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There is new news in the future of Letv founder Jia Yueting's American electric car start-up Faraday. Faraday Future (FF) signed a formal agreement with South Korean carmaker Myoung Shin, which will start manufacturing mass market models of FF81 electric vehicles for FF cars in 2024. This is the latest product development since FF announced that it will produce its limited FF91 EV in the third quarter of this year. As to whether this plan can be landed. We need to wait until 2024.

Founded in California in 2014, FF is an Internet and technology company, an artificial intelligence products company, a software company and a user ecosystem company, in addition to developing upcoming electric cars such as the FF91 and FF81. After Letv's financial problems, founder Jia Yueting went to Los Angeles for a "regular meeting" on July 5, 2017, and then devoted himself to building cars in the United States.

In January 2021, FF automobile construction has achieved initial success. FF Motors announced a merger with property Solutions acquisition Company (PSAC) into Nasdaq, valued at $3.4 billion, through a shell purchase of SPAC. FF Motors went public on the Nasdaq under the symbol FFIE in July last year. "the listing of FF is a new starting point, which solves the biggest funding problem, and then goes all out to achieve mass production in 12 months," Jia Yueting said in an interview at the listing.

But the good times didn't last long. Last October, investment companies and short sellers J Capital Research Ltd. A 27-page Faraday short report was released that concluded that the carmaker would never deliver a car. Under the influence of this report, FF did not submit its first quarterly results to SEC as required, so it was warned by SEC to delist and SEC required it to submit its results within 180 days.

FF explained to investors that it was conducting an internal investigation into the problems mentioned in the report and therefore did not submit financial statements, although there did not appear to be a direct link between the two, but FF clearly understood the relevant rules and applied them flexibly. The independent director of FF Automobile commissioned a commission of inquiry to investigate the allegations of shorting the report, and the findings were released earlier this week. The committee believes that FF's description of Jia Yueting's role in the company is not true; FF said before its launch that it had received more than 14000 orders that were misleading to the outside world, including hundreds of orders paid for deposits and 14000 unpaid orders; and there were some problems with FF's internal control, but FF had discovered it before. The survey found that, apart from that, FF did not short the problems mentioned in the report, so Jia Yueting and CEO reduced their salaries by 25% and suspended or resigned other related personnel.

The short report said there was no sign of production at FF's factories in the United States and no movement at several plants in other countries, while short sellers believed that FF could no longer borrow enough money to put the car into production.

After the release of the survey report, FF further explained to the outside world: "the pre-orders released by the company include two categories: paid pre-orders and free pre-orders, in which the company collects more than 14000 FF 91 bookings and has information about all booking users, which is free booking data; while the company released a limited edition of FF 91 worldwide, this part is a fee-based pre-order."

FF Motor also stressed: "at present, a special committee composed of an independent board of directors has investigated that the company's previously announced 14000 bookings may be misleading, but it is not false information." As a result, the committee and FF tend to have 14000 orders that are not paid for, which are part of the order, which is just a flaw in the language, not false data. In July last year, FF opened a reservation for FF 91. Users need to pay 50, 000 yuan for the order and the deposit is refundable.

In any case, FF is scheduled to deliver 300 of its first FF91 luxury electric car in the third quarter of this year, and the next thing to plan for FF is the next production plan for the Volkswagen FF81. According to official news, FF81 will be produced at the Myoung Shin plant in Gunsan, Jeolla, South Korea. Myoung Shin is one of South Korea's top five carmakers, which originally produced for Baiteng, but the latter turned to FF when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. In fact, before the listing, Myoung Shin and FF signed a memorandum on the issue of contract manufacturing, and recently only the two sides have signed a substantial contract on this cooperation. Geely, another Chinese car brand, is also one of the contract manufacturers considered by FF, and Geely is also a financial investor in FF.

Given that we know next to nothing about the second mass-marketed FF81, it is impossible to predict whether it will be mass produced and put on the market as scheduled. Jia Yueting's stories of designing cars for his dreams seem excellent and inspiring, but so far, FF cars have encountered some difficulties in making them a reality. Fake it until you make it, this is the tradition of Silicon Valley, you can't tell the truth, you can't tell the truth, but it needs to continuously output a story that looks very true, under this cultural tolerance, the ability to do PPT needs to be combined with execution, some stories will come true, some will not. Until then, all eyes are focused on the third quarter to see if we will see the landing of FF91 as promised.

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