Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Faraday Future: The secretive car company chasing Tesla”.
Tesla is getting most of the attention in the electric car world, but here’s a mysterious California company that keeps making big hires from BMW and even Tesla itself and has quietly built a staff of over 400 people. I had a chance to tour Faraday futures Southern California headquarters before they come out of stealth mode and to talk to the company’s top engineer and designer Nick Sampson is the senior vice president of Faraday future and is one of the company’s founders leading engineering. So the first discussion started eighteen months ago, eighteen months ago, we’ve got ta have car that perhaps can just turn up. When you need it, you could don’t have to own it. You can just pull it up on your phone or you can free book it, or it will just know that you need it because you’re scheduled to go somewhere.
We wanted to not just be an automotive company, so we reached out into the aerospace industries into medical device industries into the Internet technology industry to pull together a group of people with a diverse range of skills, Nick’s or woody. What do you bring to the equation as far as your background you’re, an engineer by training, uh engineer by training, but also bring more than engineering? I also studied economics and business, so I understand both sides of things and Tesla. For instance, we did a completely different sales model rather than the traditional dealership model. We used a model where we sold via the internet sold via stores sold in places that people had more access to rather than the sort of rather remote, so is Faraday going to have a similar spirit of Tesla or how is it going to be different? It’S going to be different in that we’re creating an environment, that’s even more creative, many people, look at Tesla and think of that they’ve done it differently to a traditional, auto industry which they have, but there’s there’s other other ways even more different. Imagine the future and the environment you want to be in, and the products and the world that you want to create and then work out. How would I get to that place if I go on a road trip now the weekend that I have to plan that in in indoors on a computer, and then I have to go to the car, and we put that in. I have to sort of mess about. I can’t it’s not seamless, it’s not a world where the car knows me knows my needs now. If I could, if I planned something on one device, why shouldn’t that be available? Another device? If I plan my journey, I should get in the car. The car should know my journey or should know some of the places I want to visit on the way, because it knows my preferences or even suggest places it might say.
Well we’re going on this journey to here. Would you like to stop at this restaurant rather than we have to do even bother to go on and say? Can you find me a restaurant? The car should begin to. Let me learn. My desires have learned what I what I like, where I want to go or even not of me, the owner or the user of the car.
It should the other people that are with me, and I can see a time through envisioning your car, that’s much smarter than anything. We’Ve got today. So if we went on a journey together, it should know mymusictaste because it knows who I am and it’s read my playlists and it should know who you are and the car sure to say. I’M gon na start playing these tracks because I found a commonality there. You both should like this John and music. You should also know other things about everybody.
That’S connected with the car. Well, there’d be a car with a single owner, or do you see it as no very much? We see that? Yes, there will be cars that still have single owners, but in the future, with their beer, we have vast number of people who don’t want to own a car anymore. We might, instead of sort of having own owning a car, it might be a subscription. Does that make you want to make something that could race that could be have a performance? I guess I’m always gon na. Have that desire? That’S right, but when you start a company you can do that right, like you can say why, don’t we try this yeah there there’s there’s the opportunity to, instead of it being a great thing to get a lot of people around in an efficient manner. We just had that just for one person to go and have fun so from an engineering point.
Does that mean you start with one car and you build out from that, or do you introduce ten different shapes and that people choose which one they want or how does that work? Our longer-term vision is that we’re gon na have to develop a completely different range of vehicles for the future and where’s your company in that we’re moving remarkably quickly. We’Ve already got a test vehicle out running testing electrical system here in California and we’re already well through the design process for production. We already are releasing data and information to start having parts made for real vehicles in the future, so it is an American car company. You know you’re trying to live yet the company is was founded here in California and we’re going to be manufacturing in the USA. Thinking about you know really being in the West Coast now this is, we have Apple that might be coming into the car where the Google new companies that are really no longer traditional automotive companies. So do you see those companies as like-minded competitors, not like-minded competitors? I just find them considering as like-minded allies to me.
It’S a great thing that some of those other companies are coming into the industry. It’S not a threat more that people that join the more consumers will realize the opportunities that are available and that the swing will accelerate them. Richard Kim best known for leading the design and the BMW, i3 and i8 is now the head of design for Faraday.
It’S about it’s not really about designing a car, it’s more about designing a brand designing from the ground up clean sheet of paper sheet of paper, but is that that’s an old way of doing things right? Well, it literally and figuratively a clean sheet of paper. I mean, and you come from personally working on you know such kind of design crazed cars. Like I 8×3, do you draw from some of that knowledge? Or do you just start completely new yeah we’re trying to kind of hit the reset button, we’re designing the car from the inside out and that’s unique.
We do a lot moon, oculus and augmented reality. So it’s a very unique org structure. Yes, so maybe you can talk about where you are in the design process? Is this an actual car here that yes, so this is one of the few prototypes we’re working on we’re working on multiple things at the same time, and this is a model of something we did in this very new and unique process, it’s very, very digital oriented, A lot of VR a lot of AR so this is the results. That’S right when you mention this, this car, it’s a process that starts, you said from the interior going out. So it’s not just a shell. Eventually, it’s a guy’s a lot of your hard wiring in there yeah. What’S the advantage to using to using AI into using these sort of intuitive ways of designing, does that allow you different materials to work with, so that process is giving us time we’re doing things? Super fast, third of the time that I’m used to and we’re still doing it at high quality, whereas the old, older ways first to do maybe a clay model. And then you do a hard model and then you paint it. And then you do an interior same process and then you kind of put them together and you’re.
Like oh wait, I missed something with our process. Everything is checked immediately. It’S not clear when Faraday will unveil its first product.
I expect to hear more from Faraday future. In 2016, so by 2020, will we see your cars on the road? Absolutely .