Faraday Future laying off workers and cutting salaries by 20%

Faraday Future
FF91.

Faraday
Future

• The electric vehicle startup Faraday
  Future will lay off some employees and cut the salaries of
  others as it faces financial difficulties,
  The Verge first reported.
• A Faraday Future representative told Business Insider that it
  will reduce the wages of hourly and salaried employees by 20%
  while laying off an undisclosed number of workers.
• Faraday Future CEO Jia Yueting will lower his salary to $1 as
  some members of the automaker’s leadership team decrease their
  salaries by more than 20%.
• The company representative said the pay cuts are temporary
  and the automaker hopes to reverse them once an unspecified
  amount of funding becomes available.

The electric vehicle startup Faraday Future will lay off some
employees and cut the salaries of others as it faces financial
difficulties,
The Verge first reported.

A Faraday Future representative told Business Insider that it
will reduce the wages of hourly and salaried employees by 20%
while laying off an undisclosed number of workers. Faraday Future
CEO Jia Yueting will lower his salary to $1 as some members of
the automaker’s leadership team decrease their salaries by more
than 20%, the representative said, adding that the pay cuts are
temporary and the automaker hopes to reverse them once an
unspecified amount of funding becomes available.

“Yesterday Faraday Future announced a plan to realign its
business objectives to ensure the continuance of its operations
due to Evergrande’s failure to live up to its end of the bargain
and make the payments it agreed to. Given the situation, the
Company has reviewed its short-term operating plans to identify
ways to manage expenses and protect the long-term future of FF,”
the company representative said.

Earlier this month, a
filing on the Hong Kong stock
exchange first
reported by Reuters said Faraday Future was
attempting to cancel a $2 billion deal that would give a 45%
ownership stake to the Chinese healthcare company Evergrande
Health Industry Group.
The Verge reported that the automaker was struggling to pay
vendors after spending the first $800 million Evergrande had
planned to invest in it.

Evergrande’s filing said Faraday Future asked for a $700
million advance on the remaining $1.2 billion of Evergrande’s
planned investment and entered into arbitration to cancel all its
agreements with Evergrande after claiming it had not received the
payment. Evergrande said in the filing that Faraday Future had
not met the terms necessary to receive the funding.

In a statement, the automaker said it had met the required
conditions to receive the advance payment and was attempting to
terminate its deal with Evergrande as a result of Evergrande’s
failure to provide the promised funding. Faraday Future also
alleged that Evergrande has prevented it from receiving funding
from other sources.

The automaker, founded in 2014, has struggled to build its
planned FF91 electric SUV amid financial concerns. Faraday Future
has faced lawsuits and liens from suppliers who claim they have
not been paid, and the first pre-production version of the FF91
caught fire hours after it was shown to employees and their
families, according to
The Verge.

Yueting, who’s also the founder and chairman of the Chinese tech
company LeEco, last year had $182
million in assets frozen by the Chinese
government because of unfulfilled loan payments.