Faraday Future unveiled the FF91 in January at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show © Bloomberg
Faraday Future, the ambitious US electric car start-up backed by Chinese tech entrepreneur Jia Yueting, has given up on plans to build a $1bn factory in Nevada for its forthcoming FF91 vehicle as it races towards next year's launch deadline.
The move to indefinitely postpone construction of its Las Vegas facility comes as Faraday hunts for new investors, after some of Mr Jia's assets were frozen in China.
Faraday has pitched itself as a challenger to Tesla in electric vehicles, unveiling its first production vehicle, the FF91, at a glitzy event at January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
However, a series of executive departures over the past year and concerns about its financing, after a cash crunch at Mr Jia's Chinese technology and media conglomerate LeEco, have raised questions about whether the FF91 would be ready in time for its planned 2018 debut.
Despite a ground-breaking ceremony in April 2016 that was attended by the Nevada governor and the Las Vegas mayor, Faraday has made little progress in building the factory that was supposed to be producing the vehicle. The company had scaled back its plans for the factory earlier this year, but had said as recently as last month that it still intended to begin work on the facility "soon".
In a statement on Monday, Faraday said it had "put on hold" construction of the Las Vegas facility, as part of a push to "significantly [shift] our business strategy to position the company as the leader in user-ship personal mobility".
It added: "As a result of this shift in direction, we are in the process of identifying a manufacturing facility that presents a faster path to start-of-production and aligns with future strategic options". The company insisted it would return to Nevada, where it still owns the land, some day for "long-term vehicle manufacturing".
The nature and extent of Faraday's strategic shift is unclear. The company declined to elaborate on what "user-ship personal mobility" meant, promising more details on what it bills as a "vehicle usage model that reimagines the way users access mobility" in the "coming weeks".
At the same time, Faraday said its search for new funding is "continuing as planned".
In March, the electric carmaker brought in former Deutsche Bank and BMW executive Stefan Krause as global chief financial officer, tasked with finding new investors. Mr Krause has said the company needs to raise around $1bn over the next two years to bring the FF91 to market.
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Faraday has rebuffed suggestions that its operations might be affected by the troubles at LeEco. Mr Jia last week resigned as chairman of LeEco's main listed arm, Leshi Internet Information & Technology, to focus on his automotive ambitions.
Although the LeEco company owns no stake in Faraday Future, Mr Jia has been the US auto group's sole investor, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of his personal fortune into his dream of creating a luxury electric car with advanced self-driving capabilities.
At January's launch, Faraday boasted that the FF91, a crossover sport utility vehicle, was the fastest production electric car, beating Tesla's Model S in its 0-60 acceleration. "It no longer is just a car," Mr Jia said at the Las Vegas event, "it's a new species."
The news of Faraday's strategic shift comes as the first Tesla customers take delivery of its lower-cost Model 3.
Source: Faraday Future scraps $1bn Las Vegas electric car factory
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