Aurelia Butler

Faraday Future, a California-based electric-vehicle startup, has showed a prototype version of its FF 91, which was built at its plant in Hanford, California.The company says production of the car will start in the third quarter of this year, but it’s worth noting that the company has missed claimed production dates more than once in the past five years.Faraday Future has had a tumultuous history, including its founder stepping down and declaring personal bankruptcy in 2019.Does the name Faraday Future ring a bell? In 2017, the Los Angeles-based electric startup revealed the FF 91 crossover at the Consumer Electronics Show and claimed production would begin in 2018. Five years later, the FF 91 has yet to hit public roads, sidelined while Faraday Future has battled financial issues. But Faraday Future is still kicking, apparently. The company revealed last week that it has built its first “production intent” FF 91. If Faraday Future is to be believed—and we’re not sure that’s totally the case—production is “on schedule” to begin in the third quarter of 2022.

The “production-intent” FF 91 prototype.
Faraday Future

With Faraday Future having receded from the limelight for so long, a refresher is due. The company was founded in 2014 by Chinese businessman Jia Yueting in California. In 2015, the company announced that it would build a plant in North Las Vegas, Nevada. By the time the FF 91—which was supposed to come to life in that factory—was unveiled in 2017, financial troubles had already begun. There were reports of accumulating debts, lawsuits from suppliers, and the claim from former employees that Faraday Future was actually two companies, with a separate entity set up in the Cayman Islands owning Faraday Future’s intellectual property. Founder Jia had also established another competing electric vehicle venture, the LeEco LeSee, which insiders alleged was pulling funds and talent away from Faraday Future, despite other sources claiming that the LeSee was never a real car (it still hasn’t materialized). In July 2017, a Chinese court froze $182 million in assets belonging to Jia, his wife, and LeEco affiliates, and days later Faraday Future said its North Las Vegas factory plans had been scuppered. August saw Faraday Future sign a lease for a former Pirelli tire plant in Hanford, California, and a year later Faraday Future sold a 45 percent stake to Evergrande Group—a Chinese property developer incorporated in the Cayman Islands—for $854 million. But two months later Evergrande pulled out of the deal, and Faraday Future began massive layoffs and salary cuts. In 2019, Jia filed for personal bankruptcy with over $3 billion in debt and stepped down from his role as CEO. Things went quiet at Faraday Future until 2021, when the company went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company—the same strategy employed by startup Lucid Motors.

Faraday Future

Throughout all of the financial topsy-turviness, Faraday Future has continued to promise the arrival of the FF 91. In 2018, the company said it had built a pre-production prototype at the Hanford plant and said production would begin in 2019. Now Faraday Future says it has built a “production intent” FF 91 in Hanford. According to a Faraday Future spokesperson, the latest FF 91 vehicle features a new instrument panel, front and rear consoles, and production-intent exterior lighting. There is also new exterior badging, a new production-spec lidar assembly mounted on the roof, and production paint applied in the paint booth in the Hanford plant.

The specifications of the FF 91 remain unchanged since the 2017 reveal. Three electric motors—two at the rear and one up front—supply a stated 1050 horsepower to all four wheels. Faraday Future claims a zero-to-60-mph time under 2.4 seconds for the crossover, which measures 206.9 inches long, just shy of the length of a 2022 Mercedes-Benz S-class. The juice comes from a 130.0-kWh battery pack, which Faraday Future says will provide a 378-mile range on the EPA test cycle. Given Faraday Future’s financial history, we are taking this most recent announcement with many, many grains of salt. If the FF 91 does reach production by the end of this year, a six-figure price is expected, putting it in competition with the Tesla Model X and Lucid Motors’ Air. The top-of-the-line FF 91 Futurist Alliance model, the company says, will cost more than $200,000, will be limited to 300 units, and is aiming to battle Bentley, Rolls-Royce, and Maybach. The Hanford plant will start with an annual volume of 10,000 units, with room to expand to 30,000 vehicles per year, should things ever reach that point.
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Volvo held a dealer event in Miami last week and revealed plans for five new EVs in the next few years, Automotive News has reported.According to the dealer information, a new full-size electric crossover is due next year, with a sedan and smaller crossover also planned.Volvo won’t totally abandon the wagon market, reportedly presenting two wagon-like models that Volvo called “activity vehicles.”Volvo is ramping up its transition to electric vehicles, with a new report from Automotive News sourced from Volvo dealers that says we’ll see five new EVs in the next few years and a massive upscaling of the Swedish company’s South Carolina assembly plant. The news comes from a dealer event in Miami last week, when Volvo presented its future plans to about 800 retailers from North and South America. Automotive News cited anonymous sources who were present at the function.

Volvo

The upcoming EVs will include a large and small crossover and a new sedan. The full-size crossover, effectively a replacement for the XC90, is expected to arrive next year and bear a resemblance to the Concept Recharge (pictured here) from 2021. It should offer three rows of seating and will be sold alongside the current XC90, which is also due for a facelift, for the foreseeable future. Volvo is predicting sales of around 20,000 units next year, the report claims.

There will also be two sporty wagon-esque models that Volvo apparently called “activity vehicles,” but no other details on these vehicles has leaked from the meeting. Volvo is also expected to build an electric crossover positioned between the XC60 and XC90, due in 2025, with global production of 100,000 units per year. Dealers were also shown revised versions of the S90 and XC90 plug-in hybrids. An all-electric XC60 and an EV smaller than the compact XC40 crossover are also rumored. A Volvo spokesperson contacted by Car and Driver said only that the company will not comment on future product.This electric product offensive will rely on Volvo’s 2.3-million-square-foot Ridgeville, South Carolina, plant. The factory currently produces the S60 sedan, but it churns out only a small fraction of its 150,000-vehicle-per-year capacity. Volvo is planning an “ambitious hiring plan” to prepare for the upcoming EVs, according to the report today. The first electric crossover will begin production there late this year, with Polestar also set to build an electric crossover, likely the Polestar 3, at the South Carolina factory. The flagship Volvo EV crossover will start production in early 2023, as Volvo begins its transition to an all-electric brand by 2030.
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• Our Bring a Trailer auction pick of the day is a 2004 Porsche Carrera GT that was bought new by comedian and Porsche aficionado Jerry Seinfeld.• It has a naturally aspirated 5.7-liter V-10 that produces 605 horsepower at 8000 rpm and six-speed manual transmission. • Carrera GTs have recently broken BaT records, and one recently sold for $2 million. This auction ends on March 11, and bidding is already at $1.6 million.Porsche Carrera GTs are breaking Bring a Trailer auction records left and right. Have a few million dollars to spare and want to pull up to Starbucks with a buddy pretending like you’re Jerry Seinfeld in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee? Then this example, for sale on BaT—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—is for you. We say that because this 2004 Carrera GT, showing 3700 miles, was first purchased by Seinfeld in 2005, and we hope no valet drivers with BBO have been hanging out in the V-10–powered mid-engine supercar.

Bring A Trailer

Porsche built 1270 Carrera GTs from 2004 to 2007. The production car was based on a concept that debuted at the 2000 Paris auto show. Carrera GTs have a carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic monocoque, and this example is finished in black, one of five color choices that also included Fayence Yellow and Guards Red. The chassis, designed by the same Italian company that finessed the Ferrari Enzo, features a pushrod-activated suspension.

The Carrera GT is powered by a naturally aspirated 5.7-liter V-10 with dual overhead cams on each cylinder bank and titanium connecting rods. That engine produces 605 horsepower at 8000 rpm and 435 pound-feet of torque at 5750 rpm, and it was only available with a six-speed manual gearbox. Service done on this car last September included an oil change, and the powertrain was removed to replace the rear main seal and clutch release module. In our Carrera GT test in the June 2004 issue of Car and Driver, the car reached 60 mph in 3.5 seconds on the way to a 11.2-second quarter-mile at 132 mph.

Bring A Trailer

The original New York title in Seinfeld’s name is included in the sale, and the window sticker shows delivery to South Shore Porsche with an original sale price of $448,300. With 11 days left in the online auction, bidding is up to $1,600,000 already, and we expect the price to approach or even exceed $2 million by the time it ends on March 11.

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Tesla took the radar sensors out of its North America-bound Model 3 and Model Y vehicles last year, and has now done the same in its larger models, the S and the X.Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he believes that making self-driving cars requires them to operate like human drivers: with eyes and a brain. In the EVs, that means only using cameras and a neural net to determine what’s in the road ahead.Earlier this month, NHTSA announced an investigation into “phantom braking” issues that could affect all Model 3 and Model Y EVs that the company made without the radar sensors.Tesla is doubling down on its camera-only approach, which it calls Tesla Vision, for the advanced driver-assistance features in the company’s electric vehicles. Tesla updated its website late last week to announce that, as of mid-February 2022, all of the Model S and Model X vehicles the company is building for the North American market will utilize exclusively Tesla Vision, the automaker’s “camera-based Autopilot system.”

Tesla

Until this month’s change, all Model S and Model X EVs intended for North America were equipped with radar sensors but the company has been building new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles without any front radar sensors since May 2021. That’s when Tesla announced a change for those models away from radar to Tesla Vision, just what the company is now doing with the X and S models. Tesla Vision pairs the visual data streams with neural net processing capability to offer features such as Autopilot, Full-Self Driving and some active safety features. Tesla is also changing how its radar-less vehicles will function compared to their radar-equipped brethren. The company said that there will be a “short period during this transition” when cars with Tesla Vision will have their Autosteer limited to a maximum speed of 80 mph and will require a longer minimum following distance for adaptive cruise control.

No Tesla vehicles today—indeed, no production passenger vehicle from any automaker—is currently capable of actually driving itself. Tesla admits that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has not yet rated two of the automaker’s active-safety features, forward-collision warning and automated emergency braking, on vehicles equipped with Tesla Vision. NHTSA has rated these two technologies on Tesla models with radar sensors. “We expect those ratings will be restored through confirmatory testing in the coming weeks,” Tesla wrote on its website.Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s theory is that self-driving cars should learn to drive the same way humans learn: by seeing and thinking about what you see. Without mentioning the radar his company’s cars will no longer use, Musk posted on Twitter Friday that another advanced sensor type, lidar, might be “seductive,” but it’s not required for cars to learn how to drive themselves. “The road system was designed to work with biological neural nets & eyes, so a general solution to self-driving necessarily will require silicon neural nets & cameras,” he wrote. “Real-World AI.” It’s a song he’s been singing for a while. Last October, Musk posted, “Humans drive with eyes & biological neural nets, so makes sense that cameras & silicon neural nets are only way to achieve generalized solution to self-driving.”
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Advanced driver-assistance features that rely on cameras and a neural net might be able to offer some benefits, but Tesla recently came under scrutiny from NHTSA about a “phantom braking” issue that could affect over 400,000 Teslas. The investigation is looking at all 2021 and 2022 model year Tesla Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles, pretty much exactly the ones that were built without radar sensors. That investigation is still in its early stages, but it is worth noting that other automakers, such as Nissan with the 2017–2018 Rogue SUV and Honda with the 2018–2019 Accord and 2017–2019 CR-V, have had problems with phantom braking incidents even though their vehicles use radar sensors alongside camera systems.
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