Faraday Future, a Chinese electric vehicle startup aiming to start selling its first model in early 2019, is "effectively insolvent," one of its founders wrote after quitting the company last week.
Faraday is so low on cash that it has cut pay and put many workers at its headquarters and factory in California on furlough through at least the end of the year, tech news site The Verge reported.
Nick Sampson, one of three co-founders, said in an email obtained by the website that Faraday "at best will limp along for the foreseeable future." Sampson said he was "sorry and sad that this day has been reached" but could no longer remain with the company as it unravels.
His resignation came a day after Peter Savagian, the former chief engineer of General Motors' EV1 in the 1990s, quit as Faraday's senior vice president of technology and product development.
Faraday initially planned to build a $1 billion EV plant near Las Vegas but canceled that amid a previous series of executive departures and financing concerns. Instead, it leased a former Pirelli tire factory in Hanford, Calif., and obtained a deal for $2 billion in financing from a Chinese holding company before having a falling out with the investors.
