First Faraday cars rolling out in 2018? Not so fast, warns electric car start-up

When electric car firm Faraday Future Inc. started work on its $1-billion factory in Nevada on Wednesday, it wasn’t just the groundbreaking itself that piqued the interest of the auto world.

At the ceremony, Faraday reportedly let slip that its first cars would roll out of the factory in 2018 -- big news for a secretive start-up that has garnered great attention without yet revealing detailed plans about its vehicles or operation.

“We are moving extremely quickly for a project of this size,” Dag Reckhorn, Faraday’s vice president of global manufacturing, said in a statement. “Our aim is to complete a program that would normally take four years and do it in half the time, while still doing it right.”

With some simple arithmetic, one might conclude that Faraday intends to have its factory churning out cars by 2018. But the company cautioned against inferring too much.

“We have said we’re taking a four-year program and our goal is to do it in half the time,” Stacy Morris, Faraday spokeswoman, said Thursday morning. “But we’re not releasing a specific date yet. This is a very complicated project, and so we’re just trying to move as fast as we can while doing it right.”

The company, which is backed by Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, has about 600 workers at a former Nissan sales office in Gardena.

Faraday is seen as a potential competitor to Tesla Motors Inc., as both companies focus on the high-end electric car market. Company executives have released few details about plans for its first vehicle, but unveiled a concept car in January.

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