Secretive Faraday to spend $1b on new car plant
Electric-vehicle start-up to splash out on $1.4 billion factory near Las Vegas. Still hasn’t made a single carFaraday Future has reportedly chosen a site north of Las Vegas as its $1 billion manufacturing base, according to Nevada State officials and the company’s own website, faradayfuture.com
Hoping to begin production as early as 2017, little is known about the pure-electric car-maker other than it is funded by Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting.
The news of the new car plant comes on the eve Faraday Future will reveal a concept for its first car at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2016.
The as-yet unnamed Faraday concept, that’s set to go head-head with Tesla, is thought to be more of a high-riding SUV coupe that’s expected to have 15 per cent more battery capacity than the Tesla Model S, as well as a range exceeding 500km.
On its company’s website the Nevada site was chosen because of an “enthusiastic workforce” and an “encouraging tax environment”, plus be in close proximity to its Californian HQ.
Those “encouraging tax incentives” reportedly consist of around $290 million tax incentives and credits over 15 years.
The new plant, says the US-based car-maker, will be vast 280,000 square-metre space that will create more than 4500 jobs.
The move to Nevada follows in the tyre tracks of Elon Musk’s Tesla, which has also chosen Reno, Nevada as the site to build the world’s largest lithium-ion battery factory.
It’s not known if Faraday will buy its battery tech from Tesla, but tensions are believed to have arisen with its neighbour after it was reported by newswire Bloomberg that the fledgling car-maker had poached more than 60 former employees from Tesla.
Faraday Future has also wooed BMW i3 and i8 chief designer, Richard Kim, to head up design.
Perhaps the biggest mystery is who will head up the operation as Faraday is still keeping quiet who’s its CEO. This has sparked a persistent rumour that its still unnamed CEO is a senior figure within Apple. If true, Faraday Future could be a front for Apple’s well-publicised move into becoming a car-maker.
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