(Chinese Version)

Recently we have had two articles focusing on LeEco’s car business that are worth reading from Sina Tech and Caijing. Both articles mention that Faraday Future’s core team and infrastructure are in good shape and the complex equity ties within the LeEco’s car business. However, there aren’t enough details for the readers to get a clear idea of what is really going on and some information in the two articles don’t match each other. Core questions that the articles fail to answer include Faraday Future’s equity ownership, association of the different sectors within LeEco’s car business system, and LeEco’s ecosystem as a whole. Although LeEco’s case has been reported by lots of professional media, these questions remain unsolved.

Before that, Caixin reported that LeEco’s car business and Faraday Future share the same team but a different name. That said, they are actually one body, meaning LeEco’s capability to make cars is highly reliant on Faraday Future. But many senior executives of Faraday Future’s management team all denied the equity tie with LeEco during some interviews, and revealed that Faraday Future is invested personally by Jia Yueting without any connection with LeEco’s car business. They added that Faraday Future only has strategic partnership with LeEco and that Faraday Future has other investors.

Faraday Future revealed that the company would unveil new car models on the CES on January 3rd. The interesting part is that Jia Yueting also states for several times during promotional campaigns for LeEco that LeEco’s LeSEE car would be launched on the CES as well. No coincidence, no story. Is Jia Yueting making such announcement on purpose to create a distraction or Faraday Future and LeSEE are really the same thing. From the perspective of specs, the story might be the former, which is Faraday Future and LeSEE are launching two different car models and LeSEE is only making a distraction.

On the recent China Entrepreneurs Forum, Jia Yueting openly stated out the causes for LeEco’s recent cash crisis, one of which is LeSEE. He claimed that LeEco was betting on its luck but the company was looking into the future from the perspective of the future. Jia Yueting also added that LeEco is the company with the most potential to make Internet smart electric cars. In addition to that, Jia commented that once LeEco could merge its car business with the Internet business, the company would surpass Apple and bring about the best automobiles in the world.

Caijing’s report reiterated for several times that Faraday Future is not entirely held by LeEco. And business information on LeSEE’s equity structure also confirms that. It also tells that it’s actually held by Jia Yueting.

There is in fact a big different between held by Jia Yueting and held by LeEco from the perspective of the market.

Besides that, TMTpost also found that LeSEE’s system is not a complete system, but scattered within the Faraday Future system, BAITT, and LeEco that are held by Jia Yueting. As a matter of fact, the investment made in Yidao and Dasheng was from LeEco.

It remains unclear where the $1.08 billion investment was from and people seldom mention this fact.

What follows is Zheng Jun’s report, from Sina Tech:

In the public’s eyes, Faraday Future is still shrouded by the mist. This e-car startup company rarely does interview with the media and we don’t really see the company recruiting common personnel such as the CEO. Faraday Future in fact hired lots of staff from Tesla. Besides the new car that will appear on the CES in the beginning of the next year, the investment relationship with LeEco’s founder Jia Yueting and the recent shutdown of its factory in Nevada also got the company to the headlines.

But aside from all these chaos, what kind of Faraday Future really is? In the e-car industry where funding and technologies are both great challenges, what core competence does the company have? What relationship does the company really have with Jia Yueting? With all these doubts, Sina Tech and another Chinese media accepted Faraday Future’s invitation and walked into the company.

Before entering the company’s zone, our phones’ cameras were strapped with thick tape, both the back and the front. “What you are about to see are our company’s business secrets. To ensure confidentiality, photographing is strictly prohibited in the zone,” Faraday Future’s PR explained. “Since we are going to launch a new product on the CES, please follow the confidentiality agreement and don’t leak the technological details you will be seeing today.”

tech professional talents from Tesla

Faraday Future’s R&D HQ is located at Gardena near Los Angeles’ airport. This was once Japanese car makers’ HQ in North America. The zone has three buildings, and it’s very close to the tech startup zone where young startups like Snapchat are located at. Besides here, Faraday Future also has offices and R&D centers in the Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Munich.

Faraday Future’s zone in Los Angeles has over 800 staff. If we add the staff from the other three zones, then we can say Faraday Future has over 1,400 staff in total, with 1,100 of them are R&D staff. As a matter of fact, Faraday Future originally caught the attention of American tech media not for Jia Yueting’s investment, but the fact that it attracted lots of talents from industry leaders such as Tesla, General Motors, and BMW etc.

Let’s look at Faraday Future’s core tech team first: Development and engineering, senior vice president, Nick Sampson, with 39 years of experience in the auto industry, who has worked for Tesla and Jaguar before, Model S’s senior development manager; Dag Reckhorn, with 23 years of experience in the auto industry, former Model S’s production director, now in charge of the global production; Alan Cherry, vice president of human resources, with 23 year of experience in the industry, former senior director of Tesla’s HR department; Tom Wessner, vice president of the supply chain department, 25 years of working experience, former purchasing director of Tesla, General Motors and Ford; Silva Hiti, power driven system director, with 21 years of experience in the industry, former Technical Fellow of the General Motors; Richard Kim, with 15 years of working experience, core designer of BMW X1, i3 and i8; Purchasing director Pablo Ucar, with 20 years of working experience, former senior director of Space X’s supply chain department.

Besides former staff from Tesla, Faraday Future also has staff from auto giants such as General Motors, Ferrari, BMW, Audi, and Lamborghini etc., as well as consumer electronic and Internet giants such as Apple and Hulu etc. Sina Tech also noticed that the staff here at Faraday Future are as diverse as that of the Silicon Valley. The zone has open working space, and the company encourages direct communication and idea sharing. It also provides free snacks and meals and other benefits like Silicon Valley companies do.

On the six senior executives’ leaving that media has reported before, Faraday Future’s Sampson gave the following response: “We have over 1000 people in this company, so it’s natural that some will go and some will come. It’s particularly common for tech companies in the Silicon Valley to have that. Besides, most of the staff the left were senior executives. In that case, it didn’t really affect Faraday Future’s development.”

Jia Yueting was an early investor

Most of the senior management team were attending the media during this event. They introduced their fields to Sina Tech. During the two-hour tour, Sina Tech was shown the development of Faraday Future on aerodynamics design, virtual intersection detection, power driven system, battery chassis, design lab, and autonomous driving.

During the interview, Future Faraday’s senior executive didn’t talk much about the company’s entrepreneurial journey in early 2014, or how Jia Yueting got involved in the project and his current shareholding status. They only stated that Jia Yueting is an early investor and shares the same vision like Future Faraday, and that Future Faraday has other investors and funding sources.

However, some other senior executives have stated clearly that they are not a subsidiary of LeEco, but a completely independent company that’s merely having strategic relationship with LeEco. LeEco provides Future Faraday with hardware, software, content, cloud service and IT related technologies while Future Faraday offers LeEco technologies, components and engineering support.

From this perspective, Jia Yueting personally invested in Future Faraday, which is an independent company different from LeSEE. And the two companies have strategic cooperation on going since they have a common shareholder. In other words, Future Faraday’s new car is not LeSEE’s new car. However, these two companies have close cooperation on technologies both in Beijing and the Silicon Valley.

Computer aided

Many might wonder just how advance are Future Faraday’s technologies. Adams introduced that Future Faraday has set in 2015 that VPA would be the fundamental technology of their cars, and that their very first mass-produced car will also use this platform.

Sina Tech has noticed the following differences at Future Faraday on R&D compared with traditional companies:

Firstly, Future Faraday adopts the open office space model that’s common in the Silicon Valley in which staff from different departments all work in a big open space, enhancing the communication between departments. Traditional car companies don’t have open spaces as different departments are isolated from each other, which makes it a bit inconvenient for internal communication. For example, designers in charge of aerodynamic at Future Faraday sit just right across the whole car design department. Compared with that, traditional car companies have separate and independent design centers.

Secondly, Future Faraday’s model analysis director Meraj Ahmed introduced that they have been using computer-built models to do simulation tests. The simulations in fact are very close to the actual test results in terms of precision, showing a way to reduce the time cost for test run and simulations. This is also one the factors that set emerging car companies apart from traditional companies.

Meraj Ahmed has 17 years of experience in the auto industry and has once worked for traditional companies such as Ford, Chrysler, Volvo etc. He pointed at the simulation result from the computer simulations and the damage result from actual intersection detection and said: “Thanks to this complex algorithm (with 60 million equations) and powerful computing technology, Future Faraday’s simulation result is very close to the result from actual test. It can make sure that we meet different regulations in different regions.”

According to Ahmed, Future Faraday’s computer R&D is actually more advanced than Tesla’s since Tesla is still doing 1:1 model test. Due to the fact that real test costs a lot of money and time, computer simulation does save Future Faraday lots of that. It enables Future Faraday to bring about a new car that is safe and reliable in one or two years, which is something traditional companies can’t pull off.

Core patent on inverter

Hidy was once the technical fellow of General Motors. She introduced one of the core technologies that Future Faraday has to Sina Tech: the trapezoid inverter. In general, the core technologies of an electric car are the battery pack, inverter and the motor. The battery pack provides electricity that is dealt by the inverter. The inverter will process the electricity and sends stable electricity to the motor. That’s how electric car moves.

The trapezoid inverter is a patent technology that Future Faraday got in March this year. According to Hidy, Future Faraday’s inverter, from the controller to the circuit board, from software to hardware, are all designed independently by Future Faraday. She said they are all customized in accordance with the car’s design and specs so as to bring better performance, and that their R&D center in LA can manufacture them itself.

Hidy also revealed that the patent took four months to be approved by the USPO, which is the shortest period ever that similar patents have gone through. The patent examiners found out that the inverter is a completely new product and couldn’t find any similar products. Future Faraday will announce the technological details of the motor technology on the CES and therefore we can’t say anything about it.

As for the battery, Future Faraday also required Sina Tech to follow the confidential agreement. According to the senior manager in charge of the company’s battery, they are using LG’s battery and adopted a brand new cooling technology that can expand the battery’s durability. The battery life test shows it exceeds Tesla’s current car models.

Sampson told Sina Tech that Future Faraday has filed over 200 patent applications to the USPO and over ten of them have been approved. “Future Faraday has never used Tesla’s patent technologies, and I can’t say for now if we are going to make our patent technologies accessible,” Sampson said when asked about Tesla’s open patents.

The design team is Future Faraday’s most secretive department, with only a few designers and senior executives like Sampson have access to it. Sina Tech saw six car models covered with protective layer in the design workshop, which were designed by former designer at BMW. Sina Tech also saw many advanced equipment in the workshop: A 120Hz 4K display wall that is for simulating the view that the camera on the car front captures; the biggest 3D scanner and printer in the west coast that can print a car model in two days and costs only a couple thousand euros, saving lots of time for the design process.

The new car is ready

Since this tour was all about technology and product presentation, Faraday Future’s senior executives didn’t make comments on anything related to the capital chain and the factory in Nevada. However, when the tour was about to come to an end, Sina Tech did subtly asked: “In recent years there are cases in which e-car startups failed. In fact, only Tesla survived while others couldn’t make it. But if Tesla is facing many challenges and it once almost bankrupt and it did lay off lots of staff. What makes you believe that you can succeed?”

“Many people in our team are from Tesla, so we know why Tesla could succeed,” Sampson said, not really answering the question directly. “In the early phase, buying an electric car would mean compromising on the car appearance and performance. But Elon Musk brought about products that look good while having great on-road performance. He raised the bar for the e-car industry and Tesla itself. He offered incentives for customers to buy electric cars. I love Tesla, and it happens to be an electric car. Just like traditional car brands, Tesla has been through very difficult times. This is not an easy industry. But we believe in our products. The thing is there is no e-car startup that has never had cash crisis.”

Sina Tech also saw quite a few new Faraday Future cars that were being tested in the zone. Even though they were covered in cloak, it’s still apparent that they were incredibly long. We estimated that they might be as long as Buick GL8. Sina Tech had searched Faraday Future’s new cars online and they pretty much match what were there at the scene. But still, the engine hoods were different in length so they might be different models.

When we approached the cars that were being tested, we noticed that the driver was not driving the car. They were actually testing the cars’ autonomous driving and parking function. A lidar was installed on the front engine hood, which is also the technology that Google and Baidu are using. Although lidar has better precision compared with other autonomous driving technologies, Tesla gave up on the idea and turned to computer vision discrimination instead for the high cost.

Besides lidar, Faraday Future also equipped the new cars with lots of sensors and cameras. “Tech solutions like these are going to cost a lot. We focus on safety. We have been testing this device for nearly a year. Faraday Future must be a leading forerunner in this area in the industry,” Faraday Future’s advanced assistive driving and autonomous driving technology’s director Hong Bae said.

Very soon, Faraday Future will launch its very first mass-produced car on the CES. “We have been working very hard to bring a mass-produced car model to the market. This car model will achieve mass production real soon. Unlike traditional car makers, it won’t take us years to deliver an actual product after the product release. This new car model is positioned as a high-end electric car, even much more high-end than Tesla(in the U.S). It will be in the same level as Bentley and Ferrari.”

The new car tested at Faraday Future’s field was put to compete with Bentley Bentayga (priced at $230,000 in the U.S, ￥4 million in China), Ferrari 488 GTB (priced at $250,000 in the U.S, ￥3.24 million in China) and Tesla Model X P100D (priced at $135,000 in the U.S, ￥1.255 million in China). Though the result was unknown, Faraday Future has suggested that its new car has the capacity to compete with the other three on accelerating ability.

When will Faraday Future deliver the cars after announcing them on the CES? Sampson said: “Our production is different from traditional auto makers, so we can make our delivery very soon after the rollout. However, we still need time to build the factory in Nevada. One thing is for sure though, that is Faraday Future’s new cars will be produced through OEM in the beginning.”

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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Sina Tech, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Garrett Lee (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.