Faraday Future went through an embarrassing moment during the presentation of its self-driving vehicle at CES 2017. When the Chinese entrepreneur Jia Yueting was asked to press the button to show the FF91’s “Auto Valet park,” it would not respond to the command.
Followed by a 10-second awkward silence, Vice President of Engineering Nick Sampson drew the attention of the audience by asking Yueting to address a few words to them.
The car was supposed to respond to the command by parking itself on the designated spot. However, it didn’t. Sampson asked Yueting to press the button as if he was getting home one evening and wanted to send the car to the garage.
Moments before, another model of the company had parked successfully using the Auto Valet Park function outside the venue, but it was in the middle of the official presentation the car would fail to demonstrate the self-parking feature.
The malfunction was solved moments later after a technician took a look at the vehicle. However, the presentation had already caused mixed feelings among the audience. After all, watching a model fail in the middle of its debut is something any automaker wants to go through.
What went wrong?
After the event had concluded, Sampson said it was a complicated situation, and that they were fully aware there would be technical challenges. He said the roof of the building might have had something to do with the malfunction.
According to him, the structure inhibited some of the signals that the vehicle needed to function correctly. That might explain why the other model was able to park successfully outside the building.
When someone asked him if the technicians were controlling the car via remote control, he immediately dismissed the notion. It was just an issue with the reception of signals at that particular moment.
The FF91 still amazed the crowd
In spite of the technical difficulties, they managed to impress the crowd with the FF91 and all the functions it includes.
The car, which is a new type of vehicle with autonomous features, can accelerate from 0-60 mph in only 2.39 seconds which beating any of Tesla’s current models.
It also has sensors, cameras, radar tech and facial recognition. The car has an incredible endurance as it can run 482 miles on a single charge.
Source: Daily Mail