This week, China’s LeEco canned the majority of its North American workforce and we assumed the layoffs spelled trouble for its business interests at Faraday Future. Not so, claims the automotive startup. In an emailed response to our earlier article, Faraday says LeEco’s decision to massively scale back its U.S. operations will not affect its daily goings-on or hinder the development of the FF91 electric vehicle.
Faraday Future spokesman Rich Otto also wanted to ensure us the company has no layoffs of its own planned. Obviously, the grim situation over at LeEco had everyone wondering if that was it for FF. But the aspiring electric automaker has come back with a resounding not as far as we’re concerned.
After LeEco’s announcement to employees regarding the cuts, Faraday CFO Stefan Krause issued a statement hoping to dispel concerns over the firm’s well being. “Hearing about layoffs at our strategic partner LeEco is discouraging,” he said. “However, I want to be clear that these layoffs have no impact on Faraday Future. We remain committed to our immediate goals of diversifying FF’s investment sources and getting FF 91 on the road in 2018, and we remain confident in the outlook for diversifying FF’s global investment.”
This doesn’t mean Faraday is out of the woods. LeEco hasn’t confirmed whether it will continue investing in the automaker and the FF 91 still has kinks to work out before it reaches production. However, the statement does confirm the brand isn’t interested in throwing in the towel.
[Image: Faraday Future]
With all the problems….why would anyone invest in Faraday
Patents.
(Psst…There are no day-to-day operations)
Beat me to it.
I hope that’s true, but I’ve worked for corporations that, at a high level, had no direction (or terrible direction), and as a result, their awesome little subsidiaries, despite being guaranteed autonomy, died on the vine.
What day-to-day operations? Sending out press releases to try to forestall the inevitable?