Faraday Future is ringing in 2019 with some much-needed good news. The beleaguered electric car maker that turned heads at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show announced that it had reached an agreement with investor Evergrande Health to let bygones be bygones, effectively ending a legal battle between the two sides stemming from Faraday’s accusations that Evergrande was withholding payments to the electric car maker in an attempt to gain control of their intellectual property. The agreement, which Faraday posted on its Twitter account, will “terminate the previous investment contract, withdraw and waive all litigation and arbitration proceedings, and release all security including the asset preservation pledge and equity financing rights.” As it is, Faraday Future is now free to pursue new financing as it desperately tries to remain afloat in the industry.
Let’s just put it out there. 2018 wasn’t a good year for Faraday Future. It wasn’t even a bad year if you think about it. 2018 was a crippling year for an electric car maker that was supposed to be one of the pioneers in its segment. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world of “supposed to be’s.” To say that Faraday had a bad year would be underselling the reality that the company could have — and probably should have — folded numerous times in the last 12 months. It laid off employees, bled money like there was no tomorrow, and lost any kind of equity it had in the business. The company’s fortunes got so bad that one of its co-founders, Nick Sampson, walked out of the door, claiming that the company was “effectively insolvent.” Even the things that did go right — the 11th-hour investment from China’s Evergrande Health — ended up causing more headaches than it probably should have.
I don’t really know how many lives Faraday Future has, but apparently, it survived enough to live to see 2019. It’s still on life support, sure, but the restructured deal it agreed to with Evergrande subsidiary Season Smart gives Faraday more breathing room than it probably had under the last deal. More importantly, the new agreed also gives the automaker a new lease on life or at least the opportunity for one through new financing opportunities with other potential investors. That's the good news.
If there is a sliver of good news here, it’s that Faraday can approach 2019 with a clean slate. What it does with that clean slate is entirely up to the company. The first order of business, it seems, is to push through with the promised deliveries of the FF 91 SUV, which has been in production for two years after taking the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show by storm. According to Faraday, developed of the FF 91 is all but done as a number of pre-production units have already been built ahead of its launch.
But it’s also a new year, and like most things, we’re going into 2019 with clear minds and a barrel-full of optimism in our hearts. Here’s to hoping that Faraday Future has a better 2019 than what it had to go through in 2018. Whether that happens is entirely up to the people who are running the company, or at least the ones who are still there. We’re not bullish that the company will survive the year, but we’re also not discounting it from making a triumphant rise from the ashes. That’s the kind of positive equity you get when the calendar flips to a new year. Let’s all hope it lasts longer than it probably should.
Further reading
Read our full review on the 2018 Faraday Future FF 91.