FARADAY Future staked its claim to the world’s fastest electric car with its FF91 production model, showing footage of it outracing Tesla Motors Inc.’s Model S in a glitzy event in Las Vegas yesterday.

    The startup electric-car maker backed by Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting is counting on its debut offering to drum up support from investors, many of whom had been invited to the Las Vegas presentation. The FF91 can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.39 seconds, according to the company. That compares with 2.5 seconds for Tesla’s Model S P100D in its fastest “Ludicrous” mode.

    The 1,050-horsepower FF91 can travel in excess of 378 miles of adjusted EPA range, “enough to travel from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley with miles to spare,” Peter Savagian, Faraday Future’s vice president of propulsion engineering, said in the presentation. The car will also feature a personalized interface for every passenger and be able to find available parking space on its own.

    “We are not just building a vehicle but a globally shared internet mobility ecosystem,” said Jia, who’s also the founder of tech company LeEco. “I’m willing to devote everything to my dream. Even my life.”

    Jia is working to salvage a tech-focused empire that touches everything from smartphones and electric cars to organic food and movie productions. Leshi Internet Information & Technology Co., the Chinese video-streaming service also backed by Jia, said it’s in talks to raise more than 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) from a group of undisclosed strategic investors.

    The LeEco group has reiterated that it won’t give up on its electric car dreams despite restructuring at a subsidiary due to cash flow problems.

    Jia has invested more than US$300 million of his own money in Faraday, said Winston Cheng, a former Bank of America Corp. investment banker who now runs corporate finance for the LeEco group’s companies.

    Faraday Future is one of three electric car ventures Jia has invested in. He set up LeCar in 2014 and the firm aims to manufacture its first car this year.

    LeEco is also one of the investors in Lucid Motors Inc., earlier known as Atieva and established in 2007 to make battery packs for electric buses in China. In November, Lucid said it has selected Arizona as the home for a US$700 million facility that will manufacture luxury cars. (SD-Agencies)