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News · Today in Vegas · November 9, 2026

Faraday Future Promised to Build Its North Las Vegas Car Plant in Half the Usual Time. It Sold the 913 Acres for $16.9 Million With Nothing Built.

By Hargreaves Ledger, Pace Vegas Desk · November 9, 2026

The short versionFaraday Future, which Pace Vegas reported in April 2016 was breaking ground on a $1 billion electric car plant in North Las Vegas, abandoned the Apex Industrial Park project in July 2017 and sold its 913 acres to Toronto-based H&R REIT for $16.9 million in September 2019. The company now builds in Hanford, California, trades on Nasdaq as FFAI, and in May 2026 paused its FX Super One minivan pending new financing.
Neon sign of an electric car outline above an empty desert lot with a shovel

In April 2016 Pace Vegas reported that Faraday Future was breaking ground on a $1 billion plant on a 900 acre site in North Las Vegas. "We're moving as fast as we can," spokeswoman Stacy Morris said then. "Normally, a project of this size would take approximately four years, and we're trying to cut it down to half the time while still doing it right." The California company had shown its FFZero 1 concept at CES that January and promised its first road car in 2017. Even then, we noted Jalopnik's reporting on worries about the company's Chinese financing and the departure of its lead engineer.

The state had already gone big. In a December 2015 special session, lawmakers approved $215 million in tax abatements and cleared the way for $120 million in water, road and rail work at Apex, The Nevada Independent reported; the Review-Journal later put the full incentive package at $335 million. The plant was projected to create 4,500 direct jobs, and Faraday promised a surety bond of up to $75 million plus $13 million in escrow, to be released once it built at least 1.6 million square feet. "I just knew that this was something special," North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee said in 2015, News 3 recalled.

Faraday bought 930 acres in 2016 for about $29.4 million and planned a 3.4 million square foot factory for up to 150,000 electric vehicles a year, according to the Review-Journal. Crews graded about 700 acres. Nothing was ever built on them.

In July 2017 Faraday halted the plant and said it would look for a smaller existing building, possibly out of state, The Nevada Independent reported. "Faraday was such a sexy company," Lee said at the time, adding that it "overshadowed a lot of the other good things that we're doing here." That month Faraday sent Nevada's Department of Taxation a $16,000 check to repay the only abatements it had used, the Review-Journal reported.

The next month Faraday signed a lease on a former Pirelli tire plant in Hanford, California, which it said could employ up to 1,300 people. In October 2018 it disclosed a "serious and unexpected cash shortfall," and in January 2019 investor Evergrande agreed to restructure a $2 billion investment, the Review-Journal reported.

By March 2019 the North Las Vegas land was for sale at $40 million, with Faraday citing a "global reorganization" and a cut in "non-core assets." A spokesman for the Governor's Office of Economic Development said the state was "disappointed." A sale to Stonehill Capital Management reached in late 2018 never closed.

In September 2019 Faraday sold 913 acres to Toronto-based H&R REIT for $16.9 million, less than half its asking price, the Review-Journal and News 3 reported. The Las Vegas Sun reported that H&R, one of Canada's largest real estate investment trusts, planned an industrial park. City Manager Ryann Juden called the sale "the end of a major chapter out at Apex" and told News 3, "Faraday doesn't really leave a void."

Faraday kept going in California. It listed on Nasdaq on July 22, 2021 under the ticker FFIE after a merger with a blank check company that valued it at $3.4 billion, and it delivered its first FF 91 on August 12, 2023, according to the company's Wikipedia history. The ticker changed to FFAI on March 10, 2025.

Las Vegas still gets the pitch meetings. At its CES stockholders' day in January 2026, Faraday laid out a three-phase rollout for the FX Super One minivan and a five-year target of 400,000 to 500,000 vehicles, and said it would unveil robotics products at the NADA Show in Las Vegas on February 4, Automotive World reported. In March 2026 the SEC's enforcement staff said it did not intend to recommend action after Wells notices sent in 2025, while noting that this was not an exoneration, and Faraday disclosed a Nasdaq notice for trading below the $1 minimum bid.

In May 2026 Faraday paused the original 400 volt FX Super One, less than a year after its July 2025 debut, saying it would move to an 800 volt or range-extended design and that mass production was "subject to securing financing," CarScoops reported. The company said it had shipped 68 robots through the end of April. Ten years after the groundbreaking in North Las Vegas, the cars Faraday has built came out of the Hanford plant it leased in 2017.

The desk's takeNevada wrote the incentive check in a special session; Faraday wrote one back for $16,000. The best thing the company ever did for North Las Vegas was leave graded dirt behind for someone with a lease plan. A decade later it still holds its big investor shows in Las Vegas, which is fitting: this is the one town that has always understood the difference between the presentation and the payout.

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