LOS ANGELES—The luxury electric car market may be small, but it’s lucrative enough to get another jolt—this time from a mysterious startup that says it wants to re-imagine how people interact with their autos.
The startup’s name is Faraday Future, and it has been hunting for a place to build what it says will be a $1 billion manufacturing plant for a new line of cars. Four states are contenders and the company says to expect an announcement within weeks.
Headquartered in a low-profile office just south of Los Angeles, Faraday is holding a lot of details close. Though it won’t confirm the source of its funds, documents filed in California point to a parent company run by a Chinese billionaire who styles himself after Apple’s late Steve Jobs.
Based on the few other public clues, Faraday is following the path blazed by Tesla Motors, its would-be rival hundreds of miles away in Silicon Valley.
Like Tesla, Faraday’s car will be all-electric, and debut at the high end.
The startup of about 400 employees has poached executive talent from Tesla and also draws its name from a luminary scientist—Michael Faraday—who helped harness for humanity the forces of nature.
Even Faraday’s public announcement that California, Georgia, Louisiana and Nevada are finalists for the factory mirrors the approach Tesla took to build a massive battery factory. Nevada won that bidding war among several states last year by offering up to $1.3 billion in tax breaks and other incentives.
Faraday hopes to distinguish itself by branding the car less as transportation than a tool for the connected class.
“People’s lives are changed by their mobile devices, the way that we interact,” Faraday spokeswoman Stacy Morris said. “The car industry hasn’t caught up sufficiently. The car still feels like a place where you’re disconnected.”
