On September 3, Faraday Future (FF) made waves again with an announcement, and Jia Yueting and his FF car once again entered the public eye.
According to the announcement, FF founder Jia Yueting will resign as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and will be replaced by Bi Fukang, who has 20 years of experience in the automotive and electric vehicle fields. At the same time, Jia Yueting will serve as chief product and user officer (CPUO), responsible for overseeing the overall implementation of AI, product definition, user experience, and Internet ecosystem models.
FF was established in 2014 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, an industrial center in California, USA, dedicated to the development of electric vehicle products. On January 4, 2017, FF officially released the first mass-produced electric car FF91 in Las Vegas. This electric car has high hopes. There have been many news of mass production, but it has not been implemented. The main reason is that the financial difficulties are difficult to solve.
Since 2017, FF has ushered in two important investments. However, during the "marriage" with Evergrande, litigation continued and the original agreement had to be stopped. In March of this year, FF held hands with the Ninth City again, with the main goal still to implement mass production plans.
Jia Yueting’s "Car Dream": From LeTV Auto to Faraday Future
In 2004, Jia Yueting founded LeTV and served as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), dedicated to building the LeTV ecosystem. In August 2010, LeTV was listed on the Growth Enterprise Market, and it has been advancing all the way, successively getting involved in video, film, sports, mobile phones and other businesses.
In 2013, Jia Yueting's "car dream" sprouted, and LeTV was among the best in that year, and it was listed in the "2013 Forbes Top 50 Potential Companies". Facing Jia Yueting’s car building plan, LeEco executives voted against it, but Jia Yueting pushed back against the crowd, saying: “Even if LeEco’s car was built, it will never turn back.”
On December 9, 2014, Jia Yueting was socializing The SEE (SuperElectric Eco-system) plan was announced in the media, claiming to replicate the successful model of LeTV's ecological vertical integration and completely independently develop and build Internet smart electric vehicles. Later, the public learned that Jia Yueting quietly established Faraday Future in the United States 7 months ago, and this company became a strategic partner of LeEco in 2016.
On April 20, 2016, LeEco's LeSEE supercar debuted its first concept car. At the press conference that day, Jia Yueting choked with excitement. Five months later, Jia Yueting announced that LeTV Supercar had completed the first round of financing of US$1.08 billion. Investors included Yingda Capital under the State Grid Corporation of China, Shenzhen Municipal Government Investment Platform Shenzhen Venture Capital, Legend Holdings, Minsheng Trust and other institutions. The LeEco super car has become the top priority of LeEco's ecology.
However, huge financing has not made the "car dream" come true. On November 6, 2016, Jia Yueting released "LeEco's Sea and Flames: Was it Engulfed by Big Waves or Boiling the Ocean?" "The letter from all the staff reveals the financial problems behind LeTV's scenery. Jia Yueting said that LeTV’s ecological pace is too fast. Among them, the huge investment of as much as 10 billion in the early stage of LeTV Automobile directly led to insufficient financial support. On the other hand, external financing was far from making up the funding gap. Since then, LeTV has been exposed to large amounts of arrears, the capital chain has been broken, and it has gradually fallen into dire straits.
On the evening of July 6, 2017, LeTV announced that Jia Yueting would resign as chairman of LeTV and resign from the board of directors. However, on one side is the "irreparable" LeTV dilemma, on the other side is the FF car that is getting better. The day before the announcement, Jia Yueting flew to Los Angeles, USA.
In January 2017, the FF91 car, which has been brewing for more than two years, was released in Las Vegas. FF officially declared that FF91 is a "new intelligent transportation tool" and a "new species" that has appeared after the birth and development of the automobile industry a hundred years later. FF91 is undoubtedly high hopes. Up to now, the world premiere of FF is still Jia Yueting's top Weibo.
It is worth noting that since the world premiere of FF91, there have been many mass production news, but it has been delayed again and again, and even announced in October 2017 to abandon the Nevada plant construction plan, and the order delivery plan originally scheduled for 2018 There are no signs of implementation. The financial dilemma of
is difficult to solve: After the "litigation battle" with Evergrande, the FF held by Jia Yueting, the ninth city
, has been unable to mass production. In the final analysis, it is a financial problem.
20At the end of 2017, Jia Yueting and others came to Hong Kong Shiying with a US$2 billion investment. According to the investment agreement, the two parties will jointly establish a new company SmartKing, which will account for 45% of the shares, and FF will account for 33% of the shares, and the rest will be reserved for employee incentive plans. In June 2018, Shiying was wholly-owned by Evergrande Health for HK$6.746 billion. Since then, Evergrande has become the largest shareholder of FF. This "marriage" of
soon cracked. It was originally planned that the US$2 billion was paid in installments, but after burning the first US$800 million in funds, FF proposed an advance of US$500 million in 2018. Evergrande believed that Faraday did not meet the payment conditions in the treaty and rejected this request. . On October 3, FF filed an arbitration with the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center, demanding to deprive Shiying of the right to consent to financing as a shareholder.
things continue to ferment. On November 7, Evergrande Health issued an announcement stating that arbitration will be filed against Jia Yueting and SmartKing because the financial personnel appointed by Evergrande were prevented from conducting the review, making Evergrande unable to know the company's financial status. As a counterattack, Jia Yueting also filed an arbitration request to deprive Evergrande of the mortgage of assets. On November 29, Evergrande Health issued a "victory" announcement, and Jia Yueting's application was completely rejected by the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center.
Until December 31, 2018, FF and Evergrande Health signed a new cooperation agreement, and the litigation battle between the two parties ended. According to the agreement, Evergrande holds 32% of the preferred equity of SmartKing, which Jia Yueting can buy back within 5 years. Due to the termination of the old agreement, Evergrande no longer needs to inject capital into FF. In addition, the parties revoke and waive their current litigation, arbitration procedures and future litigation rights.
On March 24 this year, FF announced a cooperation plan with Internet game company Ninth City. The two parties will establish a joint venture company in China to be responsible for manufacturing, marketing and selling FF's new brand V9 models. This is a technology based on FF 91 And design concept of luxury electric car. According to the official announcement, Ninth City occupies 50% of the equity of the joint venture, with a maximum capital injection of US$600 million. The joint venture has an estimated annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles, and plans to achieve pre-production vehicles off the assembly line and scheduled sales within 2020. The ninth city of
was established in 1998 and became famous in 2004 for obtaining the exclusive agency rights of "World of Warcraft" in China. In the same year, the Ninth City was officially listed on NASDAQ. The good times didn't last long. The Ninth City was finally left behind in 2009 due to a disagreement with Blizzard, the development company of "World of Warcraft". It is worth noting that in October 2018, the ninth city had no choice but to "downgrade" the Nasdaq capital market with a lower threshold because it did not meet the minimum market value of 50 million US dollars in the Nasdaq global market. Prior to this, the ninth city had received multiple delisting warnings.
On September 3, Jia Yueting said on social media: “I gave up everything to ensure the success of FF, and repay my remaining guaranteed debt in full as soon as possible, and finally realize my dream of revolution in the automotive industry.” Z1z
writes: Nandu intern reporter He Leshu
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