Faraday Future Scraps Plans for $1 Billion Electric Car Factory

Faraday Future Scraps Plans for $1 Billion Electric Car Factory·Fortune

Secretive electric car company Faraday Future has ended plans to build a much-hyped $1 billion factory in Nevada as the financial problems of its backer, Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, continue to escalate.

Last week, a Shanghai court froze the assets of Yueting, founder of Chinese media conglomerate LeEco, for missing loan payments to several financial institutions.

Faraday Future told Fortune that it decided to put the factory in Nevada on hold for “the near term” in favor of a new site that will provide a faster path to producing an electric vehicle. The company has previously said it plans to produce the FF91, an all-electric vehicle with an estimated 378 miles of range sometime in 2018.

In a statement filled with jargon and promises, Faraday Future said it was shifting its business strategy to “position the company as the leader in user-ship personal mobility—a vehicle usage model that reimagines the way users access mobility.”

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Faraday Future was supposed to build a 3-million square-foot factory on a 900-acre site in North Las Vegas—a deal that included a $335 million incentive package from the state. When the project was first announced in December 2015, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval boasted the factory would lead to more than 13,000 direct and indirect jobs in the region, and generate $760 million in tax revenue and $85 billion in economic impact over 20 years.

The factory project was reportedly scaled back in November due to a lack of funds. Faraday Future still owns the 900-acre factory site and said in a statement that it remains committed to the buildout.

The company plans to share more details about its new strategy in the coming weeks.

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