Faraday Future threw its cards on the table in Las Vegas at the 2017 CES (the new official title for the former Consumer Electronics Show). The China-funded would-be Tesla rival has been challenged by the recent departure of key executives and questions about its financing; after missed payments stalled construction of its factory in mid-November,  Nevada’s state treasurer called Faraday Future ?a Ponzi scheme? in an interview with Fortune. Nevertheless, at CES, Faraday Future took the wraps off its FF91 electric vehicle, a more practical-looking if less exciting machine than the single-seat FFZERO1 concept car it displayed at the same show a year ago. It also carted out a pair of crudely constructed FF91 prototypes.
With unfinished interiors and lacking exterior elements such as headlights and taillights, the two black-and-white beta-prototype vehicles individually showed off two FF91 technologies: the crossover?s automated self-parking system and its dynamics. Faraday Future opened the rear-hinged rear doors to its self-parking FF91 prototype, giving us the chance to stretch out in the electric crossover?s unpolished rear quarters while a company representative sat behind the three-spoke steering wheel. Equipped with a retractable lidar system, 10 cameras, 13 radar sensors, and a dozen other sensors, the FF91 prototype proceeded to drive itself around a relatively full parking lot in search of an open parking space?the front-seat representative never once ha...