Faraday Future FF 91 moves towards production at 155 mph
Cars
[MUSIC]
The road to producing a car is a long and challenging one and it's been no different for startup electric car company Faraday Future and its FF 91.
They've dealt with lawsuits with former executives.
They've had changes to manufacturing plans.
And they've had funding challenges.
But development of the FF 91 presses on and that includes testing which has us here at East Liberty Ohio at the transportation research center for an exclusive look at some high speed testing.
The high-speed exercise is just one in a series of tests Faraday is putting the 9, 1 through, as it makes it way towards production following traditional winter testing, tire valuations, general durability runs and not so traditional ones like entering the Pike's Peak International Hill Climb last year.
For its trip to the Midwest, Faraday's using the same fully caged car from Pike's Peak that's been rewrapped with a new black and white livery, gaining it the nickname of the Panda Express.
It won't be delivering and Chinese food, but is performing Faraday's Autobahn test cycle on the 7.5-mile oval.
That requires the car launching from a standstill, accelerating up to and maintaining 155 mile per hour for three minutes, three separate times.
Those 155 mile per hour runs are broken up by two minute cruises at 75 miles per hour.
The Faraday Autobahn test profile, which is similar to those used by other luxury automakers, takes less than 15 minutes to complete and eats up roughly a third of a fully charged battery, which Faraday claims is capable of delivering 378 miles of regular driving range.
The goal of all this is for engineer's to learn as much as possible, compare results to their simulation work, and tinker with the 1050 horsepower car software to better cope with the thermal efficiencies of the battery pack.
They also hope to maintain a progressive drop off in performance when the battery becomes heat soaked in high-stress situations, like say running down the German Autobahn at full bore.
Or when impressing your friends with a bunch of consecutive 2.39 second zero to sixty runs.
By all accounts the Faraday team seem happy with the results from the three days of testing that did produce software changes to improve thermal performance of the LG Chem battery pack.
The Pan Express didn't suffer any major setbacks looking incredibly strong off the line and zooming past us at 155 mph.
Which in all honesty is promising to see.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Faraday's plans call for production of the FF91 to begin at the end of the year with deliveries beginning early 2019.
But before that happens more testing needs to be done.
With trips to Death Valley and a return to Ohio for second round of high Speed test.
And a production plant needs to get up and running too.
It all sounds ambitious.
But I can say that things seem to be on the right track for this car too actually happen.
And that's a fact that seemed questionable not too long ago.
[MUSIC]
