Faraday Future gets serious about electric cars with $1 Billion U.S. factory

The number of employees have doubled since July - now adding up to more than 400 - and FF expects to grow its team to 500 by the end of the year.

Sampson, who supervised vehicle and chassis engineering, left Tesla in January 2012; Elon Musk said at the time that he asked for Sampson's resignation because there was not a "good fit for him within the company".

The company, which has no publicly-named CEO has plans to spend a $1 billion dollars on an electric vehicle manufacturing plant in one of four states, but is refusing to reveal its backers.

The exact site of FF's first manufacturing facility will be announced in the coming weeks, which means that's probably when more details will appear.

He recently told reporters that the company would launch a brand new electric vehicle in 2017 that would rival the Tesla Model S, and a press release revealed the company was ready to get that going.

Faraday hopes to make money not just on the auto, but on subscriptions for connective services, apps and other infotainment that is piped into the vehicle, Sampson said. It is not known if the aid from the online video magnate is complete or partial.

In terms of design, the company has a teaser rendering on its website of an SUV which looks very BMW X6-esque.

Apart from designing EVs, the company is also planning to venture into different aspects of the automotive and technology industries, including unique ownership and usage models, in-vehicle content and autonomous driving.

Production is slated to begin in 2017. Now Faraday has funding for a manufacturing plant, the mystery has garnered serious interest.

This week, FF announced that it will be spending $1 billion on a "state-of-the-art facility" to build its all-electric cars.

The Post speculates that naming a CEO would out Apple as a partner (hence why it hasn't happened) as would the "huge amount" of former Tesla employees now working at the company.