Faraday Future May Have Reinvented the Wheel After All, Patents Show

That was because the whole message behind the clip was that you shouldn't listen to people when they say you can't do things, even if their advice makes a very valid point such as "don't try to reinvent the wheel." However, the images were cryptic enough to leave us completely in the dark, as nothing seemed out of the ordinary compared to the wheels you or I have on our cars.

The answer might lie in a patent filed by the Chinese-backed company on November 1 where some details of its powertrain emerge. The paper presents a few solutions for improving the acceleration capabilities of an electric vehicle, of which one stands out in particular. The idea isn't completely new, but if Faraday brings it to market, their car would be the first production vehicle to use it.

We've heard about cars with electric motors on each wheel, but not in them. That's what the ambitious EV maker is proposing, even though it doesn't really go into much more detail than this. The paper says the “motor may be built into a wheel such that the wheel may rotate coaxially with a rotor of the motor.”

The advantages of such a system are the elimination of any loss through mechanical transmissions, plus a very compact design. On the other hand, there are some drawbacks as well. The unsprung mass of the vehicle would increase, for instance, and you would also have a very delicate and important component of the car in a very exposed place. Hitting a curb with the wheel would no longer be such a casual affair.

The paper lists a few other interesting details about the car, which are hilariously similar to Tesla's features. For instance, Faraday speaks of different "drive modes," splitting them into "base" or "normal" and "enhanced." The proposed names for the enhanced modes contain "thrilling mode" and "exhilarating mode," which are basically the worst synonyms for Ludicrous mode we've heard so far.

However, all these steps that Faraday keeps taking show the company is still serious about releasing its first EV, and that's wonderful. If everything goes to plan, the crossover should be unveiled in January at CES, which is just another way of confirming how intertwined the two fields of cars and technology have become.