Nevada Gets Nervous About Faraday Future’s $1 Billion EV Factory

Nevada says it will suspend some subsidies promised for the $1 billion electric-car factory planned by California-based Faraday Future Inc. until the shadowy startup puts some of its own cash into the project.

The two-year-old company announced in December it planned to use the first phase of the plant to begin making EVs in 2017. Faraday envisions building a wide range of vehicles that share the same platform.

Nevada quickly offered Faraday some $215 million in tax breaks and other support. But now the state wants the company to provide as much as $75 million in collateral before infrastructure improvements begin, Automotive News reports. The newspaper notes the state also has set up a trust fund to recover tax abatements until Faraday’s plant investment actually reaches $1 billion.

Faraday is backed by Chinese Internet tycoon Jia Yueting. Nevada Treasurer Dan Schwartz tells AN he grew wary of the company’s plans after trading in shares of Jia’s Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corp. was suspended in December pending a company restructuring. Trading in Leshi was supposed to resume on Jan. 31 but has been delayed to March 7, according to the report.

Faraday garnered attention in January by unveiling the FFzero1, an electric hypercar mockup, at the Consumer Electronics Show. The company says the single-seat “proof of concept” is projected to make 1,000 hp, zip from zero to 60 mph in less than three seconds and reach a top speed of 200 mph.

A Faraday-produced video shows a computer-generated image of the car zipping around curvy mountain roads. But it isn’t clear whether the company has yet built a functioning prototype.