Last night, Faraday Future finally unveiled the company’s first offering, the FF 91, to a crowd of eager journalists at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Using a 130-kWh battery pack, the FF 91 delivers a claimed 378 miles per charge; however, the intriguing stats, at least to gearheads like us, are in its performance credentials.
With over 1,050 horsepower on tap, the FF 91 takes just 2.39 seconds to hit 60 mph, a tenth of a second faster than the Tesla Model S P100D. Additionally, it’s coupled to an AWD system that allows for rear-wheel steer, letting it go around corners as well as smoking everything off the line. However, Faraday Future didn’t just want to rest on its numbers alone. That’s why the company took its prototype to Irwindale Speedway in California and lined it up against some of the quickest cars around.
As you can see, the car is quick, beating a Ferrari, Tesla, and Bentley Bentayga. Yet, there’s something wrong with these drag races: the scale. Irwindale is an eighth mile drag strip. Short in comparison to many other strips, but the short length was likely picked to show off the FF 91’s acceleration ability. But here’s the problem, Faraday Future isn’t even using the whole strip in this video.
The question becomes, if Faraday Future’s car truly has all that performance grunt, why stack the deck and potentially mislead consumers? In our opinion, Faraday Future needed a win after months of speculation on whether or not the car would show up to CES. Following rumors of internal turmoil, rising debts, and an ever-changing executive team, the startup EV needed to show the world something positive. Unfortunately, during the company’s press conference last night, the FF 91 immediately broke down.
When the Faraday Future team attempted to show the car’s self-park feature, it stopped halfway through the presentation as engineers looked on from the crowd in horror, unable to do anything to alleviate the issue. It was cringe worthy.
Building a car is hard. Building a car and a company from scratch? That’s damn near impossible without almost limitless capital. Faraday Future can still become the Tesla fighter it says it will be, but not without more money, less turmoil, and better engineering. Hopefully the failure on stage was the company’s last.
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