SPY PICS: Futuristic Faraday on the road

It's an unfamiliar shape to Australian eyes, but the Lincoln MKZ is a conventional luxury sedan in its home market, the USA.

But that's not the case for this particular MKZ, which spy photographers report to be a mule for a production electric car from secretive tech start-up, Faraday Future.

Bursting onto the scene at the end of last year, Faraday Future has promised to provide Tesla with real competition in the marketplace, and its first product for sale is expected to be a rival to the Model S – which makes this MKZ mule the perfect hiding place for the electric drivetrain, battery pack and electronic wizardry that will allow it to motor around the place quietly without a driver at the wheel. The state of California has already granted the company permission to test its autonomous car on public roads, as it has for other brands.

Reports indicate Faraday Future has developed a modular platform for the unnamed car, and this, much like Tesla's architecture for the Model S and Model X, is mooted to underpin other 'top hats' in the future.

One of those body styles could even be the exotic FFZERO1 show car, which resembles a Le Mans Series racer designed by the late GM designer, Harley Earl. The FFZERO1 made its debut at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, although the company has gone on record refuting the concept will go into production. But the company has certainly admitted that the platform of the FFZERO1 is 'scalable'. It's a production-ready platform, in other words.