.
In terms of endurance, FF officially claims that FF 91 is equipped with the world's highest energy density power battery, which has an energy density of up to 130kWh power battery pack, so that its NEDC endurance reaches 700km. Such endurance in 2017 is indeed worthy of the world's highest energy density power battery, but it is somewhat unworthy of the name at present.
It should be known that in 2017, the mileage of Tesla Model S100D long-endurance version models was only 579km, and the endurance of China's new energy vehicles at that time was generally at the level of 300-400km. Today, tesla Model S Plaid Plus endurance has been able to reach 840km. Among its own brands, the GAC Aean LX, equipped with an energy density of up to 144.4kWh power battery, has an endurance of more than 1000km.
In terms of autonomous driving capabilities, the FF 91 is equipped with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-chip provided by NVIDIA and Velaryne's first solid-state lidar, the Velarry H800. However, with such strong hardware support, the current FF 91 only has L2+ level automatic driving capabilities, and the high-speed and urban road automatic driving capabilities advertised by FF in that year were not mentioned at this conference.
You know, as early as June 2016, FF has obtained the California autonomous driving test license, and it obtained this automatic driving test license even earlier than many Robotaxi companies specializing in unmanned driving technology.
If you put the time back to 2017, FF is undoubtedly a company that thinks quite ahead, and FF 91 is also a fairly good product. In Xiao Lei's view, if this forward-thinking company can mass-produce this excellent product in 2017, then its price of 2 million yuan is not excessive.
However, time can not be turned back, and the FF and its FF 91, which still cannot be officially mass-produced, listed, and delivered, have missed too much time, and these missed times have made its product power disappear rapidly. So the question is, from 2016 to 2022, what has FF experienced?
FF 91's bumpy background
FF was founded in May 2014 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, USA. In January 2017, the first mass-produced electric vehicle, the FF 91, was officially launched in Las Vegas, USA. Subsequently, the company completed a $1 billion Series A funding round. Before 2017, its development can be described as smooth sailing and quite moist.
However, 2017 was also the beginning of Jia Yueting's nightmare. In this year, due to the outbreak of a personal debt crisis by Jia Yueting, the founder and actual controller of FF, the company fell into financial problems, resulting in a long-term suspension of the FF 91 car-making project, and it was not until today that mass production was completed.
In July 2017, Jia Yueting, who was in debt of tens of billions of yuan, began to chase his car-making dream after leaving the United States, and he can be said to be struggling in this asset-heavy automotive industry in recent years. Since he decided to create FF, "lack of money" has always been a word that the car company can't get rid of, and the long-term shortage of funds has also made Jia Yueting's car-making dream look more and more unrealistic.
In the 3 years that Jia Yueting has been circling around in the United States, there have been many investment negotiations, but FF funds are still short. After experiencing a series of wall encounters, although Jia Yueting did not pull back much investment, he learned the way for American entrepreneurial losers to restart their lives.
In September 2019, Jia Yueting resigned as FF Global CEO and became CPUO (Chief Product and User Officer), and in October, Jia Yueting applied to the United States for personal bankruptcy restructuring, transferring all assets to creditors through creditor trusts. In July 2020, Jia Yueting's personal bankruptcy restructuring plan officially came into effect, and the creditor trust officially began to operate.
On January 28, Faraday Future (hereinafter referred to as "FF") partnered with Property Solutions AcquisitionCorp. ("PSAC") jointly announced that the two parties have reached a final agreement on the business merger, which plans to complete the transaction in the second quarter of 2021 and complete the listing on the NASDAQ exchange.
On July 22, 2021, FF was listed on the NASDAQ through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), when the issue price of FF was $13.78/ADS, and the opening price was $16.8/ADS, an increase of 22% compared with the issue price, and the total market value of FF reached $5.4 billion.
However, the starting point for FF's share price is almost the highest point it currently has in the stock market. As of February 24, 2022, FF has fallen from $14.42 per share on the day of listing to $4.74, and its total market value has also fallen to $1.537 billion.
On October 7, 2021, the US short-selling agency J Capital Researc released a 28-page short-selling report, which raised a number of questions about FF's research and development investment, production capacity, capital operation and Jia Yueting itself, and believed that FF could not sell a single car.
The J Capital Researc report pointed out that from August to September 2021, it visited FF's Hanford plant in California, USA three times to investigate, but the plant showed no signs of production, and several factories claimed to be under construction by FF were not traced. In addition, FF's listing documents show that FF91 is still 1.4 billion US dollars away from mass production, but J Capital Researc said that there will be no more investment institutions to provide funds and loans to FF.
Obviously, in the past 7 years, FF and its first model, FF 91, have been mired in the mud, until February 24, 2022, that is, today, they saw a glimmer of hope. However, the FF 91 quasi-production car off the production line means that Jia Yueting has fulfilled his dream, has FF succeeded?
FF91 is only suitable for standing on the altar, FF81 is the savior
In Xiao Lei's view, the mass production of FF 91 is only the first entrance examination since the establishment of FF, and there are many tests waiting for it in the near future. Even if the FF 91 has completed mass production off the production line, Xiao Lei is not optimistic about the future sales development of this model.
You know, according to Jia Yueting, FF 91 is benchmarked against ultra-luxury, supercar brand models such as Maybach, Ferrari, and Bentley. However, the consumer groups of Maybach, Ferrari and Bentley may not be able to look at this new car-making force that has no foundation to speak of and is worried about even the most basic survival ability.
In an era of pompous propaganda, the word "benchmarking" has become ambiguous. For example, there are many people on the Internet who threaten to benchmark Highlander and hang Tesla car brands, but the status of Highlander and Tesla in the same class of models is still difficult to shake, and the same is true for FF91.
Secondly, it is undeniable that when FF 91 first appeared in 2017, its advanced design and the sense of technology advertised by Jia Yueting were indeed very shocking. However, after 5 years, it is still unknown whether this model, which was designed ahead of the time and had explosive performance, still has the competitiveness of that year.
It should be known that FF 91's brother Gaohe HiPhi X has been mass-produced and listed as early as March 2021, and its price range is only 570,000-800,000 yuan. If the listing time of a full year ahead is that Gaohe, who came up later, punched FF in the face, the "low" price of Gaohe HiPhi X gave FF 91 a fatal blow.
Finally, the high price of the FF 91 dooms its audience to be quite small. Such a high price is doomed to FF 91 is only suitable for standing on the altar, and its product strength cannot make FF profitable. In Xiao Lei's view, compared with the FF 91, which is doomed to be unable to go, the cheaper FF 81 is the savior who can solve Faraday's urgent needs in the future.
Not long ago, FF signed a cooperation agreement with Myoung Shin, which will start production of FF's second electric model, the FF 81, in South Korea in 2024. It is understood that although FF 81 is still mainly smart and luxurious, in order to achieve volume in a short period of time and cover the market on a large scale, the price of this new car will explore the range of 300,000 yuan, and its product positioning will be much lower than that of FF 91, which is priced at millions.
You know, what FF needs most today is no longer faith, but survival, and the pricing of FF's 8130,000 yuan level also means that FF will go down the altar and go to consumers. Previously, FF's product planning was formulated under the circumstances of a good situation, but now the situation is stronger than people. FF's previous product planning is not suitable for FF at this stage, so if it wants to get out of the predicament and seek a way to live, it must put down its body.
Note: The material for this article comes from the Internet