American electric vehicle (EV) start-up Faraday Future Intelligent Electric announced over the weekend that it has secured $US135 million in financing which it hopes will allow it to begin production of the FF 91 electric sedan.
Faraday Future announced that it had concluded a series of definitive agreements for financing and other financial moves which, when completed, will mean the company has raised all necessary funds to start production of the FF 91 Futurist.
The California-based company has had to suffer through years of financial turmoil since it was founded in 2014, and only last July had to again delay the launch of the FF 91 as it sought further capital to begin production.
A month later, the company announced that it had lined up new funding which, at the time, led the company to state it would then be able to begin production – a claim which has obviously proven to be optimistic.
Fast-forward to the weekend and Faraday Future completed the execution of definitive agreements for financing commitments of $US135 million in secured notes, with $US80 million to be funded within 10 business days.
This latest round of financing, combined with the $US33.4 million which was committed to the company in December, has led Faraday Future to claim that it “has received sufficient financing commitments for the funds required for [start of production] of the FF 91 Futurist assuming timely receipt of funds.”
Faraday Future hopes to begin production next month of a saleable FF 91 Futurist model – the invite-only run of models that Faraday announced back in July of 2021 had all been secured. Models would start coming off the production line in early April, with deliveries before the end of April.
“Securing $135.0 million in funding commitments is critical and imperative for Faraday Future’s sprint to FF 91 Futurist’s [start of production],” said Xuefeng (XF) Chen, Global CEO of Faraday Future.
“The availability of these additional funding commitments provides confidence that FF can reach the SOP milestone in March 2023. We will deliver the FF 91 Futurist with high quality and high product power as soon as possible after receipt of the funds contemplated by these financings.”
Expected to offer an industry-leading 1050-horsepower, 130kWh battery pack with immersive liquid cooling technology, the FF91 Futurist Edition models will supposedly boast acceleration of 0-100km/h in around 2.4 seconds as well as rear wheels independently driven and controlled by dual rear motors.
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.