Faraday Future may have technically built a small handful of EVs that can somehow legally be driven on public roads, but it’s still not a real car company. What exactly is going on behind the scenes and why this fake company still pretends to exist, I can’t really say, but big news! They’re branching out! After revealing some rebadged Chinese minivans last summer, Faraday Future now wants you to believe it makes humanoid robots. In fact, if the press release is to be believed, you won’t even have to wait very long to get one of these futuristic marvels, because deliveries will begin in just a couple of weeks.
Why anyone would give Faraday Future a single cent, I have no idea, especially now that it bills itself as “a California-based global shared intelligent electric mobility ecosystem company.” But if the humanoid robots that actually exist just aren’t scammy enough for the folks in your C-suite, maybe one of the three robots Faraday’s “first batch of Embodied AI (EAI) humanoid and bionic robots” will be more their speed. Will they actually work? Does it even matter? It’s probably better to lay off a bunch of human workers now and figure the rest out later.
Three options
According to the press release, the credulous rubes who might spend real company funds on these things will have three options to choose from: the FF Futurist, which the “company” bills as a “full-size professional humanoid;” the FF Master, a so-called “athletic ‘action master’ humanoid;” and the FX Aegis that’s described as a “quadruped security/companion.” Supposedly, that will make them “the first in North America to deliver both humanoid and quadruped robots simultaneously.” Exciting! Oh, and there’s also apparently something called the Mobile Manipulator Robot Series that will allegedly begin production in Q2.
So, how much of your department’s budget is it going to take to fulfill your CEO’s dreams of replacing real employees with human-shaped robot slaves? On the top end, the release claims each FF Futurist robot starts at $34,990, although an extra $5,000 tacks on something Faraday calls the Ecosystem Skill Package. Drop down to the FF Master, though, and each robot will only cost $19,990, plus $3,000 for the Ecosystem Skill Package. Meanwhile, you can pick up an FX Aegis robo-dog for a mere $2,499, plus $1,000 for the Ecosystem Skills Package.
And while you probably shouldn’t take Scammier Tesla’s word for anything, the press release does claim “[t]he total number of FF EAI Robotics units covered by non-binding and non-refundable B2B deposits reached more than 1,200, which marks a terrific start for the Company’s robotics goals.”
There’s also more to the press release, but unless actual companies start using Faraday Future’s “new” robots to do actual work, why bother? Let’s all just collectively cross our fingers that no one’s CEO is gullible enough to get tricked into spending company money on a bunch of Faraday Future robots.
