Produced by | Tiger sniff car group
Author | Wang Xiaoyu
Cover | Courtesy of the enterprise
“Born in California. Global DNA – Born in California, Global Genes. ”
This sentence is a new definition that Jia Yueting blurted out in English at the FF91 quasi-production car unveiling ceremony held on February 24. Before the ceremony began, Faraday Future (Faraday Future, hereinafter referred to as FF) showed the construction progress of the Hanford plant in California, USA - workshop equipment has been entered one after another, and the time of soop planned for the third quarter has not changed.
The FF91 quasi-production car unveiled this time, although it is close to the form of mass production vehicles, it is far less than the mass production level mentioned by the automotive industry. Because from the production process and process, it is "assembled", not on the production line. According to Gao Mengxiong, CMO of FF China, this batch of "quasi-production vehicles" will be used to complete the final project verification and certification, such as sending them for crash testing.
In the past, when the car company came to this step before mass production, sending two photos was even if the publicity work was completed, but Jia Yueting held a press conference with great fanfare. Behind this, it is more likely that the latest mass production progress of FF91 is to show the outside world to counter the previous "order fraud incident". To put it bluntly, it is to help Old Jia prove his innocence - I am seriously building a car.
First, the new car is unveiled again, where has it changed?
“Is everything ready to go?”
Jia Yueting, who has been building cars in the United States for five years, speaks a "Jia-style English" and asks software test engineer Sankar about the first quasi-production car of FF91. At 8:00 a.m. Beijing time on February 24, Dr. Bi Fukang, global CEO of FF Company, Jia Yueting, founder of FF Company and global CPUO, drove the first quasi-production vehicle of FF 91 out of the factory slowly.
From the appearance point of view, this FF 91 quasi-production car is almost no different from the pre-production car that rolled off the production line on August 28, 2018. After all, this car completed the product definition in 2017, because of Jia Yueting's financial problems, which led to repeated delays in the mass production of FF91. For Jia Yueting and FF, the mass production of FF91 is indeed as difficult as climbing Mount Everest.
Faraday Future, internally, set seven milestones for the FF91's mass production process, the last of which was the start of production in the third quarter to achieve SOP. Fortunately, the road to mass production of FF91 is now halfway through.
The 7 milestones are:
Milestone 1: Completed the installation of equipment to support the production and manufacture of quasi-production vehicles;
Milestone 2: Obtaining the Factory's Final Production Qualification ("COO") to pave the way for mass production of ready-to-produce vehicles;
Milestone 3: Start the infrastructure of the remaining production areas, including body shops, paint shops, warehouses and final assembly shops;
Milestone 4: Mass manufacture of pre-production vehicles for final engineering verification and certification;
Milestone 5: Full mechanical, electrical and piping systems are operational to support the final installation of the equipment;
Milestone 6: Completion of all infrastructure construction and equipment installation in the main vehicle manufacturing area;
Final milestone: SOP achieved in the summer of 2022.
However, whether it is the "pre-production car" in 2018 or today's "quasi-mass production car", there is a big gap from the final mass production. According to the hanford factory site shown by FF officials in the live broadcast, only the equipment has been completed at present.
Most of the equipment is procured from a Chinese company, Guangzhou MINO Equipment. According to public information, Mingluo has the service capabilities required in the automotive manufacturing links such as system integration and production line delivery to core hardware, software product development and standardization, etc., and its customers include Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, North American well-known electric vehicles, Ford and other global car companies. To put it more simply, Ming Luo can provide a one-stop solution related to automobile manufacturing.
However, as far as the current progress is concerned, this production line of FF is far from being put into production. It should be known that on January 26 this year, the equipment purchased from Mingluo arrived in the United States on the other side of the ocean. As you can see from the live broadcast screen, most of the equipment has just entered the field, but it is not placed in the position where it should be, and forklifts are everywhere on standby in the workshop.
Live footage of FF's U.S. factory
Compared with the progress of the production line, the product iteration progress of FF91 is more worthy of attention.
Compared with the "pre-production car" in 2018, this "quasi-production car" has a major update in terms of parts suppliers. For example, lidar, on the roof of this FF91 "quasi-production car", there is an additional solid-state lidar, from Velodyne. The velary H800 lidar has a detection range of up to 170 meters and uses Velodyne's proprietary lidar array architecture.
Different from the mainstream semi-solid-state lidar in China, H800 is a solid-state lidar, that is to say, there are no movable components inside, and it is slightly inferior to semi-solid products in terms of detection angle. But in velodyne's hands, it belongs to a relatively mature technology.
Velodyne website
According to the official description, this product integrates remote perception and wide field of view, which can be used in ADAS/high-level automatic driving systems, providing collision avoidance functions for our familiar adaptive cruise, emergency braking, etc., and effectively making up for the lack of millimeter wave radar/camera.
Like domestic NIO ET7 and other products, the FF91 "quasi-production car" version adopts a "watchtower" scheme arranged above the roof. This means that the circular lifting lidar that was originally located in the front cabin of the vehicle is now canceled – this is also the FF91 quasi-production car, unlike any previous test version.
The FF91 has Velodyne on the roof
In addition to lidar, there are also suppliers like taillights that have also been updated. HSL, an Italian company, currently supplies a 3D crystal light strip for the FF91 tail light. Each LED in this strip is individually programmable, custom light animations can be uploaded to the vehicle system at any time, and the FF 91 also provides preset light animations.
In addition to these icing on the cake configurations, including the supply of core components such as power batteries and motors in the most important three-electric system, they could not be announced at the event. The FF China side told Tiger Sniff that there will be a special release of products in the follow-up, but the time is not clear.
Next, FF will complete the remaining 3 manufacturing milestones as planned. This includes the start of operation of all mechanical, electrical and piping systems (MEPs) to support the fifth milestone of final equipment installation, the sixth milestone of completing all infrastructure construction and equipment installation in the main vehicle manufacturing area, and the seventh final milestone of "SOP" planned to start production in the third quarter of 2022.
Second, do you want to believe Lao Jia again?
Good food is not afraid of late, although the mass production plan of FF91 has been repeatedly delayed, but in this era of "human artificial vehicles", Jia Yueting's first-mover advantage may still have some stock left. You know, the tesla Model 3 conference time can be traced back to 2016, so many years have passed, the hardware has only carried out some upgrades on the power battery, it can still be said that the product power is bursting.
FF faces two major rivals in the luxury electric vehicle market in China and the United States, which happen to be Jia Yueting's "old love" - domestic Gaohe Automobile and Lucid Motor in the United States. The former is a brand founded by Ding Lei, Jia Yueting's old department, and the latter is a new American force that Jia Yueting once invested in.
Ding Lei, who was the CEO of LeEco Automobile, founded Huaren Express and launched the Gaohe Automobile brand after leaving Jia Yueting's company, and the first product, HiPhi X, was priced at 57.00-80.00 million yuan. The car has been mass-produced and delivered nearly 5,000 units, and according to the sales data released by third-party agencies, HiPhi X is firmly in the front row of the domestic luxury brand electric vehicle segment of more than 500,000. Its second product, HiPhi Z, will be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in April and will be delivered this year.
In terms of product form, FF91 and HiPhi X are almost a "brother model" born of a mother. However, according to previous information, FF91 is priced at as much as 2 million yuan in the Chinese market, while the United States is 200,000 US dollars.
In the past two years, Gaohe has established a new understanding for some Chinese consumers - they have a clearer understanding of what kind of product power a "luxury electric vehicle" should have, what experience it should bring, and what price point it should sell. According to the anchoring effect, if FF91 wants to sell for a higher price than Gaohe, it must first break the inherent cognitive system of consumers.
Similarly, U.S. consumers are being "educated."
In 2014, Lucid accepted a $100 million financing from BAIC, and after its completion, BAIC held 25.02% of the shares, becoming Lucid's largest shareholder. In the same year, Jia Yueting led LeEco to participate in Lucid's Series C financing for $70 million, becoming the second largest shareholder after BAIC. Later, BAIC sold its shares, and Jia Yueting was also rumored to sell Lucid's shares.
After Lucid's backdoor listing, it can be said that it has gained a foothold in the US luxury electric vehicle market.
According to foreign media data, Lucid's Air Dream reservation number of up to $160,000 has reached 10,000, which has been fully booked, and even some consumers have paid an advance deposit of $7,000 or more in advance. According to the test data of the overseas automobile website Insideevs, the Lucid Air Dream Edition has become the world's highest endurance electric vehicle with a measured range of 804 kilometers.
According to the information on Lucid's official website, in addition to the Air Dream that has closed the reservation, Lucid has three versions of Lucid Air on sale, priced at $69,900, $87,500 and $131,500, of which the version exceeding $100,000 also has a range of 800 kilometers.
Like GAOHe's efforts in the Chinese market, Lucid's product and service experience has achieved some recognition in the US market. For example, the famous American automotive magazine Motor Trend, in the Lucid Air review article used the title "An Impressive Rethink of the Luxury Sedan", the article has an original sentence translated like: "Air is not only the most impactful American luxury car in recent years, it also has the ability to reshape the definition of luxury cars." ”
The first Lucid Airs were delivered in front of a dedicated background board with the owner's name written on it
The biggest challenge may not be in the product, but in the credibility of the brand.
Lucid was founded by Xie Jiapeng, former vice president of Tesla, and Wen Shiming, a former oracle executive. In 2016, Tesla's chief engineer Peter Rawlinson joined the company and became LUCID's CEO in 2019.
Ding Lei, the founder of Gaohe Automobile, in addition to the resume of the CEO of LeEco Automobile, other experiences are also very convincing in the industry: graduated from Fudan University majoring in nuclear engineering, vice president of SAIC Motor, general manager of Shanghai General Motors Co., Ltd., and deputy mayor of Shanghai Pudong New Area.
For Jia Yueting, in addition to making the product well and produced, what may need to be done more energy is to regain the confidence of consumers, the automotive industry and the company Faraday Future. At the same time, as a listed company, it is necessary to resolutely avoid the recurrence of small tricks on information disclosure.
Last October, FF was shorted by short-selling agency J Capital Research. In the short-selling report, J Capital Research said FF would never sell cars and said FF founder Jia Yueting still controls FF through FF's global executive committee. In February this year, FF updated the 8-K document on the official website of the SEC in the United States, which published the results of the special committee's findings on the inaccurate statements that the company may be involved in, and the report confirmed that there were some inaccurate statements in the FF, but denied the contents of the short report.
At the same time, FF has made a series of personnel adjustments to re-establish confidence in the capital market. So FF replaced the chairman of the company. Jia Yueting, the founder and chief product and user ecology officer of FF, also reduced his basic salary by 25%.
For Jia Yueting, the disturbance of the outside world did not produce much lethality in the face of his strong self-confidence. Because in the face of dreams, all the controversy seems worthless, "The dream we are fighting for is getting closer and closer to us, and the new species FF 91 is about to be born here!" Jia Yueting said at the FF91 quasi-mass production unveiling ceremony.
Write at the end
So, how far is Jia Yueting from the success of car building?
Weibo big V hard brother, the FF91 quasi-production car is the following evaluation: "Infinitely close to the mass production of FF91. It feels like the PDD progress 99.999999% of the red envelope, and inviting a few more people (investment) is successful. ”
Lucid was founded by Xie Jiapeng, former vice president of Tesla, and Wen Shiming, a former oracle executive, and founded Atieva in 2007. Focus on the development of power batteries and powertrain systems. In 2016, Tesla's chief engineer Peter Rawlinson joined Atieva, the same year Atieva changed its name to Lucid Motor and officially entered the production of smart electric vehicles. Peter Rawlinson also became CEO of the company in 2019.