Gardena-based Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc. unveiled the official name of its manufacturing plant located in Hanford: the FF ieFactory California. Additionally, the company also announced last week that it executed an agreement for a new financing facility.
Under this new financing, Faraday will receive an initial $52 million of committed funds out of roughly $600 million. Funds managed by ATW Partners, a U.S.-based institutional investor, led the transaction.
The FF ieFactory facility will produce Faraday’s FF 91 luxury electric vehicles for the North America and China markets. The vehicle is expected to roll off the assembly line later this year.
For preorders of the Futurist vehicle, U.S. customers must put down a deposit of $1,500. For the Futurist Alliance Edition, preorders require a $5,000 deposit for customers in the U.S. As of the end of the second quarter, there were 399 preorders.
Carsten Breitfeld, global chief executive of Faraday Future, said that the company continues to make progress on construction and development at the Hanford manufacturing plant as it gets close to the start of production, slated to begin in the late third quarter or fourth quarter.
“Main body lines, e-coat systems and paint ovens and conveyance are all in place for start of production and we continue to build production-intent vehicles that will be used for further testing and validation,” Breitfeld said in a statement.
Faraday is close to accomplishing what it calls its sixth milestone, the completion of construction and equipment installation in the final vehicle manufacturing areas. Robots in the body shop are undergoing final commissioning and validation to support production activity, a release said.
The first electric vehicle to be made at the factory, the FF 91 EV, was designed in the company’s Los Angeles headquarters and engineered in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and China. But the FF ieFactory California is about more than just making an EV product. Faraday is creating a larger “intelligent ecosystem,” hence the “ie” in the name.
Faraday Future will hire upwards of 350 new employees at this facility as the company ramps up production.
Faraday released its second-quarter earnings on Aug. 15, reporting a net loss of $142 million. The company attributed it to an increase in headcount and other expenses.
