Over the past few months, things appeared to be out of control at the high-profile electric car startup Faraday Future. The new leadership brought in by billionaire founder Jia Yueting, including Stefan Krause, former BMW and Deutsche Bank CFO, and BMW’s head of EVs, Ulrich Kranz, along with several other high-profile employees, left in masses.
The circumstance surrounding this new startup is apparently directly linked to Krause’s departure from FF.
The longtime financial exec was brought on board to straighten up the company’s finances, but sources say that he faced important roadblocks from FF founder Jia Yueting, also known as YT.
YT was better known as the founder of LeEco, a Chinese tech giant, but as the company’s financial troubles got out of control over the last year, YT had to resign from his leading role at the company and instead moved to California to focus on Faraday Future, which is still under his control.
Earlier this month, YT’s profile in China was hit even harder when the government placed him on a debt blacklist, which is a way to shame affluent Chinese business people and block them from engaging in reckless spending.
With his position in China growing weaker, it looked like YT turned to his US EV startup to build his empire back up.
That’s while Krause was trying to raise money for the company in order to bring its first vehicle, the FF91, to production.
But sources say that while Krause made some progress to raise capital, deals fell through because they were contingent on YT resigning or giving up a controlling part in the company, which is something he refused to do.
Last month, FF sent out a press release announcing that they terminated Krause’s employment and they were looking into legal actions against him:
“Stefan Krause’s possible violation of law and lack of contribution to FF’s goals over the course of his leadership since March has led to severe damages to the interests of FF and its investors. FF is currently taking legal actions as a result of Stefan Krause’s malfeasance and dereliction of duty.”
At the time, Krause responded by stating that his employment wasn’t terminated and that he had instead quit a month earlier.
He launched his own electric car startup called ‘EVELOZCITY’.
The startup has now a very simple website online with the following “vision”:
“Design, develop and deliver the most competitive, capable, connected and clean mobility device for the next generation.”
Sources say that he was able to raise funds using the groundwork that he had done on the previous deals that he tried to close for FF, but that ended up failing due to disagreements with YT.
With a reportedly significant financial backing and preferring Krause’s leadership over YT’s, sources say that several high-profile Faraday Future executives and employees are following Krause to EVELOZCITY and that more could come.
We are told that Richard Kim, FF’s former head designer, Bill Strickland, a former Ford executive who joined FF last year to lead its vehicle line, and Sohel Merchant, a former Tesla engineer who led vehicle engineering at FF, all joined the new startup.
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