It took Tesla five years to produce the limited edition Tesla Roadster even though it started with engine-less ‘gliders’ supplied by Lotus in England. Now a group of former Tesla executives is out to upstage Tesla in getting an all-new, advanced electric vehicle from drawing board to production in record time. Faraday expects to launch its first fully electric production vehicle in 2017.
Founded just 18 months ago, the startup reportedly has 750 employees globally and has broken ground on a 3 million square foot factory in North Las Vegas. The company ultimately plans to have 4,500 employees. Faraday has teamed up with China's LeTV, which is supplying much of the substantial funding needed as well as LeTV’s vast experience with consumers products including flat screen TVs, smartphones, tablets, and PCs, along with Internet TV and video production/distribution. Like many other automakers, Faraday see the merging of mobility, information, and entertainment in future vehicles.
Faraday unveiled its first concept, the high-performance, single seat FFZERO1 electric race-car concept at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The 1,000 horsepower, 200 mph concept showcases Faraday’s basic design that would allow for many body styles and battery configurations, although the company has not elaborated on what they might be.
The FFZERO1 uses variable platform architecture (VPA), a modular skateboard-style chassis optimized for electric vehicles, as the backbone for the race car concept. All future production vehicles will also use the VPA chassis since it can readily accommodate different body types and battery configurations by changing lengths of the rails and other components. The VPA chassis has structural benefits such as larger crumple zones that improve safety by centralizing and protecting the battery pack. Modularity also decreases the time needed to get new models to market and lowers production costs.
Another feature of the Faraday architecture is a battery pack designed on a ‘string’ that allows adding or removing batteries based on engine layout, number of wheels, or other internal parts. Adding or subtracting strings will allow vehicles of varying sizes featuring more power or greater range. Individual cells and groups of cells can be replaced more readily than a single battery.
The race car features carbon fiber and lightweight composite construction with high-performance racing suspension, advanced vehicle dynamic control, and torque vectoring. Aero tunnels run through its interior length, allowing air to flow through the car rather than around it to dramatically reduce drag and improve battery cooling. The FFZERO1 integrates an electric motor at each wheel and is built for the track. However, VPA allows from one to four motors for rear, front, or all-wheel drive, extended range options, and various power outputs – all using the same chassis architecture.
Autonomous driving is part of equation. According to Faraday, the FFZERO1 concept could potentially meet its driver at the track and take a few perfect laps on its own to compare with, and improve upon, its human driver’s performance. The car’s NASA inspired single-seat offers a comfortable, weightless body position that holds the driver at a perfect 45-degree angle to help promote circulation.
In contrast to race cars with internal combustion engines, the clean and quiet FFZERO1 concept’s interior is primarily white with a carbon fiber finish. A propeller-shaped, asymmetric instrument panel runs seamlessly into a unique Halo Safety System with integrated head and neck support, oxygen, and water supply fed to the driver through a prototype helmet. The system could also gather biometric data about its driver. Faraday has also directly integrated a smartphone into the steering column, a move that could enable the smartphone to serve as an interface between vehicle and driver in – and outside –the car.
