Faraday Future Intelligent Electric has postponed the start of production and deliveries of its long-awaited debut vehicle to the “third or fourth quarter of 2022,” and said it needed additional capital to pull off the launch, media reports said.
The Los Angeles-based electric vehicle startup, which went public in a July 2021 merger with a blank cheque company, had previously said it planned to launch the battery-powered SUV as soon as this month, a Bloomberg report in the Detroit News said.
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Founded in 2014, Faraday Future once promised to start making and selling the so-called FF91 SUV as early as 2018 but has been forced to postpone delivery several times, the report said.
“The company needs additional cash to commercially launch the FF 91, and is currently seeking to raise additional capital to fund its operations through 31 December, 2022,” it said in a filing cited by Bloomberg.
Faraday Future had previously said it wouldn’t need additional funds until after the launch of the vehicle, the report noted.
The company reportedly said in an investor slide deck it wanted to raise about US$325 million.
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By GlobalDataBloomberg added the delay came amid a standoff between the electric vehicle startup and its founder, Jia Yueting. In late June, a shareholder group affiliated with him demanded the removal of a director from the startup’s board.
Faraday reportedly responded the group had offered the director a contract worth up to $700,000 in order for him to resign.
On 15 July, those shareholders said in a filing that they had offered Faraday a lifeline of “at least $100 million” on the condition that the director resign. Several days later, the group accused the startup of not treating the offer “with the gravity, urgency and fairness it deserves in light of” its financial condition, Bloomberg reported.
