California Startup is Taking on Tesla With New Electric Vehicle

Welcome to the future—Faraday Future, that is. While Tesla has had a longstanding reputation of being the sole purely electric car manufacturer in the U.S., one California company hopes to change all that. And they’re bringing the big guns.

The folks from Faraday Future recently sat down with Motor Trend to give a more in-depth analysis of exactly what they hope to accomplish. The first being to take the battle to Tesla with a car they hope will be in consumer driveways by 2017. But don’t confuse them with Tesla or previous failure Fisker. Seriously, don’t.

“We’re not Tesla. But we’re not Fisker, either. We’re not f*cking around.” Alrighty then.

So who are these guys claiming to dethrone Elon Musk? Well, they have some experience. Currently, Faraday Future—or FF for short—has 200 employees at their Gardena, California, facility (formerly the Nissan Research and Design Building). And by next year, they hope to up that number to 300.

Of those 200 employees, six of them have major credentials from BMW to Tesla. Here they are, as follows:

Nick Sampson — Product Architect, former Vehicle and Chassis Engineering for Tesla
Richard Kim — Head Design, former BMW i8 Concept, BMW i3 Concept
Silva Hiti — Sr. Dir. of Powertrain, former lead powertrain at Chevy Volt
Pontus Fontaeus — Exterior Design Chief, former Creative Director at BMW
Porter Harris — Batteries, former SpaceX

Along with that serious lineup, all other 294 employees would be working on an all-electric vehicle. From the rendering and sketches, it looks like either a lifted sedan or a small SUV. Either way, it’s a vehicle for the masses, and aimed directly for the Tesla Model S and upcoming Model X SUV.

We’ll hope to see some progress reports from FF in the near future. If everything goes as planned, expect to see an all-electric car on that road that doesn’t have a Tesla badge by 2017.