Faraday Future, maker of the long-delayed FF91 EV, re-upped its commitment to raising funds while reporting Tuesday that its second-quarter operating losses more than quadrupled.
The company posted an operating loss of $137 million for the second quarter, compared with $28 million for the year-ago period. Overall, its second-quarter financial report paints a grim picture.
With still no vehicle to sell and little near-term prospect for generating revenue, the company has warned several times this year that it is running out of money.
The perennially cash-strapped company now has even less cash on hand, reporting roughly $121 million at the end of the second quarter, versus the $505 million it reported at the beginning of the year.
Faraday said in a statement that it “projects that it will require additional funds by early September 2022 in order to continue operations, and will also need to raise additional financing during the remainder of 2022 and beyond 2022 to support the ramp-up of production of the FF 91 to generate revenues to put the Company on a path to cash flow break-even.”
Lack of funding has been just one of the impediments that have delayed the launch of the beleaguered automaker’s first vehicle. Faraday’s future has been in jeopardy repeatedly since its founding in 2014, but the company has been tenacious in its vision, and launched as a public company in July 2021 through a SPAC merger with Property Solutions Acquisition Group.
Just in the second quarter, the company removed founder and former CEO Yueting Jia as an executive officer, began proceedings to force the former Lieutenant Governor of Nevada from its board, and fell under the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice, stemming from an SEC probe into whether Faraday misled investors.
It also narrowly avoided being delisted from Nasdaq by filing its overdue 2021 annual report and 2022 first-quarter financial results in May. That Faraday filed its second-quarter results should encourage investors.
“Importantly, we also became current with our financial statements and regained compliance with NASDAQ listing requirements,” CEO Carsten Breitfeld said in a statement Tuesday. “Fundraising efforts are underway, and we currently expect to deliver the FF 91 to customers in the third or fourth quarter of 2022.”
The company said it had 399 “fully refundable, non-binding, paid deposits” for the FF91 as of June 30. The new start of production and first deliveries of the FF91 have been pushed to the third or fourth quarter of 2022.
Despite the tumult, Faraday has big plans for the future, including a target to open a factory in China mid-decade to build two more models: an FF 81 sedan and FF 71 smart last-mile delivery vehicle.