Faraday Future's second EV will be manufactured by South Korean auto-parts supplier Myoung Shin, Faraday announced Wednesday in a press release. Production is scheduled to start in 2024, with a "high volume production" target later that same year.
This new model, the Faraday Future FF 81, will be a "luxury mass-market electric vehicle" aimed at a wider audience than the FF 91, Faraday said. The company claims the FF 91 will launch in the third quarter of 2022, after years of delays.
Myoung Shin's former General Motors factory in Gunsan, South Korea, offers the scale for "high volume production," Faraday said. The company also said Myoung Shin will reserve sufficient FF 81 production capacity to meet its forecasts.
Faraday Future FF91 prototype
Myoung Shin is the same supplier that was due to help produce Byton vehicles under contract from the same former GM facility. It's likely no coincidence that Byton's original CEO Carsten Breitfeld is now the CEO of Faraday.
Faraday said it will continue leasing a former Pirelli tire factory in Hanford, California, which the company planned to refit for car production after abandoning plans for a Nevada factory that had been backed by generous state incentives. Faraday also claims it is on track to achieve profitability by 2025, but to do that it will have to finally start manufacturing cars.
The FF 91 was unveiled in what Faraday called production form in January 2017, and the company released the first body-in-white from its Hanford facility in summer 2018. At the time, Faraday said it planned to deliver the first vehicles to customers as early as December of that year. So after years of financial complications, if Faraday achieves its Q3 2022 goal, the FF 91 will be almost four years delayed.
