Last night Faraday Future revealed its new concept car, the all-electric FFZero1.
The start-up, which is backed by Chinese TV giants LeTV, live-streamed the big reveal from CES 2016 last night.
The concept prototype could easily be mistaken for a Batmobile, or a TRON set piece. In short, it looks about as futuristic as we could imagine.
Faraday Future, the 18-month-old start-up company, says they are on track for getting a production-ready vehicle made in the next two years.
The slick video that was shown at CES 2016 certainly looks the part (shown below), but the success of FFZero1 hinges on whether the company can carry all of their ideas through to production.
Features
The car boasts some pretty impressive features, including:
- A smartphone dock in the steering wheel
- 1,000 horsepower
- Ability to top 200mph and reach 0–60mph in less than three seconds
- A helmet that provides water and oxygen to the driver
- Aero tunnels that allow air to circulate through the vehicle (cooling the batteries)
- A multi-touch screen interface and augmented reality projections
- ‘UFO line’ edged side design feature
Connected mobility
As we speculated yesterday, in our roundup of the most exciting automotive announcements to expect at CES 2016, Faraday Future has some bigger plans, outside of the technical specification of its new concept car.
This has to do with how the cars will interact with each other, and how this will change our view of car ownership.
Jordan Golson, who ran a live commentary on the big reveal for The Verge was sceptical in parts about Faraday Future’s vision: ‘Faraday Future says it is looking at the future of mobility. It all sounds very ambitious… Yeah, very ambitious.’
Ding Lei, Managing Director of LeTV, Faraday Future’s ‘strategic partner’, said the focus was not just to create an electric vehicle, but to ‘build an internet infrastructure to connect the vehicle’ and to build ‘an entertainment ecosystem and integrate it into the future of the vehicle’.
The suggestion is that vehicle ownership will be shaken, and that those travelling in a Faraday Future vehicle will be entertained – by ‘the Netflix of China’ no less (LeTV).
Variable architecture
Faraday Future believes it can move very quickly and make its ideas a reality in a short space of time. How are they going to do this? With a new take on building vehicles.
The company suggests that it can make a variety of models by using the same basic wheelbase for all of them.
The wheelbase structure will allow different battery packs and various motor configurations to be added, depending on whether the model prioritises horsepower or range.
The structure could also support both two or AWD systems.