Broke, but not broken.
Despite an uncertain future, Californian electric mobility company Faraday Future appears not to care in the slightest, with the company releasing a series of videos on YouTube detailing its push to compete in this yeas’ Pikes Peak hillclimb event. The normally secretive company, known for its endless teasers of essentially nothing at all, has taken the opportunity to cement its place at the Pikes Peak event.
A “new level of transparency” is being promised with the Pikes Peak entry, with the company running a FF91 prototype in the ‘Exhibition’ class of entrants at the 101st hill climb. While this class isn’t the most competitive grouping at the event, it should still allow FF to post a competitive time and showcase its “advanced” powertrain, assuming it makes it up the hill at all.
Electric cars have become quite the spectacle at the Race to the Clouds. In recent years, the ability of EVs to keep going at full-pelt toward the top of the course (at a lofty 4,300m above sea level) where internal-combustion cars begin to wheeze has proven them to be highly competitive in the event, with some of 2016’s best recorded times posted by electric cars, and the 2015 event crowning an electric car as the best overall performer.
For the uninitiated, the ambitious Chinese-backed electric-vehicle startup is favoured fodder for critics and observers thanks to its ridiculous, reckless, and often eyebrow-raising corporate antics. The company boasted a US$1bil factory it couldn’t afford, talked about seats it cannot use (thanks to a lawsuit by the seat vendor who didn’t get paid), teased features that didn’t work, and claimed achievements it really shouldn’t have. They clearly didn’t heed advice not to count chickens before they hatch, or talk about self-parking before it actually parks.
With a bevy of highly-engineered, rigorously-tested, and extremely-competitive electric vehicles expected to turn up at this years’ climb, we bet that the team at Faraday Future are praying their FF91 doesn’t get “shy” and simply pack up. Again.
For more information on Faraday Future, stay tuned to CarShowroom.
