From mounting debts to supplier lawsuits, and all-around mismanagement, Faraday Future’s once-promising trajectory has all but crashed. And now, after all the setbacks the California-based company has faced in the past year, the last straw appears to have snapped. The company is abandoning its massive $1 billion production facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. Might as well throw in the white flag and fade into the shadows because there appears to be no turning back after this latest debacle.

Of course, Faraday needs to keep a positive face and its chief financial officer, Stefan Krause, appears to be the one who’s doing it. In a statement to the Nevada Independent, Krause confirmed that the company remains “committed to the Apex site in Las Vegas for long-term vehicle manufacturing.” Hollow words at this point, but you have to admire the man’s dedication to the company’s increasingly fragile future. What’s clear is Faraday is in a lot of trouble and recent news from China revealing that a Shanghai court froze $183 million in assets of Jia Yueting, the company’s main financier, is another headache that it has to deal with. It is more than just a coincidence that the company abandoned its massive Nevada factory a week after Jia’s latest round of legal and financial woes made the news. It’s a shame because the car the company produced – the FF91 – has shown a lot of promise, even setting a record at the 2017 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb for its segment. Now it appears that Pikes Peak will be the only highlight of the FF91's short life as Faraday Future teeters on the verge of collapse, if it isn't there already.

Continue after the jump to read the full story.

Faraday Future's ship is sinking

It’s been a wild and tumultuous ride for the people behind Faraday Future ever since the company burst onto the scene back in 2014. At first, it wasn’t hard to get excited about the company’s promises, which included making a run at Tesla as the standard-bearer in the electric car segment. It appeared to have a solid financial base and it didn’t shirk away from all the skeptics who thought it wouldn’t amount to anything.

For a while, it even seemed like Faraday was on track to validate its ambitions. It managed to secure tax incentives from Nevada, hired highly-regarded executives from Tesla, Mercedes, BMW, Ferrari, and Volkswagen, and legitimately positioned itself as a threat to the establishment. But like most ambitious start-ups, Faraday couldn’t get out of its own way.

Jia’s LeEco conglomerate that was funding Faraday Future also started getting a little too ambitious for its own good, spending cash on a few more automotive initiatives and not concentrating on Faraday as a whole. One former Faraday executive even admitted to The Verge that the company was bleeding money on “unimportant things,” leaving its cash flow bone dry to the point that the same exec said that the company is in danger of missing payroll to its employees.

All this points to a startling number of issues that are poised to doom Faraday Future if the company doesn’t get its act together. Sadly, a number of these problems appear to be beyond the company’s control at this point – Jia’s legal issues in China being one of them – so it’s going to be interesting to see if its plan to find a smaller location to get its production facility up and running ever comes to pass.

I’m not putting my hopes up anymore though because it appears that the ship has sailed on saving Faraday Future. It’s a shame, but it’s not the first time this has happened in the industry. A young start-up automaker got too close to the sun and tried to touch it, only to burn its wings in the process. Icarus, anyone?

2018 Faraday Future FF 91 - Drivetrain Specifications

Powertrain

multi-motor setup

Horsepower

1,050 HP

0 to 60 mph

2.39 seconds

Range

378 miles (EPA est.) and over 700 km (NEDC est.)

Charging Speed

More than 500 miles per hour


References

Read our full review on the 2018 Faraday Future FF 91.