Nine years of madness, FF91 is finally mass-produced, is the new car still waiting for Jia Yueting?

Teacher Qin Shuo once described Jia Yueting as follows:

"In a moment of despair, a man hangs on a cliff, a deep valley below, surrounded by howling winds, but he just doesn't let go, and his face is no different from ordinary people. He hangs there, swings there, does what he can, asks for help from chance encounters, but does not beg.

Maybe it's this mentality that has done so many things and made so many mistakes. I don't know if this counts as an entrepreneurial spirit, or how to define it, except that most of us have long since let go and sought relief. ”

Jia Yueting, who did not let go, ushered in an inflection point.

Earlier this month, Faraday Future (FF) issued a notice saying the company's new car would begin production at the end of March. However, Boss Jia also added a precondition before this plan, which must be when the investor's capital is ready.

After 30 days, Jia Yueting did not break his word, he announced to the world with a huge global launch that the FF 91 Futurist officially entered mass production (SOP) at the FF ieFactory factory in Hanford, California, USA, and is expected to be sold simultaneously in the US and Chinese markets.

On this day, Jia Yueting waited for nine years.

As the founder of FF and CPUO (chief product and user officer), Jia Yueting appeared in the speech, unable to hide his excitement, almost choked up and sighed - "All our crazy persistence and decisive dedication that are not understood have finally come to today's moment, nine years of suffocating dreams, and finally ushered in the peak moment"

Over the past nine years, FF's fortunes have been a rollercoaster, burning $3 billion on and off, and long-term internal friction and infighting have been reported repeatedly. Product bounces, capital shorting, high-level replacement, financial report postponement, any of these negative news, smashed into any car startup, may be unbearable.

Nine years, times have changed

In the past nine years, Jia Yueting has never fulfilled his promise to "return to China next week", and the FF 91 Futurist, which was originally planned for delivery in 2018, has been curled up in the already yellowed PPT.

Until today, FF 91 Futurist, FF 91 Futurist, FF's first electric model and flagship product of the brand, has finally been officially announced to be ready for mass production. According to the plan, it will start production at FF ieFactory California, a manufacturing plant in Hanford, California, and the first new vehicles will roll off the assembly line in early April and be delivered to consumers by May.

Let's take a look at the content of the mass production conference.

One is about the product.

The parameters of the new car, 1050 horsepower, acceleration to 100 kilometers does not exceed 2.4 seconds, EPA-certified cruising range is 381 miles, acceleration time per 100 kilometers is 2.27 seconds. But interestingly, FF only showed the freshly painted body at the scene, and Jia Yueting's mouth full of Internet new words during his speech did not show other details of the new car.

Nine years, it has long been changed.

We see that the FF new car still retains the original design specifications, and Jia Yueting's team has not adjusted the model over the years. A lot of the data and ideas officially announced by the new car, put in 2017, the concept car was just released, and may still be able to fool in the capital circle, but now in 2023, this information is not enough to "tell a good story".

The second is about production.

Named FF ieFactory California as its manufacturing facility in Hanford, California, FF 91 Futurist, is located in California's Central Valley, close to two tech hubs, Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, covering 1.1 million square feet.

In August last year, Jia Yueting was excited to not only hire more than 300 new employees, but also described the new breakthrough in the body shop as FF's sixth manufacturing milestone. Today, series production has begun, which also means that all seven milestones set by FF at the end of 2021 have been completed.

The third is about strategy.

Even if he broke the contract many times, almost no one wanted to believe the pie drawn by Boss Jia anymore, and he still announced the three-step development plan tailored for FF with a serious face——

The goal of the first phase is to deliver the FF 91 Futurist Alliance, FF 91 Futurist and FF 91 on time; The second stage goal is to launch follow-up models and achieve sales climbing; The goal of the third phase is to achieve sustained rapid growth in new car sales on the one hand, and to promote the further improvement of the new mobility ecology (including software, Internet apps and sharing) on the other hand.

I don't know how far FF can support the implementation of these plans, but Jia Yueting still told everyone at the press conference:

The current production capacity is far behind the market demand.

Hearing this, who can not admire Boss Jia's ability to fool? After all, holding a frame to drive a mass production conference, no second person in the entire car circle dares to do this. According to Jia Yueting's own statement, the FF 91 Futurist Alliance Edition, which was previously limited to 300 vehicles worldwide and had a deposit of $50,000, was sold out in only three days.

|Jia Yueting's backwater battle|

Boss Jia has his own confidence.

On the one hand, it has found a "backer" in the country.

In January this year, FF signed the Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement with Huanggang City, Hubei Province, to set up FF China headquarters in Huanggang City to promote the strategic implementation of the Sino-US dual home market. FF plans to relocate its FF China headquarters to Huanggang, Hubei Province, and Huanggang provides FF with financial and policy support, with the Hubei Yangtze River Economic Belt Industrial Fund (Yangtze River Industrial Fund) playing an extremely important role.

On the other hand, it is to solve internal contradictions.

Many readers should not until Jia Yueting resigned as CEO of the company in 2019 due to personal debt problems and became the company's CPUO (chief product and user officer).

In 2022, due to the board of directors, many FF founding teams and executives such as Jia Yueting were gradually marginalized by the company. It was also during this time that FF negative news came out frequently, stock prices plummeted, governance was chaotic, and even pushed to the brink of bankruptcy for a while, until the end of 2022, when the mass production of new cars was about to be put on the agenda, and Jia Yueting, as the founder, regained control of FF.

Finally, the money finally arrived.

In the past year, FF's net loss reached US$552 million (equivalent to about 3.85 billion yuan), compared to a net loss of US$516 million in the same period of 2021. From the establishment of the company in 2014 to the end of 2022, FF's cumulative loss has reached 3.43 billion US dollars (equivalent to about 24 billion yuan), during which the company has been caught in the vortex of broken capital chain more than once.

When announcing the results for fiscal 2022, Jia Yueting released the news that the new car was about to be mass-produced, but at that time he also specifically emphasized a prerequisite, that is, capital is ready. In fact, on February 6 this year, Jia Yueting posted on social media that FF Partners had helped complete a $135 million financing, and on March 13, it won a non-binding additional financing of $50 million.

As long as the white knights in the capital world are still there, Jia Yueting's FF still has hope of survival, especially when the dominance, production base, government relations and capital are in line with expectations, which is almost the best time for FF new cars to move towards mass production and Jia Yueting to build a counterattack, and it is also the endorsement battle to break through upward in the past decade.

In the previous case, there is the success of NIO and Anhui Hefei hand in hand, but whether FF can copy NIO's transformation and whether Jia Yueting can copy Li Bin's success is very difficult to compare with many factors.

Since Hefei proposed the establishment of a new energy vehicle industry cluster in 2015, it has gathered more than 300 new energy vehicle related enterprises, ranging from finished vehicles, parts to technology companies, attracting investment from BYD, NIO, Volkswagen Anhui, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, etc. On the other hand, Hubei, its automobile center has been concentrated in Wuhan and Shiyan and other places, Huanggang's industrial foundation is weak, and the introduction of WM Motor has also encountered sales and product bottlenecks in the near future.

There are still opportunities, depending on whether FF can seize it.

【Attached】:

Jia Yueting's speech at FF SOP:

Hello to all futurists around the world!

What we are here today is not only a milestone for the start of production of the new species, FF 91 Futurist Alliance, but also the most solid step taken by FF as a disruptor of traditional ultra-luxury car civilization. SOP is the realization of the company's commitment to users and shareholders, indicating that under the governance and operation of the company's new board of directors and new management, the new FF has entered a new stage of development, and we believe that FF will quickly return to its due value.

I would like to especially thank all the futurists around the world, whose deep insight and commitment to the long-term value of FF are making our dreams a reality.

As production begins, our next phase of goals will focus on three things:

First, complete the production line of the first batch of high-quality and invincible products of the first vehicles as soon as possible, and realize the production ramp-up of SOD and SOD as soon as possible.

Second, with the delivery of the FF 91 Futurist to the most futuristic ultra-luxury users, which we call "Super Top Users", we will strive to build a travel ecosystem for top users with user acquisition and user operation as the core.

In order to continue to implement the business philosophy and corporate vision of co-creation and sharing at the beginning of FF's establishment, and provide a unique platform for top users to participate in change, we divided FF 91 Futurist Alliance's co-creation delivery after SOD into three categories and three stages: the first is the co-creation class delivery of industry expert FPO, which stands for Futurist Product Officer. The second is FPO co-creation delivery, and the third stage is the comprehensive co-creation delivery after the production capacity climb is achieved. This three-phase delivery program provides maximum flexibility for our manufacturing operations and market needs, and delivers the best products to our users. This also helps to alleviate the current situation where the plant's capacity is far from meeting the market demand.

Third, we will continue to complete the iterative upgrading of product technology to ensure the unique leading edge of product strength and technical strength.

All our ununderstood insistence and determination have finally paid for today's SOP. It can be said that after nine years of suffocating dreams, it has finally ushered in a moment of disruption. So I'd love to share with you again what makes FFIE, the new species FF 91 and FF Futurists unique:

FF is the pioneer of the luxury spire market of Extreme Technology in the era of smart trams, and the subversive of the traditional ultra-luxury car civilization represented by Ferrari and Maybach.

FF 91 is not only the only luxury electric vehicle model that represents the next generation of disruptive technology, but also the only product specially built to build a super peak user ecosystem.

Our first phase goal is to deliver the transformative FF 91 Futurist Alliance, FF 91 Futurist and FF 91 to the global top users on time, with high quality and invincible products, to achieve the subversion of traditional ultra-luxury car brands, and to achieve the goal of being the first in the global super top user market as soon as possible.

The second phase aims to launch subsequent models, achieve explosive sales growth as soon as possible, and grow and scale in the mobility ecological revenue, becoming the leader of the spire market.

The goal of the third stage is to achieve sustained rapid growth in smart terminal sales and explosive growth in ecosystem (including software, Internet APP, and sharing) revenue. FF's ecological revenue accounts for an increasing percentage of total profits, becoming one of the mainstream high-value user market leaders and continuing to consolidate its leadership position in the spire market.

Dear FF Futurists, you are the most important group for our success. Whether you are our global users, investors, suppliers, partners, FF Dealer Par, FF User Par; Whether you are an entrepreneur like us, a stock investor who agrees with the long-term value of FF, or a product geek or car geek who always pursues the ultimate experience, the paranoid pursuit of dreams and crazy persistence, adhering to futuristic beliefs and co-creation of shared values, great adventurous spirit, and fearless in the face of hardships, disasters, never give up, never admit defeat has closely connected FF and you.

Because of this, your firm belief and support for FFIE, every stock you own, every reservation you have, is a great encouragement to us, let us be more determined on the way forward, even if the current production capacity is far from meeting the market demand, but with your support, we can go all out to improve production capacity, better create a shared peak user travel ecosystem, and share the value created by us.

At the upcoming final conference, in addition to elaborating on the technical features and unique advantages of the product, we will also announce the FF external partner program and co-creation shared products, and further announce the post-SOD co-creation delivery plan. In addition, I would like to take this opportunity to remind all investors that the company will hold its annual general meeting on April 14. All futurists, remember to vote before the meeting date. This is the last crucial milestone for the company to reach full compliance with listing requirements.

The vision put forward by FF at the beginning of its establishment has ignited the dreams of many people, and the industrial development blueprint we have sketched has also been practiced by many people and partially realized, which can be seen from the current fierce price war and saturation competition in the low-end electric vehicle market. However, today, when the new FF officially enters a new stage of development, we are still the only adventurer in the spire market of intelligent ultra-luxury electric vehicles, and in the face of new opportunities and challenges, the partnership system including internal and external partners is the cornerstone of our success, and we will adhere to the core concept of co-creation and sharing. We welcome all futurists to join our ecosystem.

All partners, let's make FF the "Ferrari + Maybach" in the era of smart trams. Let's reconstruct the future of mobility from top to bottom, and let's jointly build the goal of the travel ecology of the top users.