I’ve met an actual Faraday Future FF91 owner last month, which is only about three times more likely than meeting someone who has literally walked on the moon.
The California-based electric automaker has produced something like 16 real cars, which feels like more of an achievement until you consider the company has also reportedly spent $3.5 billion to get to that point. It’s a strange business, which maybe explains why the company is trying to sell a rebadged van as an ‘AI’ van that has a face.
Obviously, if you read about David’s trip through the looking glass for that van’s launch, you have some sense of this company’s vibe. If not, just imagine you put every car business/tech buzzword into a bag, lined them up randomly on a table, then snorted those words through a sour straw into your brain. That’s what FF is like.
But what’s even better than technology and tech buzzwords? Crypto buzzwords! Which explains this truly bizarre email we all got last week, under the headline “Faraday Future Plans to Spin-Off its Crypto Flywheel Assets into an Existing Listed Company for Independent Fundraising and Operations, Building a Dual-Listed Company Structure.”
Sure, those are words.
I am far from an expert in cryptocurrency, which seems like a technology with some totally legitimate uses being promoted by people who often come off as anything but legit. I’m not a complete novice, though, so I had a sense that “Crypto Flywheel” was probably a concept created by Faraday Future.
It does have a nice ring to it, I admit. What does it mean? Well, here’s a good explanation for how an actual flywheel works:
As you might imagine, electric cars mostly do not have flywheels, so it’s the perfect metaphor for an automaker that only makes electric cars.
And here’s Faraday Future’s explanation for, uh, whatever it’s doing:
The Spin-Off plan aims to establish two independent listed systems—FFAI and a new company focusing on the Crypto Flywheel—that will operate independently while forming strategic synergies.
C10 & Crypto will be driven by its three engines of core businesses, including C10 Treasury, with the goal of accelerating the realization of its Web3 strategic vision and unlocking its full potential. As presented at the Company’s August 16 event, this move is expected to further advance the construction of an “independently operated, mutually empowered” Web2+Web3 dual-engine growth system to maximize stockholder value.
“Separating and listing the Crypto & C10 and crypto asset businesses marks an important turning point in the Company’s development,” said YT Jia, Founder and Global Co-CEO of FF. “We are establishing a second growth engine while ensuring that our core EAI EV Flywheel remains focused, accelerating product delivery and market expansion.”
Oh, I get it, they’re going to use the Crypto Flywheel on the company’s Web2 + Web3 dual-engine growth system. You see, C10 Treasury is a product of FFAI Crypto that buys the 10 biggest cryptocurrencies (excluding stablecoins, obvs, so no Tether) and puts them into a financial product you can invest in. These investments are 80/20, which is to say that 80% is passively managed and 20% is actively managed.
I’m curious, though, were the investments picked randomly or were the allocations thought of ahead of?
Within the overall portfolio, the actively managed 20% allocation achieved performance surpassing the C10 Index average. Notably, all four core digital assets selected in C10’s active allocation outperformed the overall C10 Index and every coin that outperformed the Index was proactively chosen.
Oh, good, they were proactively chosen. I was worried this whole thing was just some convoluted way to offshore income from China. I wonder if we could get a crypto influencer to explain it in a way that makes it sound like she’s been kidnapped by the North Korean government and is reading from a script? That might help:
View this post on Instagram
Sure, sure, sure. You buy the car that they can barely make with this. Makes sense.
Perhaps there’s another influencer who can do an even better job here:
Sorry, when I said “influencer,” I meant California’s actual State Treasurer. That’s Fiona Ma. She’s running for Lt. Governor, which means one day she could be governor. I’m sure this video will never come back to haunt her.
This is all to say that we get emails like this from Faraday Future all the time, and I hope they never stop.
Top graphic images: Faraday Future; Engineering Explained; depositphotos.com
Exactly how does this get us towards AI developed plant based burgers? Oh, wait, I see now…
Michael Faraday, an actual genius scientist of yore, is rolling over in his grave at his name being used for this BS.
NEWS ALERT: Faraday Future exhumed the corpse of Michael Faraday and hooked him up the Crypto Flywheel. A mushroom cloud has been seen over California and millions are presumed dead.
WOW! That is a lot of words to say it is a collosal failure and a waste of money. Some of us said it from the beginning but it’s nice some writers are starting to catch up.
“C10 & Crypto will be driven by its three engines of core businesses, including C10 Treasury, with the goal of accelerating the realization of its Web3 strategic vision and unlocking its full potential. As presented at the Company’s August 16 event, this move is expected to further advance the construction of an “independently operated, mutually empowered” Web2+Web3 dual-engine growth system to maximize stockholder value.”
We have reached the “We don’t even fecking try anymore” phase of the program.
I feel like this is an indicator that enough people have forgotten about the dotcom bubble to once again be swindled by the modern dotcom bubble that is tech startups.
Actually the dotcom bubble had some good items but then everyone threw crap against the wall. This is just a waste of money
I really miss the bubble era, just in general, the internet was much more hopeful, cars were good, people weren’t attached to their phones at the hip, good times. Wonder if I can find my old Geocities page….
Get-rich-quick schemes never go out of fashion.
I mean the 1st bubble gave us the pets.com sock-puppet dog, so it wasn’t all bad.
They need to change their name to WeFearEveryDay for our Future
COTD
Everyone hold your dollars for the next release. When they tie this into the turbo encabulator – that’s when you pounce.
Isn’t the encabulator the one with the crystals?
Some subset of people clearly drink this slop down, or it wouldn’t continually get produced. I’d need a bath if I had written those words.
Can we get back to a world where we make real products instead of constant grifts?
“What would you say… you do here?”
I need this to be an AI Quantum Crypto-Flywheel Dyson Sphere Warp-core before I invest. There’s not enough sci-fi buzzwords to get me excited yet.
Surely you mean the AI Quantum Crypto-Flywheel Dyson Sasquatch Sphere Warp-Core.
That’s the trim of my pickup truck!
Now with added Jeffries Tubes!
Everyone knows that will never happen unless they can invert enough tachyon beams by diverting power through a deflector array of some sort, but I’m not aware of a deflector dish large enough to manage the discharge of the resulting quantum pulses!
Technobabble solves everything!
REVERSE THE POLARITY!
Like a balloon with too much air or something!
Porsche’s 911 GT3 R Hybrid used a flywheel instead of of batteries, as did a bunch of F1 cars in the KER era.
So a little EV related.
Also wasn’t there a flywheel bus?
And of course flywheel elevated to high art
https://youtu.be/A5v-qTv1gJs
The Williams F1 team developed a flywheel KERS system but it never raced
The 911 you mentioned, and also the Audi R18 Le Mans car used Williams flywheel hybrid systems
That’s the way startups work. Make some bullshit using existing hardware or software, create a new way to market it or market it to a different potential customer base, and then hope you get bought out by a bigger company who want to keep you from competing. Faraday Future missed the “get bought out by a bigger company” part, and they’re about six years too late for that to work now.
What they’re talking about here is spreading the liability between two subsidiaries. If they get caught doing shady shit and get hit by any world government (but most likely the EU at this point) they can blame the subsidiary. Said subsidiary meanwhile will be trying to implement digital feudalism by making people pay for shit that should be free. Most heinously they want to control the means of currency and transactions, which is what “Web3” is based around. Web3 is the stupid thing a bunch of MBAs came up with as a catch-all name for their attempts to place toll booths at every single step of every single digital interaction.
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/what
Faraday Future as always is six years late and six million dollars short. I bet they thought Bed Bath & Beyond stock was a good investment too.
I think I got it! It’s a non-customer facing version the Paddy’s Dollars ecosystem. Faraday crypto distributes C10 coins to FFAI, who uses them to make cars, thereby making more capital to reinvest into C10 coins!
*spins finger in circle repeatedly
Dishearteningly, it appears that Fiona Ma is the front runner for LG.
To be fair nobody really pays attention to the Lt Gov position.
With Newsom clearly running for President, the California LG race definitely deserves attention.
Newsom’s term-limited anyway.
If they ran their business a fraction as good as “Wendy O” looks in that leather skirt, they might actually have something!
Just sayn’
Their car company looks to be going about the same as this Wendy O’s group is!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/91/5c/08/915c08dbd67848a0606d78b1ccc9dbd3.jpg
Except that she was actually bad ass and cool (rip).
I’m going to have to recalibrate my bullshitometer, this article (and David’s earlier one) peaked it out and may have fried a capacitor.
More like Faraway amirite
Crypto Flywheel sounds like the name of a new Jamiroquai album.
Hahahaha. Well played sir. As soon as I read this comment, I was instantly struck by how accurate it is. They’ve moved on from Canned Heat
And C10 Treasury sounds like a warehouse full of old Chevy truck parts.
I was thinking Pocket Full of Crypto Flywheel by these Spin Doctors
So the company is still a shell game of bullshit and scams.
Lucky for them there’s a sucker born every minute. And we’re a long way from running out of minutes.
Are we, though?
I’m trying to be optimistic here.
Idk a Chinese van with a TV on the front partially financed by a shitcoin ETF with a variety of nebulous AI enhancements seems perfectly suited for the times we live in
Oh but wait- we have a shiny new scam! don’t you want to jump in first before all the other suckers?
Gonna need a full story on the FF91 owner and their experience, please.
I swear, anything this company puts out appears to be written by AI and then published without anyone actually reviewing it.
This includes their actual business plans, if you can even call them that.
They have to realize that literally nobody cares about them, right?
Written by AI, translated to Chinese, and then translated back.
To be fair- this is crypto we are talking about. There is no legitimate business plan. It’s all hype and bullsh*t.
Okay, but has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Where to begin. Web2 is what we have now and Web3 is supposed to be decentralized in comparison to Web2, which is really not centralized anyway, but, oh I get it, crypto. So if Faraday is supposed to be a vehicle producer, shouldn’t there be a cocaine deal saving the company? Missing a few steps here, people.
How about a Web2 spinoff of OnlyFans called OnlyWizards, which eschews porn but allows a safe space for wizards to cast spells to eliminate disease and promote immortality. That seems like a safer synergy than crypto.
Well Web2 has been working out perfectly so far so I can imagine it could only be made better by converting it into a gigantic money farm.
The Big Short II – Crypto Flywheel….coming soon to
a theatre near youNetflix.Hmmm. I’d like to see a dynamic interface which takes into account current currency values and electricity prices and then determines whether to put the energy gained from braking into crypto mining or battery recharge.
mine crypto just by driving!