Faraday Future's FF 91 prototype electric crossover vehicle is unveiled during a press event for CES 2017 at The Pavilions at Las Vegas Market on January 3, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Backed by Chinese tech billionaire Jia Yueting, FF started hiring engineers from BMW, Tesla and other rivals, rolled out a sleek if puzzling race car prototype at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, and announced it would spend a billion to build a sprawling factory in Las Vegas. "How do we get FF 91 to market by 2018 – that is the lens through which we have to view all of our management decisions," Krause told USA TODAY in a statement. "When you think of a company like Waymo (Google's self-driving car venture, which is aiming for full autonomy), they have unlimited funds and we are a start-up, so we need to be more realistic," said Hong Bae, FF's head of Advanced Drive Assisted Systems, who keeps a model of David Hasselhoff's self-driving and talking Knight Rider KITT car on his desk.

Faraday Future unveiled the FF 91, its first production EV, at CES in Las Vegas Tuesday night. Unlike the fantasy racecar at last year's show, the FF 91 (pronounced "nine-one") actually moved and drove--drove itself, parked itself, and did 0-60 in 2.39 seconds live onstage (with a driver). Also unlike last year's car, Faraday has plans for the FF 91, including the production of 300 limited editions in March and mass production sometime in 2018. What was like last year's show was the raft of big promises. The FF 91 is "the first of a new species," said Nick Sampson, senior vice president of R&D and engineering.