Max Ma’s hopeful vision and bright-eyed optimism is compelling. The CEO of Faraday Future’s sub-brand, Faraday X, laid out a narrative of a dogged company, overcoming a decade of obstacles to achieve production of its first product, then moving on to higher-volume segments. He promises affordable electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids ranging from $20,000 to $50,000. He promises a deeply integrated AI experience. It’s hopeful, it makes sense and now is the right time to do it.
But to believe in it, you have to believe in Faraday Future. That’s no small order.
You may be somewhat familiar with that name. The full tapestry of Faraday Future’s history eludes most; it stretches over more than a decade’s worth of corporate takeover politics, geopolitical intrigue and undelivered promises. Those promises typically came from Faraday Future’s founder, Yueting “YT” Jia. He was once hailed as one of China’s greatest internet entrepreneurs, but is now not especially welcome in his home country after failing to repay his considerable debts.
But if you do know the company, you probably know the FF 91.
Unveiled at CES in 2017, the FF91 promised 1,000-plus horsepower, 378 miles of electric range and Level 4 autonomous driving. Those are the sorts of wild technologies we’d expect from one of China’s best EV makers today, but Faraday Future once said it would go to production sometime in 2018 at a planned Nevada factory—one built from the ground-up, not a retrofitted old plant like those used by Tesla and Rivian in their early days.
The original Faraday Future FF91 concept.
Yet the factory never materialized, despite heavy investment and incentives from the state of Nevada. The company stopped work on the factory before the FF91 was even revealed, leading the treasurer of Nevada at the time to say it was a “Ponzi scheme,” per Fortune.
Over eight years after that halt, seven years after its introduction, six years after its proposed production start date, Faraday Future has produced just 16 FF 91s. Almost all—if not all—have been given to employees, paid spokespeople and other advocates. One of those spokespeople is also perpetually troubled American singer Chris Brown, so it’s hard to say the company’s judgment has improved.
Now, Faraday Future is back at CES, with another set of compelling promises. But it says this time is going to be different.
The New Promise
Faraday X is the company’s new sub-brand. While Faraday Future’s sole product, the FF 91, costs over $300,000, Ma said “FX” will target the $20,000-$50,000 range. These will include the FX 5, priced between $20,000-30,000, the FX 6, with a target price between $30,000 and $50,000 and the “Super One” minivan at an undisclosed price.
We know little about the FX 5 and FX 6. But FX had a Super One prototype on hand, and told us that the vehicle—which is to be assembled in the California manufacturing facility it now has—will be in production by the end of this year. The Super One is aiming to introduce Americans to the sort of “luxury MPVs” popular in China and other Asian markets. Think Cadillac Escalade luxury in a Toyota Sienna package, with big plush recliners and top-flight tech.
A teaser for the FX 6.
Photo by: Faraday Future
Ma said this was a “Nokia and iPhone moment” for the brand, where “you have the right product and open people’s hearts.”
He’s got plenty of reasons to trust his instincts. There’s merit to a luxury minivan, an efficient solution surely intriguing to Ma, and engineer by training. He’s got the car guy bona-fides, too. Xiao “Max” Ma has been at Faraday for over a decade, but before that he did engineering work for Altran, a supplier to Porsche, and Bosch, where he worked on the V-8, W-12 and W-16 Volkswagen Group Cars. He even has van credibility. He drives a Kia Carnival here. But there’s a gap between the highest-end minivans and the super-luxury SUVs, he says, and that’s where the Super One will fit. It’ll transform the market, he says, as luxury MPVs transformed high-end markets in Asia.
“The same thing is going to happen here,” Ma told InsideEVs. “Today, the celebrities are using Escalades. [It’s] big, but there’s no real luxury, top luxury, or, you know, space and comfort. There’s no AI. And then if you want to drive yourself, it’s very hard to drive. It’s a big car, right? At the same time, celebrities are starting to modify their Mercedes Sprinter vans because they do want to have [this experience].”
Everything’s About AI
That quote is telling because Faraday is locked in on AI. The company was among the first auto brands to extensively use AI buzzwords, and it was hardly alone in this at CES 2025, but arguably no one has taken it this far before.
The FF91 is not an EV. It is an “AI-EV.” The Super One is not an MPV. It is a “Luxury AI MPV.” And because it will come as a plug-in hybrid with to-be-announced specs, it will be a Range Extended Artificial Intelligence Electric Vehicle, or “RE-AIEV” to keep it concise.
Over an hour of introduction, both FX CEO Ma and Faraday Future CEO Matthias Aydt emphasized that AI is core to their mission. (Jia was removed as CEO in 2022, following an internal investigation. He is still at the company.) It is once again a reasonable position if you’re trying to pitch a tech company today. Yet as soon as we looked at the product itself, cracks started to form.
Things Get Weird
A product representative gave me and a few other journalists a tour of the Super One prototype. That, however, is a generous term. FX is transparent that they’re making this with the help of a Chinese partner, using a mature design.
Essentially, the Super One will be a rebadged Chinese plug-in hybrid MPV, with FF’s tech. Yet the prototype they showed was… just a Chinese MPV. It could have been a Dongfeng Voyah Dream, based on what I saw inside. But I’m no expert on Chinese MPVs, and FX didn’t allow me to take any photos.Regardless of what Chinese MPV it’s based on, however, the Super One didn’t appear to have much FX-specific equipment.
The interior of the Voyah Dream, a Chinese MPV. This is not the FX Super One’s interior, but it looks mostly similar to what I experienced.
Photo by: Voyah
The entire tech stack was unfinished, so the dashboard was covered in black cloth, as prototypes often are. Instead, FX showed us the big recliners in the rear. They’re comfortable and offer power recline and massage functions, with similar thrones for the third row. It was a nice experience, a step above what you’d see in a top-end Toyota Sienna or Kia Carnival.
I didn’t see any AI features. I asked the product representative what AI features it would have.
“Well, it’s a general term,” he said. He added that it would support voice controls and have semi-autonomous driving features. But given that Ma claimed no other MPV product has AI on board, you’d expect more than two features every single minivan on sale offers.
For a better view of what Faraday’s AI could do, they showed us an FF 91. It had impressive voice commands. The representative was able to say “Find me an Italian restaurant with outdoor seating and at least four stars, exclude pizzerias.” The car complied, and when he said “Navigate to the third one,” it understood his context.
The tech suite in the FF 91 is pretty snazzy, though I did spot some bugs. I only used it briefly, so I’ll reserve full judgment.
Photo by: Faraday Future
But the “large language model” AI companion on the rear screen was far less impressive. A spokesperson said it would automatically pull up relevant stock tickers to videos you watch. After a few failed attempts, they got a CNBC YouTube video to play. As promised, the AI companion pulled up the stock ticker. Yet it was either at least three months out of date or entirely fabricated, with no resemblance to the current stock price.
I can’t think of a more apt metaphor for shoehorned AI integration in 2024. It shows incorrect information without me asking for it. This, I should note, is on the production car, the FF91. The Super One hasn’t even gotten that far.
The Elephant In The Room
At the center of the Faraday Future saga sits one man: YT Jia.
Social media sensation, Chinese entrepreneur and founder and chief product officer at Faraday Future. Conspicuously absent from our meeting, and, per Ma, still in some legal hot water in China. Jia founded companies like Leshi, a Netflix-like streaming service; LeEco, which dabbled in everything from TVs to smartphones with a common software ecosystem underpinning it all; and a Le-branded car enterprise that seemed to be different from Faraday Future. The lines between his various enterprises were often blurry, but at one point he was said to be a billionaire. Amid China’s rise in the 2010s, he was once taken quite seriously as perhaps that country’s answer to Elon Musk.
Yet Jia had incurred massive personal debt which he secured using Faraday Future stock. When he failed to repay creditors, he entered bankruptcy in the U.S., but never quite settled his affairs in the mainland. Ma said that some issues with his status in China persist today.
“Under U.S. law, YT has been through a successful personal restructuring,” Ma said. But that doesn’t mean he’s in the clear at home.
“And within [Chinese] law, there have been certain small amounts of funding that need to be further cleared. So that’s the reason why he’s still working very hard to, kind of through different means, to try to earn money and pay the debt back to the debt creditors,” Ma said.
It leaves him in a vulnerable position. Facing serious issues at home, and with an American company—FF—that has already gone bust once, and had to be rescued by Evergrande, of all companies. If you know that name, it’s because you know that the Chinese property giant went bust a few years back, and almost took the entire country’s economy with it. So Jia’s own issues still add to the uncertainty around Faraday, even as the company’s leadership emphasizes him as a key player.
“His role is pretty important. He’s the founder of the company,” Aydt, the global CEO, told InsideEVs. “He has given his ideas to the products. So from that perspective, he’s an essential and crucial element for our leadership team. He’s reporting in parallel to me, directly to the board, so his role is focusing very much on product and the user ecosystem.”
He wasn’t concerned about Jia’s personal issues, either, describing them as just that: personal. Aydt noted that Faraday Future has no further exposure to any issues in Jia’s personal life. Both Aydt and Ma also emphasized that they believe Jia was a good person, and that they trusted him.
The question, then, is whether shareholders, customers and critics should share that trust.
The Faraday Future team at the FF 91’s start of production.
Where Does FF Go From Here?
Ma directly appealed for more positivity around the brand, a bizarre ask for a CEO speaking to the media. He painted a picture of resilience, of pushing through when everyone doubted. He has been at the company from the beginning, then lived through an attempted corporate takeover, the failure of the Nevada plant and, eventually, the launch of the FF 91. He’s still scrapping, still trying to make it work.
I noted that from our perspective, it was hard to lend FF credibility. I don’t want to mislead my audience, and FF has given the public little reason to trust it. Ma understands.
“We have been trained, with big hearts, with resilience, with hard [work.] We also want to have this big opportunity to prove that we can do it again, right?” Ma told InsideEVs.
That’s YT Jia on the right.
He added: “There’s also activities about a reputational issue. But today we have cleared up all those issues. It’s all behind us. We want to have a fresh start.”
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