Faraday Future To Unveil First Production Vehicle At CES 2017

It has been less than three years since Faraday Future began as a startup in Gardena, California, and the company plans to release its first fully electric production vehicle in 2017. It announced late Tuesday on Twitter it would debut the car on Jan. 3, 2017, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The picture is also the first look of what the front of the car, specifically the headlights, would look like. And so far as teasers go, it is quite exciting. Another teaser picture that followed Wednesday showed what the rear of the car would look like.

It seems Faraday has very neatly incorporated its logo in the row of lights at the back. Pretty clever. The picture shows another interesting aspect of the vehicle: there are no rear-view mirrors on the sides of the car, but instead, there are cameras.

It is not the first time a car without rear-view mirrors would be unveiled. Tesla’s Model X and the BMW i8 also were meant to be without the side appendages, but regulations don’t allow such cars to be produced commercially. However, Japan now allows cars sans rear-view mirrors on its roads, according to Electrek, and other countries may follow suit. Also, if needed, it should be easy for Faraday to retrofit mirrors instead of cameras, if the law so demands, much the same way Tesla and BMW did.

Faraday had unveiled its first concept vehicle, the single-seat FFZERO1, at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2016. And in a year since then, it is planning to showcase its first production car. The company also received permission to test autonomous cars in California in June this year, and reached an agreement with LG Chem in October for the supply of batteries.

But when we can expect to see a Faraday car on the road is still anyone’s guess. The company is having financial problems, struggling to raise capital despite partnering with LeEco, the Chinese consumer electronics company. Financial problems led the company to suspend work on its Nevada production facility in November, seven months after it broke ground at the site.