Faraday Future Cleared By SEC After Years-Long Investigation

• The SEC closed its investigation into California-based EV startup Faraday Future.
• The EV maker had been under the spotlight for allegedly fake sales numbers and “false and misleading statements” regarding its stock market listing.
• The financial regulator’s probe began in 2022.

Faraday Future, the California startup known for the low-volume (and outrageously named) FF91 2.0 Futurist Alliance luxury electric performance vehicle, has been cleared by the Securities and Exchange Commission after a four-year-long probe.

The financial regulator was looking into whether the company made “false and misleading statements” when it went public in 2021 following a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). A separate part of the probe looked at allegations that Faraday Future had faked the sales numbers of the FF91 in 2023.

Now, the SEC has dropped its investigation, Faraday Future confirmed in a blog post. According to TechCrunch, the decision comes despite the SEC staff on the case recommending an enforcement action last year. The company and the people involved have been officially cleared now that the probe has been dismissed.

“We can now put all our energy into strategy execution,” said YT Jia, FF Founder and Global Co-CEO. “Over the past five years, we have had to spend a great deal of time, effort, and money on cooperating with the investigation. Now, I, the management team, and the Company’s capital and resources can all be 100% focused on strategy execution, business progress, and value creation on our core business of EAI Vehicles and Embodied AI (EAI) Robotics.”

As a reminder, Faraday Future debuted the luxurious $300,000 FF91 in 2023, choosing a peculiar and hard-to-remember name for it. Officially dubbed the FF91 2.0 Futurist Alliance–and built upon the so-called FF aiHyper 6×4 Architecture 2.0–the car sold fewer than 20 units in two years, despite backing from several celebrities.

After the failed FF91, which is still on offer, Faraday Future announced its plans to go into the luxury van business with the new Faraday Super X One, an electric, artificial intelligence-infused people carrier with a big screen instead of a conventional grille. Deliveries of this model have yet to begin, but the company says that the first shipments are scheduled for 2026.

More recently, Faraday Future announced that it’s going into the robotics game this year, with two humanoid and two dog-like robots on offer. In the meantime, though, the primary focus will be on doing whatever it takes to prop up the stock price, which has fallen below the minimum $1 required by Nasdaq.