It's one of those jobs you call them like a privileged job, right? You can't imagine being paid to do such a thing. It seems like something that is just fun. Welcome to our next sessions one to one.
I'm Amelia Taylor-Hauperg, and this week I'm speaking with Richard Kim, head designer for Faraday Future, named after the English scientist Michael Faraday, who essentially founded the concept of electromagnetism. Faraday Future is an audacious new car company that hopes to create a new paradigm in electric vehicles, one that works more like a tablet. Kim is the company's lead designer, and before that spent time at Audi and BMW, where he designed the i3 and i8, we talk about the difficulties of breaking into the car market as faced by those at Apple and Tesla for starters, and the future of car transport. Spoiler, it involves aromatherapy.
So I'd like to begin by asking a question about your timeline. As I understand it, Faraday Future has began in 2014, and you joined in 2015, and you want to have a car ready for production in 2017. How crazy of a timeline is that compared to BMW where you were working before? It's actually, I would say it's impossible, the timeline.
So we have to reinvent the methods to get to that point. And you know, of course there's some, I'd say the only old school or traditional thing we're doing here is helping us succeed as working hard, putting in a lot of hours. That would be the only traditional thing we're doing, but in order to meet that milestone or that promise, we had to reinvent our whole entire design process. So how did you go about doing that when you first came in?
Well, when I looked at the schedule, and I was by myself a year ago, so now I have about 80 people. But when I was by myself here, and you know, pretty much an empty building, a warehouse kind of thing, I saw the calendar of what they wanted to accomplish, and I thought, this is impossible. But I have a really good group of designers, very excited to try things in a new way, very excited about taking the risk and using new software and new techniques to meet our deadlines and still have good quality and a really awesome result. So one thing we did a lot of was virtual reality.
And if you design a car in a traditional setting, you have millions and millions of dollars worth of equipment. You'll have a couple hundred guys building prototypes. The way we started was just the empty room. Sometimes we had enough power.
Sometimes we had plumbing and HVAC and some computers. That's how we designed a car. So tell me more a little bit about how you use virtual reality in the design process. I would say it's probably the first car that was ever designed in virtual reality.
And then of course, we, you know, cars are not just pictures or videos. Then we CNC'd everything out, 3D print, CNC, everything from digital data and checked our work. So we did that a few times, not too many times. And we were fairly accurate.
And so what is it about the actual design process while someone is wearing say an Oculus Rift? Is that the technology that you're using? Well, we're using a handful and then we bought every single version of VR off the shelf and tried it out. And so this car in particular that you're speaking about designing through the Oculus and through these other virtual reality systems, is that the one that the FF01?
Well, that too. But you know, that's a side project. That's probably 1% of our efforts. The real first production car was designed in the same way.
So what is it exactly about using virtual reality that allows you to design in a different way? We're just curious about the attention that architects and designers have towards designing with say their hands and drawing and having a simple 2D surface to sketch out on versus the advantages of having something like a simple CAD system of 3D renderings. But what is it about approaching it in that virtual reality that really changes the methods? I think well, first you have to train your eyes.
You have to be brave because you might be working on something that you can't touch. When you're a special automotive designer, it's all about the surface, the touch, the feel of things, the way highlights run across 3D forms. And we didn't have that luxury in our situation here. So we had to trust our eye and actually learn very quickly.
The team is very young and we just embraced the digital process and unlearn things as much as we were learning things. So maybe to get back to the beginning a little bit, what exactly brought you first into car design? I understand you were a student at Art Center, College of Design. Did you go to school thinking you wanted to become a car designer?
No, not really. I think I changed with majors. I was just an illustrator. I liked drawing and painting.
And while I was at Art Center, I discovered that you could design cars. I didn't even know it existed as a profession. So very quickly, I changed majors. And actually, I went from illustration to product design and then to car design all in like three months or so.
So what exactly drew you to the car design after realizing that it was a thing you could actually do? Well, it's one of those jobs you call them like a privileged job, right? You can't imagine being paid to do such a thing. It seems like something that is just fun.
And it is most of the time. And so when you first came to be a part of the team at Fair Day Future, what exactly did you, what was drawing you to that company as a side to leaving BMW to do so? Well, actually I left BMW a few years before that. Okay.
Yeah, we're to Audi. I actually was working in a little town in Germany called Ingleschott on a project. And I realized that experience at Audi and BMW was really training. It was like I had to go through that in order to do something like Fair Day Future.
To see how a so-called legacy car company might operate and how the various limitations and opportunities in that? Yeah, I would say it was a continuation of school. I worked at a great brand to like BMW, a great brand like Audi. I was sitting in a tiny little town in Germany and I was working on a car and I realized that I don't know, maybe it was too much of the same.
It was starting to become routine. And there is a point in time where you just start, I guess it's you start brand worshiping. You start saying, oh, what does it mean to be Audi? What does it mean to be Mercedes?
And you're constantly thinking like how far can men go? Or how far can Rolls-Royce go? You're always within this small bandwidth. And an opportunity like this that I mean now you can actually create that DNA and that heritage in real time.
And that I felt I was ready for. And your time at BMW, you also were able to carve out your own field working on the I-8 and I-3 series cars, the electric BMW series. And that was kind of your own, you were given control over that project. What was the work that you did for those cars, the I-3 and the I-8 that you might have brought to Fair Day Future?
Is there anything there? Well, the team was very strong over there, a lot like it is here. And it was very small. And what BMW was trying to do was hit the reset button and reach out to maybe customers that normally would paint BMW.
And what they did was they actually had a separate building, separate studio, separate team. It's just about four of us, two interior to exterior. And I think they were trying to simulate almost the start of atmosphere. And they really pushed us away from the headquarters to start from scratch.
So they thought the startup environment would be more motivating or more inspiring for that kind of thing? Yeah, inspiring. And to really, you're always influenced by your surroundings. So they put us in a separate building.
And that way we're doing something very different. So it was good training for this experience. And you've said before that Fair Day Future aims to make a car that's like a tablet. So more like a tablet than say another iteration of BMW or a Tesla or so on.
But I'm still a little bit interested in how you would describe that a little bit more. What exactly do you mean of describing a car like a tablet? What are the goals inherent in that comparison? Well, I guess if you look at cars now or transportation now, it's always, I guess it's not as progressive as your typical trip to Home Depot, right?
You can go to Home Depot and get a more futuristic experience. Smart, thermostat, smart, toilet, smart. Everything is smart, right? And I think cars are just not there yet.
And you need to hit the reset button and design them from scratch with the user in mind, with the customer, the user is the first point of reference when you design the car. So when we design this car, we not only design the car from the inside out, but we design the car as if it was basically a room or a lounge on wheels. Because as we go towards autonomous driving, it's no longer about having specific roles in the car. Like one guy drives, the other guy's a copilot, the two in the back have crappy leg room experience.
We wanted to create an environment where every seat in the house is an awesome seat and maybe even designing this car from the back seat out as opposed to just the inside out. So the assumption is that in the relatively near future, we will be in a car environment that is dominated by autonomous vehicles. That's the fairly future model. I think so.
Yeah. In the same way we went from the mobile phone industry, how progressive that was. I think cars are a little behind it. And we'd like to take a couple steps further, be ahead of the curve.
So I'm interested in a little bit in how then you tailor the, say the being driven as opposed to the driver experience of being inside an autonomous vehicle. What are the goals of customizing that environment to someone who's being driven? Does it become more like the experience of, say, being in a train where you don't have any control, a passenger has no control over the track or the driving speed or things like that? Because they trust that the vehicle itself will take care of everything.
Or is it more like being a film theater where you are being given media to keep you entertained? What is the kind of ideal interior atmosphere of one of these vehicles? Well, it's everything you mentioned. So if you do want the exhilaration of driving, I can assure you that an FF or a fairly future car will be fast and fun to drive.
But if you don't, if you want to relax, if you want to massage or aromatherapy or light therapy, great air quality better than your own home, then you can have that as well. And maybe you're, as you said, maybe you're being entertained, maybe you're watching movies, maybe you're doing your work, you're absolutely connected or disconnected. And just the idea that you can sit in traffic, let's say that we can't solve the traffic problem overnight, but with one of our cars, you can sit in traffic in two or three hours later on the 405. You feel more refreshed and that you've accomplished more things.
You are more excited about whatever it is that you need to do because you had that spa time. So what is it though about FerriDeefutur that requires the company or rather motivates the company to produce an actual vehicle as opposed to producing that interior experience through technology and autonomous applications and then giving that technology to preexisting car companies to use? Why does FerriDeefutur decide that they also need to make a car? I think it's because the car needs some help.
And we are a small nimble company embracing the latest and greatest technology and implementing that immediately. We want to build cars the same way one might build a consumer electronics device, updateable just like your own phone or your own laptop. So what is the major market that FerriDeefutur imagined is operating? Is it a US car market or a Chinese car market?
I think it's not so much about the market. It's about sort of frame of mind. To appeal to sort of the tech-minded tech savvy, if you think about Uber, for example, I don't know if Uber really applies to one or two specific areas. It's sort of answered a question that people didn't know they had.
And we're trying to do that more in that mindset rather than from country to country. Right. But presumably there's also a price point that will need to be met to afford one of these cars. So what kind of person do you imagine being able to use one of these vehicles?
Well, so that's a very good question. Maybe you buy this car. Maybe there are the traditional customers. But maybe it's the potential to buy a package or a membership.
So you don't have to have one car, but you have three cars and you can alternate depending on what you need to use them for. So that refers to a kind of subscription model or say an alternative leasing opportunity where you decide maybe on a ride-by-ride basis what kind of vehicle you'd like to use, but you also own that car? Is that how the model will work? It could be.
Yeah. I don't think we're selling one customer usage model. I think we are very open to seeing the way mobility is going. If you look at your CD collection, you don't have one anymore, but you still own the music that's on your cloud.
So the idea would be that there could be some opportunity for people depending on their own ability to opt fully in by owning it or to use this Spotify model or the streaming servicing. That would also be a streaming service for cars effectively. Yeah, exactly. I think that's where ownership with air quotes, that's what ownership is.
It's about when you want it or when you don't. And so do you imagine ever having some kind of or disparity feature, ever imagine having some kind of agreement or partnership with city governments to help bring this vehicle and the autonomous technologies into not necessarily a public transit model, but to be accessible on a public level, similar to maybe say like a publicly owned, for lack of a better comparison of publicly owned taxi service, but with these kinds of vehicles. I don't know. I'm probably not the best person to ask that question, but it's all of those ideas are a possibility.
The thing about traditional car design is about designing cars, building them and selling them. And we have a very talented group of designers who have done that for many years, but this was the first time we were designing a car with the opportunity for it to be shared or not necessarily owned. But still to have a great experience, there'll be a premium luxurious experience. If you go to a fantastic hotel, you don't worry about the fact that someone was there the night before or will be there the night after.
So who do you imagine being your major competitor in this market then? I don't know. Maybe the airline industry. Really?
Why exactly would someone decide, are you saying that someone would prefer to take a very future car on a trip that they would otherwise take an airplane ride? For example, yeah, why not? I think so. I mean, if you have the range that we're expected to achieve and you go from LA to San Cisco door to door, you've had your content streaming, you've had your massage, you've taken a nap, I think you probably had a more efficient use of time.
So maybe a better comparison would be your future competitor is the as of yet still a bit of a fantasy, but hyperloop. That would be your major competitor. Could be. I don't know so much about that project, but yeah, maybe.
Excellent. Well, Richard, thank you so much. Those are the questions I have for you. So thank you so much for taking some time out of your very busy schedule to answer these few questions and talk to us on one to one.
Thank you. Thanks for listening to our Connect sessions one to one with Richard Kim, a fair day future. Danny LoVoynoff edits the podcast and Matt Skilling's composed our music. Myself and Paul Petunia are the producers of one to one.
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