Faraday Future Unveils FX Super One: An AI-Powered Electric Minivan with Ambitious Claims

Faraday Future's Latest Plan: Sell This China-Style 'AI EV' Van To Celebrities

By the time I arrived at the ninth floor of a shopping mall parking garage abutting Los Angeles' Skid Row, I knew this wasn't going to be a normal car reveal. Faraday Future is not a normal company. The company defines itself by its "Co-Creation Strategy" and its focus on "AI EVs." So this debut was not a typical nuts-and-bolts affair. It was a surreal rooftop party, replete with a mocktail bar and a cast of hundreds of influencers, both paid and unpaid. But the spectacle was far from the weirdest bit. No, that came when the company revealed the Faraday X Super One, billed by company officials as the "disruptor of the Cadillac Escalade in the EAI EV era." Frankly, I didn't even know we were in the EAI EV era, so let's get caught up. What is the Faraday X Super One, and what's the deal with the company building it? Faraday X is the new, more accessibly priced sub-brand of Faraday Future. If you know Faraday Future, you may know the company has a weird history. It unveiled its first product, the FF 91, at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2017. The company promised over 1,000 horsepower, 378 miles of range and Level 4, eyes-off autonomous driving. It was supposed to go into production in 2018. Seven years later, the company has delivered about 16 FF 91s, per Autoweek. It seems to be sold primarily to "Co-Creators," or paid spokespeople for the company, making the situation more confusing. Has the company sold cars to cash-paying customers? It's not clear. The company has been accused of fudging sales in court, but denies wrongdoing, per TechCrunch. It also made big promises about a giant factory in Nevada, for which it received subsidies to build. That never materialized, leading the state's treasurer to call Faraday Future a "Ponzi scheme," according to Fortune. With so many grand ambitions and so little to show for it, Faraday Future has so far felt like a company that primarily traffics in hype. The leadership of the company has also undergone some shakeups. Its founder, Jia Yueting, also known as YT Jia, built his fortune at the helm of Chinese tech company LeEco. But he has faced considerable issues with his personal debt. He filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. in 2019, but was under pressure from debtors in mainland China for long after that, leading to some issues for the business. Then, earlier this week, Jia and Faraday Future President Jerry Wang received Wells Notices from the Securities and Exchange Commission, as TechCrunch reported. These notices state that, after a three-year investigation into alleged wrongdoing surrounding 2021 Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) merger, the SEC's internal investigators are recommending an enforcement action against the company, which could lead to further legal and financial burdens. It is all a confounding mess. The high-level summary is: Take Faraday's promises with a grain of salt. Much appears to be up in the air. The Faraday X Super One is, according to the company, the world's first "EAI MPV" and "AI Hybrid Extended Range Vehicle" or "AI HER." It is also the first U.S. market vehicle to feature the "Super EAI F.A.C.E."-front "AI communication ecosystem." All of this is to say that it's an electric or hybrid minivan with a big-ass screen on the front grille. It is essentially a Chinese- or Japanese- style luxury people carrier, available with giant, massaging recliner and a pillar-to-pillar television for rear-seat passengers. Its goal, the company says, is to capture the VIP transportation market in the U.S., with a coddling, sophisticated van that outflanks the Escalade on its own turf. To do that, the Super One will have a variety of AI features accessible through a digital AI agent that company representatives claim has a "soul." But no details are yet available about what exactly that AI agent will do. Faraday X claims it will get to know you and enable your work, but their last attempt to demonstrate their AI to me was... unimpressive. Also, the Faraday X event came with an extraordinary disclaimer at the top. "The company plans to gradually implement all functions after mass production," John Schilling, director of public relations for Faraday Future, told the audience. The translation is: Don't expect any of this to work when you get the vehicle. The company has also not publicly announced when exactly that will be. Schilling told InsideEVs that Faraday wants to start production next year, but it needs to ready the Hanford, CA facility, where it builds the FF 91. Schilling claimed the factory can produce 10,000 vehicles a year, but given that we've seen fewer than 20 FF 91 deliveries, that number feels ambitious. Schilling also confirmed to InsideEVs that the Super One is based on an existing van, but would not say which one. We do know that it's based on a Chinese-market MPV. InsideEVs' resident China expert Kevin Williams says it's likely a Wey Gaoshan, which is made by Great Wall Motors. He also notes that GWM doesn't have a great reputation for making competitive vehicles in that segment. That being said, I got a brief ride around a parking lot in the back of the Super One, and its interior looked fantastic. We weren't able to sit up front or touch any of the software, but the seats themselves and the ambience of the cabin were both impressive. Sadly, details on range, power, engine size and pricing are all still to come. "It's gonna be less than a Cadillac Escalade," Schilling told InsideEVs. I happen to think there is a real market in the U.S. for electric and hybrid ultra-luxury vans. For vehicles that primarily move rich people around in cities, vans just make more sense than SUVs. Their space-efficient proportions allow for bigger, comfier seats with low, flat floors. That's why Schilling says they want to sell these things to executive transportation fleets. After all, luxury vans have already taken off in Asia. They're working their way into Europe. Mercedes is getting in the game. It's truly only a matter of time before someone capitalizes on that market here. But I'm skeptical that it will be Faraday Future. The company just secured another $105 million in funding, and is now planning to open a factory in the United Arab Emirates, both signs meant to show staying power and long-term commitment. "We never give up," Jia told the audience. Yet with many of its outstanding promises unfulfilled, and with authorities in both the U.S. and China seemingly skeptical of Jia, it's hard to believe that Faraday Future is one year away from transforming the VIP transportation market. Rich clients want luxury, sure, but they also want status. They want the appearance of wealth and sophistication. When a company is perhaps better known for its regulatory drama and the personal debts of its CEO, it's hard to imagine its product signaling the right things to these buyers. On the other hand, with another hundred million bucks, maybe the company can make it work. It claimed to get over 10,000 pre-orders within the first hour. Plus, Faraday had no shortage of seemingly successful LA influencers on hand. It has proven, then, that it can pay successful people to care about its product. The next part is harder: Getting successful people to actually pay for its product.

Faraday Future unveils FX Super One, an EV minivan with a funny F.A.C.E.

Faraday Future is still kicking and unveiled its next planned vehicle tonight - the FX Super One, an all-electric MPV. The FX Super One is an MPV, "Multi Purpose Vehicle," which is... basically the new word for a minivan. Minivans have gotten less popular in recent years, as the entire industry has been infected with the SUV virus. But they still offer a lot of the same benefits they always did, like more room for passengers and cargo. The problem is, there just aren't many EV minivans. In the US, we've basically got the ID.Buzz, and that's about it... so far. But we've also seen and heard of some upcoming prototypes, making us think that perhaps this could be a bit of a trend in upcoming models - much as electric 3-row SUVs have been a trend for the last year or two. For example, the Kia PV5, a potential upcoming Chevy Express, and an upcoming electric van from Mercedes all look like they could fit that bill. Outside of the US market, electric vans are much more popular. This is particularly true in China, where many electric MPV models are available. Into this segment wades Faraday Future, the US-based but decidedly China-flavored electric vehicle startup founded by Chinese businessman YT Jia, who is currently its Co-CEO along with Matthias Aydt. Faraday's current car, the FF91, is a huge, powerful, comfortable, very expensive, and incredibly low production vehicle which was first unveiled in 2017 and finally went into production in 2023. As of the start of this year, the company has sold around 16 cars. (And we got to drive it around a racetrack, read more thoughts on the car & company here) But a low-volume hypercar... er, hyper-SUV?... does little to make a dent in overall consumer EV demand, so the next car Faraday has unveiled will maybe strike a little closer to the center of consumer demand than their first effort. Unveiled tonight at a public event in Los Angeles (and seen by us a couple weeks ago at a private event), the FX Super One doesn't make quite as many pie-in-the-sky promises as the original FF91 did, though it does include its own fair share of flashy features and plenty of question marks still to be answered. Perhaps the most headline-grabbing feature is something Faraday is calling the "AI F.A.C.E.," which seems to be an optional feature as only one of the prototypes we saw had it installed. This consists of an array of LEDs at the front of the vehicle, in place of the radiator grille, which can light up to display just about anything you can dream of - as long as it's relatively low resolution (but certainly higher resolution than, say, traditional headlights). Faraday showed several animations of what this could be used for, including videos showing off the car or sample atmospheric designs, or much more interestingly: emoji-like animated faces showing off certain emotions. Beyond this, the specs of the vehicle seem quite fluid - which, frankly, is probably a good thing given the tall promises made by the FF91 at unveiling. It instead replaced all those promised exceptional specs with a bunch of promises about AI, claiming that the car will be your companion, your avatar, your co-pilot. This was all mumbo-jumbo as far as I'm concerned. Faraday differentiated its "AI-MPV" from a "traditional minivan" by claiming that this vehicle will have a "balance between luxury and premium," but with better power and handling than either minivans or full-size SUVs. It didn't specify a price yet, but it did state that the FX Super One would have "premium pricing" but also would compare with a traditional minivan in total ownership cost. Elsewhere, Faraday stated that it will be "an affordable mass market MPV." It even asked, in the presentation, what price attendees feel like they would pay for the vehicle. Feel free to sound off in the comments below with your thoughts. If those phrases seem to be in conflict with one another, it could be because Faraday did drop some hints at potential higher-end configurations, speaking to a likely large spread of prices across the model range. While the examples we saw were configured like traditional 3-row minivans (they insisted that nobody take photos of the unfinished interior, but it has both 6- and 7-seat configurations), Faraday suggested that a more limo-like experience could be had with vehicles configured for a comfortable back seat experience, with lots of legroom, a TV, and a fridge. At today's introductory event, we even got a short chance to take a ride in the car, albeit just in circles around a parking lot. We got a quick chance to try riding in the 2nd and 3rd row seats in the 6-seat configuration. Although we weren't allowed to take any cameras with us, so you'll have to take my word for it. The pass-thru to the 3rd row is a little tight, probably owing to the size of the 2nd-row seats, which are large and comfortable. But with the 2nd-row seat positioned in such a way to give me a full foot or two extra feet worth of leg/knee room, I could still fit comfortably into the 3rd row. There is no question that 6 adults could fit comfortably into this car even for a long ride. And while, again, the ride was just around a parking lot, we had our driver punch it a little, and the car felt plenty powerful enough, especially for a minivan. But this should be no surprise for an electric vehicle from a company whose other car, the FF91, boasts 1,050hp. We briefly tried out the "zero-G" 2nd-row seat, which reclines into an almost horizontal position. With the massage seats turned on, this was definitely a comfortable experience. There seems to be room for a possible fold-down TV on the roof of the vehicle, but one wasn't installed in the prototype we rode in. The prototype did, however, have a small fridge between the front seats, but it wasn't activated during our short demo. Faraday called this configuration the "GOAT Edition," and showed a rendering of what the backseat might look like. This edition would offer more of a "VIP experience," and we'd expect a higher price to boot. Faraday said it was aiming to unseat the Escalade as the car of choice for VIPs, which is notably a six-figure car in all but the most bare base model configurations. This exceptional rear seat comfort seems like it will be important not just for the VIP market, but the China market. Most Americans, even the very wealthy, will still drive their own cars. But in China, having a driver is much more common, and there is more of a focus on rear seat comfort (we saw the same with Faraday's first vehicle, the FF91). Faraday was a bit cagey when talking about international sales, but did say that it is targeting 10,000 "global" reservations tonight. We would not be surprised if a significant percentage of those reservations come from a country where minivans are popular and rear seat comfort is a priority, and which happens to hold about a fifth of the world's population. In its press materials about the car, Faraday focused largely on comfort and safety, saying the car will have "360º safety, active + passive" and all-time all-wheel drive. The Super One has promised plenty of sensors for driver aids, including a "vision-first VLA system powered by lidar, millimeter-wave radar, ultrasonic sensors, and high-definition cameras" As some of the few specific specs in the release, it mentioned a 130-inch wheelbase, 51.2-inch cabin height and 39.4-inch third-row legroom. It highlighted how this gives exceptional space efficiency, with flexible sliding rows, room for six golf bags, and fold-flat seats to turn into a camper bed. Faraday refers to those seats as "zero-G" and says "every seat is the VIP seat." If they're anything like the rear seats in the FF91, which is extremely comfortable, then that will be something. It also highlighted the various software features the car will include, like voice recognition, gestures, over the air updates, and AI suffused throughout the car's tech. It said the FX Super One could function as your "Mobile AI Office." It has also said that the FX Super One could be a "Mobile Livestream Studio" (hmm, where have we heard that before...) Faraday did bring up one feature that I thought was questionable - the possibility of including a "range-extending" gas engine. It called this the "AI Hybrid Extended Range" powertrain, keeping with the trend of using "AI" in as many superfluous ways as possible. This feels like it could be a misstep, because Faraday has been an all-electric brand since the start. As if spinning up production on a mass market minivan wasn't hard enough, now Faraday is adding another powertrain option to the mix - and one which it has no experience with. This means having to design the powertrain packaging two different ways, source more parts, compromise the design of one powertrain to make room for the other, and so on. That's a lot of work to do on the revenue from the sale of 16 total units to date (though Faraday did just raise $105 million to help with this, and also said the hybrid version would come after the all-EV one). Faraday pointed out that it is one of the only American EV startups left, able to avoid bankruptcy like so many of its kind - Fisker, Canoo, Nikola, Lordstown, and so on. It put itself alongside Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid, claiming to be one of only four American EV startups that has not gone bankrupt yet. This list may not be exhaustive, but Faraday does make a point that it is one of the few that is still in business. But I would argue that, while their tech is actually fairly impressive (Faraday showed us an update to their voice recognition system which worked great at interpreting natural speech, even with stumbles and pauses, and supports 50+ languages, with help from OpenAI - an actual concrete practical use of AI), I wouldn't so much call Faraday "thriving" or put it in the same category as other existing American EV startups. Faraday spoke of its "capital efficiency" and showed a graph of how much less money it spends than its three compatriot companies, suggesting that its small team held an advantage over the other companies as a result. But those companies have each sold at least five digits worth of cars, which is a lot more than the two digits worth of cars that Faraday has sold. And that brings up another point about Faraday's private presentation which irked me: there was a lot of talk about the stock before we got to talking about the car. Now, this was a private event and several investors were there after all, but it still struck me that the last time I talked to the company (when it had a big stock price jump last May), it was about the stock, not a car. This is emblematic of what I think is an issue with the company - I know it's popular today for basically every company to chase the stock market to some extent, in our overly financialized economy. And in the startup EV space, you don't have to look far to find one specific company which has been quite successful despite that it often seems to treat the stock as the product more than the cars themselves. But that company (it's Tesla, if you haven't guessed) at least has products, and has good products too. Tesla may have a lot of hype too, but it started with a eye-opening product, it delivered that product, and then continued to iterate and improve and deliver more products. The first of those products (Roadster) was delivered before the company went public at all, and the excessive focus on pumping the stock with hype for constantly-delayed product releases really didn't start until several years later (perhaps the mid-2010s with respect to products like FSD and solar roof, though Model 3 and Model Y both delivered roughly on their promises, and its only lately that everything Tesla does has been underwhelming or past-deadline). In contrast, Faraday has taken a long time to deliver just 16 vehicles (it had targeted a yearly run rate of 10,000 cars by the start of 2025), and now it's promising a whole new vehicle, a new powertrain, and a whole new pile of incomprehensible acronyms and branding. In their short presentation, here are some of the novel acronyms and branding I heard: AI-HER, Super EAI F.A.C.E., X Super One, EAI-MPV, AIEV, Semantic VAD, VLA, Super AP + EAI platform, and the ultimate champion, the FF EAI Embodied Intelligence AI Agent 6×4 Architecture. This is too much. Maybe Faraday doesn't have to appeal to "normies" right now, as it has only sold 16 vehicles, but at some point you need regular joes and janes to buy your car. And those buyers are still - to far too high of a degree, I would argue - scared by electric cars. You're not going to sell the tech-resistant by throwing a million acronyms at them. You're going to sell them by giving them a good product at a reasonable price that makes them feel like their concerns have been addressed and that they can just use it normally without thinking about it. This was exhibited by one conversation I had at the unveiling, with a lovely couple from St Louis. They didn't ask me what I thought of the FF EAI 6×4 Architecture, they said "well it gets both really hot and really cold in St. Louis, can an electric car handle that?" Those are the questions on the mind of your buyers. If you want to sell cars, those are the questions you need to answer. Making people feel weird, making EVs feel foreign, isn't going to answer those questions for them. But that's just the thing: you do that if you want to sell cars. Again, I think Faraday's tech is pretty good. They have a very cool voice recognition system, their screen is responsive, they even have a clever solution for the problem of physical vs. screen controls for volume and HVAC (you can swipe up/down and left/right with three fingers to change volume/temperature, respectively). And the FF91 has some real superlatives to it (though you'd expect so at that price). But the company suffers from a lack of focus on the mission of building vehicles - a mission that it really has not yet completed at any significant scale. Getting any car to market is an achievement, and one which many thought Faraday would not accomplish. But as I've stated before, I think all this complicated branding, excessive injection of "AI" into every sentence, and focus on buzzwords and promises is all a distraction. I don't think it helps to sell cars, or helps to build them - except insofar as the company is able to trick the stock market into thinking it deserves some of the excessive money being thrown at anything with the letters "AI" on it right now. So there is that, I guess. So once again, this turned more into a discussion of Faraday the company than the FX Super One the car. But that's bound to happen until a successful vehicle project gets off the ground and meets its targets. Will the FX Super One be that vehicle project? We'll have to wait and see. Our first indication might be how many reservations Faraday is able to get tonight, as it's targeting 10,000 global reservations in 48 hours (a lower goal than the 64k hand-raisers they got 36 hours after the FF91 reveal, exceedingly few of which converted into orders, but those were zero-cost reservations). If you'd like to be one of reservers, feel free to get in line over at their website, where reservations should be live now, and where the company has already been taking refundable $100 pre-reservations for a little while. We're sure we'll here more soon about how those numbers turn out in the coming days, and Faraday says more info on specs, pricing, and delivery timing will be announced later this year. To catch the rest of the event livestream (and perhaps see a replay afterwards), go check out Faraday's website. The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you've ever considered going solar, now's the time to act. 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