Is This How Faraday Future Is About To 'Reinvent The Wheel'?

Remember that mad Batmobile-like electric vehicle concept Faraday Future revealed earlier this year? The Chinese-backed Californian company has just revealed a sneak peek of its first production model, and unsurprisingly, it’s nothing like it.

Yep, as much as we’d love a 1000bhp EV supercar, Faraday seems to be sensibly chasing after the Tesla Model X with an SUV. But what’s more interesting about the above teaser is the whole ‘re-inventing the wheel’ aspect. So what is FF up to?

Judging by a patent discovered by The Truth About Cars entitled “System and Method for Improving Acceleration Performance of an Electric Vehicle,” it’s all about in-wheel motors.

The patent details several different motor concepts, one of which that proposes that the “motor may be built into a wheel such that the wheel may rotate co-axially with a rotor of the motor.” And if this is the technology that Faraday has instilled in its new SUV, the ‘reinvent the wheel’ thing isn’t far from the mark - in-motor technology has only ever appeared on concepts and prototypes when it comes to cars.

The patent also shows that like Tesla, Faraday Future is thinking about performance. There’s talk of a Ludicrous-style driving mode which “may also be referred to as, for example, a sports mode, a turbo mode, an exhilarating mode, a thrilling mode, a rocket mode.”

I don’t know about you, but ‘rocket mode’ gets my vote…