Two internal whistleblowers at Faraday Future claimed that the troubled electric car company has been lying because of the few sales figures it has announced so far. They also claim that founder Jia Yueting has “weaponized” the electric vehicle startup’s human resources department to retaliate against anyone who makes these allegedly false statements.
The two employees, Jose Guerrero and Victoria Xie, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against Faraday Future and Jia Yueting, as well as the company’s human resources director Nan Yang. The claims are made in a new lawsuit alleging wrongful termination, breach of contract and infliction of emotional distress.
Guerrero, who previously served as Faraday Future’s senior director of sales and after-sales, and Xie, the company’s go-to-market program manager and launch manager, said the company announced these deliveries before the sales process was complete. They claim that at least three of the four were never paid in full at the time the tip was filed, while the fourth was only paid “more than 60 days after the ‘sale’ was announced.” Faraday Future has since claimed to have delivered 10 vehicles throughout 2023.
Guerrero and Xie allege that when sales staff objected to these “premature” announcements, Jia’s unit’s leadership team continued to cite the need to announce the sales to boost the company’s stock price and retaliate against employees who raised compliance concerns Sexual HR Action. Faraday Future entered into these sales agreements with its initial customers without conducting pre-delivery inspections of the vehicles. They also claimed that Jia Yueting’s team was sending “non-road-approved software” to these early customers’ cars and that they failed to properly document or disclose the software’s release notes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which may have violated United States Law.
Xie said in the complaint that she was fired two days after the letter was submitted “in retaliation for her protected reporting,” and claimed that Jia and Yang were directly involved in her firing. Faraday Future also fired Guerrero on January 18 in retaliation for his outspokenness. They both filed arbitration proceedings against the company, but Faraday Future did not pay the required arbitration fees and they subsequently filed suit in the High Court.
According to previous reports, Faraday Future defaulted on lease payments of nearly one million U.S. dollars and was almost kicked out of the headquarters building by the landlord. It was sued and later reached an agreement with the landlord to settle.
“Faraday Future takes the allegations made by former employees in these two lawsuits very seriously,” a Faraday Future spokesperson said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. Faraday Future believes that, on the merits, it has a robust defense to the alleged claims and will pursue all available avenues and remedies to protect and defend itself and the company’s dedicated employees against all allegations, including character attacks. Through their lawyers, Guerrero and Xie declined to comment on the allegations in the documents.
