Faraday Future’s first vehicle might actually be a game-changer

After a year of hype and anticipation, new automaker Faraday Future today unveiled its first ever vehicle at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. The Chinese-funded, America-based startup showed off a wild single-seater electric supercar with a glass canopy under which the driver needs to wear a helmet. With no conventional dashboard, the steering wheel requires the driver to dock their iPhone in it. It’s “not so much a concept car, more a car of concepts,” said Faraday Future’s young head designer Richard Kim – wearing a sharp three-piece suit accompanied by silver sneakers – after unveiling the car onstage. The car, dubbed the FF Zero1 and which looks like a cross between a new Batmobile and a current Le Mans LMP1 racer, is unlikely to go into production. Instead, it’s a stop-gap, some fancy food for thought, until Faraday Future is ready to reveal a car that will actually go on sale. At the CES unveiling, Nick Sampson, senior VP of R&D and product development, showed off Faraday Future’s “variable platform architecture,” a chassis platform that he claimed can be adapted quickly around what the firm calls a “string” of batteries. That allows the team to build in a modular way, allow them to create new model types quicker and more cheaply than most automakers can manage. It could be stretched or shrunk, with more or fewer batteries, and can accommodate any motor layout, such as for all-wheel drive.