Car makers paint a picture of driving nirvana defined by roads with no congestion, speed limits or shortage of glamorous passengers – but with the global urban population expected to swell to 6.3 billion by 2050, it’s a fantasy that becomes less credible with each passing concept car.
Faraday Future is a start-up car maker that models itself on a tech business model – and for that read that it moves quickly. In its first 18 months it has employed a team of 750 including former executives from Apple, BMW, Google, NASA and Tesla, and announced a $1 billion factory to be built in Nevada. The Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting is among its investors.
Impressive-sounding stuff and an impending threat to Tesla, but the company’s namesake, a man described as one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time, might have been surprised by its first car.
Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, the FFZERO1 Concept vehicle is described as a test bed from which a design and engineering team will draw inspiration for a future range of clean, intuitive electric vehicles. However, while its batmobile carbon-fibre styling might be beautifully seductive, the 1,000 horsepower electric motor, 0-60 time of less than 3 seconds and top speed of over 200 MPH seems lodged in the past. Supercar concepts might steal column inches, but solve real-life transport challenges they do not.
Polar opposite to the electric supercar concept is the Ego Urban Transporter; an enclosed pedal-powered tricycle fitted with a small electrical assist motor. In America, the tiny 20 mph vehicle is legally a bicycle, so requires no license or insurance.
The only cost to operate the Ego is that of recharging the batteries -electricity that can be bought from renewable sources such as wind or solar.
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