It is the booming age for electric car startups. Interestingly, many such companies have a strong tie with Chinese firms. In this article, we will look at Karma Automotive, Faraday Future and NextEV (Nio).
Karma Automotive
Karma Automotive is a subsidiary of Chinese auto parts company Wanxiang. Wanxiang acquired the bankrupted Fisker Automotive in 2014 and renamed it as Karma Automotive earlier this year.
The headquarters of Karma Automotive are located in Costa Mesa of California, which they ended up buying in April for $56.25million. The company’s factory is located in Moreno Valley of California. Besides, Karma’s controlling company Wanxiang is interested in building a new auto plant in Hanzhou, China. The factory will be able to produce 50 thousand Karma vehicles annually.
Karma Automotive launched its first luxury car Revero on September 8th. The MSRP starts at $130,000. Potential customers can go to Karma dealership to order. Revero is based on the previous Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid, but now uses technologies from BMW. The company plans to build 3,000 units per year. Another model Atlantic, a low-cost 2-door electric car, is in the pipeline.
Faraday Future
Faraday Future was founded in 2014 and the headquarters is in Gardena, California. The company is reportedly backed by Chinese LeEco’s boss Yueting Jia.
Faraday Future released an eye-catching concept electric supercar FFZero1 during CES 2016, featuring a versatile Variable Platform Architecture (VPA). This is pretty much what we know about its product so far. There either is a target time to launch any product.
On the other hand, the company is expanding very rapidly. According to its website, there are over 1,400 people globally already. Faraday Future has attracted top talents in the industry, e.g. an automation expert from Apple. However, recently some top executives left the company.
Facility-wise, a $1billion 900-acre factory is under construction in North Las Vegas, and another 157-acre formal naval shipyard near Silicon Valley is in negotiation. Recently, Faraday Future downsized the Las Vegas plant to 650,000 square feet. It will be completed by end of August this year. Moreover, Faraday Future will work together with LeEco on the latter’s planned $1.8billion EV factory in China, manufacturing 400,000 cars annually.
Faraday Future launched FF91 model in January this year. The cost would be “less than $300,000”. There were over 64,000 reservations within 36 hours of its debut. The delivery is expected to start in 2018.
Faraday Future has been granted to test self-driving cars on the road in California. It is also running a Formula E racing team – Faraday Future Dragon Racing.
NextEV (NIO in the US)
This less-than-2-year old company has already launch two electric cars.
The first one is a supercar named NIO EP9 with massive 1 megawatt of power (or 1,360 horsepower). The car was caught at the Nuerburgring, filming commercial footage. The supercar will cost $1.48million and Next EV plans to build only 10 of them. It will be available in China and US.
The second on is a 7-seater electric SUV – NIO ES8. The car will be capable of swapping the battery. Sales will be stated in 2018.
The China-based startup has offices all around the world including London, Munich and Silicon Valley. Top industrial executives like former Ford Europe boss Martin Leach and former Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior have been involved with NextEV. Leach visions NextEV to be automaker version 3.0, a level up from Tesla’s version 2.0 over-the-air connectivity.
According to NextEV website, the company plans to build a half-billion motor plant in Nanjing China. It also has formed strategic partnership with Chinese carmaker JAC which will potentially be worth nearly $1.5 billion. There is a joint venture with China Changan Automobile.
NextEV joined Formula E race in its inaugural season and its racer Nelson Piquet Jr. won the championship in 2014/2015 season.