CES 2016: Faraday Future ZERO1 revealed

This is not a production car, insists Faraday Future, the secretive California-based electric vehicle (EV) startup that's secured billions of dollars of Chinese investment.

Instead, the first creation to come from the Tesla rival is a hardcore, 1000hp, 745kW supercar with more whizz-bang technology than a 3D printer can cook up. It can drive itself, it has a top-speed of 320km/h and rips from 0-100km/h in under 3.0 seconds. But it represents an extreme version of what the company is capable of building at its upcoming billion-dollar Nevada car factory in the USA.

Initially leaked via a technical blunder within the company – not an auspicious start – and now shown in full HD for the first time, the FFZERO1 is about as far-removed from a mainstream EV as is possible.

It was thought that an electric sedan or SUV to rival Tesla's Model S or Model X would be exposed at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas today, but no – it's a single-seater Batmobile.

The FFZERO1 shows how flexible the new 'Variable Platform Architecture' that underpins the concept car can be. It's scalable and can fit a number of different motors that can be configured for two- or four-wheel drive.

And there will be an SUV – just watch the video for a clue.

It's also likely Faraday Future will adopt a new way to sell – or lease – its vehicles to customers, with a subscription method being considered by the company when fully autonomous cars are the norm. This would allow users to request an SUV for an airport run one week, and a sports car for a coastal drive the next, for instance.

Faraday Future's Chinese backing has also come into focus at the CES launch of the wild new car, the US company confirming it has done a strategic deal with Chinese media giant LeTV, which makes phones, TV and so on. Whether this means direct funding or a different financial relationship is not quite clear.

It has not been revealed which type of vehicle Faraday Future will launch first – whether a sedan or an SUV – but the US and Chinese markets will be crucial – and Australia is a likely destination too. The company hasn’t put a time frame on a launch vehicle either but it's understood we'll see a mainstream production car by the end of the decade.