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Faraday Future Says New Robot Business Not a Pivot, but a Plus

At NADA, Faraday Future introduced the FF Futurist, FF Master and FX Aegis, robots that it hopes to sell with the help of, among other things, auto dealerships.

Faraday Future co-CEO YT Jia is joined by the company’s FF Futurist full-size humanoid robot during a presentation at the National Associaiton of Auto Dealers Show in Las Vegas. (Chris Clonts)

Another automaker is jumping into the robot pool. On the heels of Tesla and Hyundai, Faraday Future, the troubled electric car company, announced at NADA that it will now use its expertise to build three AI-powered robot models with a new entity, FF EAI-Robotics. These are the company’s first three offerings:

  • FF Futurist is a full-size humanoid robot. positioned as a full-size, professional EAI (embodied artificial intelligence) humanoid robot for what the company called professional roles. Price: $34,990.
  • FF Master is an “athletic” robot that the company said would be one of the most cost-effective humanoid bots in the U.S. market. Price: $19,990.
  • FX Aegis is a quadruped (like Boston Dynamics’ Spot) EAI positioned as a robot for security and companionship. Price: $2,499

Software packages for each robot will be sold separately.

In a news release ahead of the announcement, the company said it wanted the humanoid FF Futurist to be the world’s first humanoid robot in the United States to be mass produced and delivered to customers. It should be noted, however, that Faraday Future, the car company, struggled to produce its main product, delivering fewer than 20 vehicles since it was founded in 2014. The company is optimistic, though, that its new FX Super One, an EAI minivan, will be more successful than its original FF 91. The company announced it had recently started delivering the Super One to customers in the Middle East.

The company said its new robots fall under what it calls the three-in-one robotics ecosystem, comprised of the EAI device, the FF EAI Brain and open-source platform, and the EAI decentralized data factory. A big part of the business case would be monetizing collected data, said Jon Rettinger, a tech creator who joined FF executives for the announcement.

Rettinger also said that a convergence of developments is a positive sign for the robot industry. “The embodied AI robotics industry is reaching a critical moment – a tipping point where technological breakthroughs are giving way to large-scale commercialization,” he said.

What could the robots be used for?

FF Master is meant to be more affordable/approachable than Futurist. (Faraday Future)

Rettinger also announced that the company has made its development software for the robots open-source, and invited programmers and engineers to begin exploring the possibilities.

The company outlined uses for its robots this way: FF Futurist is meant to work in business settings, where it could be the first point of customer contact, providing information before routing people to a human employee. Think retail settings like, yes, auto dealerships. Another use mentioned would be hospital settings where a Futurist could work a health-care tech, in radiology, for instance. The smaller FF Master is meant to be the “athletic” and communicative version, playing with children, for instance, or keeping them on-task with homework.

The dog-like Aegis is meant to be a security and companion bot, with a range of uses from exploring rubble for bodies after a building collapse to accompanying hikers (and carrying a payload) over rough terrain.

The company’s founder and co-CEO, YT Jia, laid out a grand vision for the robot business. “EAI robots will reshape productivity models and drive a new leap forward in productivity through human–machine symbiosis,” he said.

Faraday Future joins Tesla and Hyundai in moving into the service robot industry. Like Tesla, which is moving forward with its Optimus humanoid model, Faraday Future established a web page to take preorders. Jia said the company already had more than 1,000 orders. Hyundai is working with Boston Dynamics to make its Atlas humanoid robot capable of working on the factory floor of an auto plant.

How robots need automobile dealers

You might be wondering why Faraday Future would make this announcement at a convention for automobile dealers. Jia didn’t dance around that question, saying that dealers would be a big part of the company’s sales growth.

He said that moving away from the so-called one-and-done sales cycle, dealer partners would create a recurring revenue stream. He also said they would reap benefits like access to capital for customers who finance or lease robots.

He also said dealers would have the opportunity become stakeholders and/or shareholders, benefiting from any long-term growth in the company’s value. John Schilling, Faraday Future’s director of government and public affairs, said, “We’re going to need people to sell these, and that’s what dealers are good at.”

Twin-engines for the company

Jia said that the EAI vehicle business and the EAI robot business could be two flywheels that drive the company forward and that each could help sustain the other in tough periods of potentially slow growth.

He also said a fourth robot, a mobile manipulator, is in development. Mobile manipulators combine a mobile base with arms and grabbers capable of picking up and moving items. They are particularly useful in materials handling.

Topics:
Artificial Intelligence Automation Automotive Electrification Manufacturing & Prototyping Robotics

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