There were
five. And now, there are none.
Faraday
Future, the once-buzzy Chinese electric vehicle startup that has delivered lots
of promises and fanfare, but has struggled to deliver an actual product,
suffered back-to-back departures this week of the remaining five founding
members of its executive team.
Nick Sampson, a co-founder and senior vice
president of product strategy, and Dag Reckhorn, the company’s senior vice
president of global manufacturing, resigned this week.
The
departures were first reported by The Verge, which has closely followed the
company’s numerous problems. Sampson confirmed his resignation to TechCrunch.
Faraday Future has not responded to a request for comment. (We’ll update if
that happens).
Faraday
Future initially launched with the backing of Jia Yueting, who co-founded the
company with Sampson, a former Tesla director, and Tony Nie, a former Lotus
executive. Nie left earlier this year. The founding executive team included
Reckhorn, Sampson, Richard Kim as well as two other Tesla veterans Alan Cherry
and Tom Wessner.
Sampson and
Reckhorn were the last of the founding executive team. Only Jia Yueting, the
company’s initial backer, co-founder and CEO, remains.
It’s been
more than four years of drama for the company that has been trying to begin
production of an ultra luxury electric SUV called the FF91 by the end of the
year.
It’s most
recent setback may sound the death knell for Faraday Future. The company is quickly running out of money,
a problem that accelerated during a fight with its main financial backer,
Chinese real estate giant Evergrande Group. Evergrande came to Faraday’s rescue
just as it was running out of cash in 2017 and took a 45 percent stake in the
company for $2 billion.
That
relationship has since soured. Faraday had spent $800 million by July 2018 as
it pushed to complete a pre-production version of the FF91 vehicle at its
Hanford, California factory. Evergrande has denied an advance of any more
capital and accused Jia of trying to back out of its investor deal. The case
went to arbitration and Faraday Future is allowed to seek up to $500 million in
new investment — if it can find a willing investor. Even then, Evergrande must
still approve any deal.
Now, as
Faraday Future seeks other investments, the company has laid off employees, cut
salaries and most recently shut down some operations at its Hanford factory and
Gardena, California headquarters.
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