Faraday wants you to believe it’s not a front for the Apple Car, but probably is

Billion dollar car companies don’t pop up overnight.
Well, except
Applefaraday-future Faraday.
It plans to release its first vehicle in 2017, and claims it’ll have 15 percent more range than the Tesla Model S. Bold.
It’s also spending some serious loot.
According to a recent blog post,
Apple Faraday plans to spend $1 billion to develop a manufacturing plant in California, Nevada, Georgia or Louisiana in order to “explore other aspects of the automotive and technology industries, including unique ownership and usage models, in-vehicle content and autonomous driving.”
The well-funded startup currently employs 400 people and adds 10 new hires a week. Right now you’ll find them operating out of Nissan’s former California research facility.
All that sounds great, but where
Apple Faraday loses the rest of us — and sparks intense rumor that this could indeed be the Apple car —  is through its representative speaking in vague generalities and carefully guarded truisms.
For example, when pressed by the Wall Street Journal about where the $1 billion plus in funding was coming from,
Apple’s Faraday’s only named spokesperson, Senior VP Nick Sampson — former director of vehicle and chasis engineering at Tesla — responded, “we are keeping our partners confidential.”
The CEO is also an enigma. He or she most certainly exists, but unlike other companies this size,
Apple Faraday is remaining mum on who it is. The only way that really makes sense is if it’s a “former” Apple executive.
Equally mind-boggling is the fact that
Apple Faraday employs so many Tesla alumni. This could coincide with the shade CEO Elon Musk has been lobbing Apple’s way lately.
Tesla Motors Chairman and CEO Elon Musk
“They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard’. If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I’m not kidding,” Musk told German newspaper Handelsblatt.
Add this to the fact that it’s almost certain Apple plans to enter the car market within the next five years, and that it just bought a huge amount of land in California — twice the size of its new “spaceship” campus — and it paints a compelling picture. I mean,
Apple Faraday did say they planned on building a billion dollar facility, right?
Of course, it could just be a well-executed ruse for a company — Faraday — that has its sights set on Tesla, to drum up some attention. It’s really impossible to know for sure. That said, it really feels like an Apple move.
Welcome to the auto world
Apple Faraday.

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