Faraday Future has spent the better part of a decade promising to upend the car industry, and the results have landed somewhere between “modest” and “wait, is this company still going?”<\/p>\n
The El Segundo outfit has trickled out only a small number of its flagship FF 91 since 2023, spun up a cheaper second brand called Faraday X, and then in May hit pause on its original 400-volt Super One program while it decides whether to go 800-volt electric or extended-range hybrid instead. So when word lands that FF has patented a new powertrain, the reflex is a tired sigh.<\/p>\n
This one’s worth a second look. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just granted Faraday a transmission design built around one bet: pull the gasoline engine, the electric motor and the wheels apart from each other, so a controller can decide on the fly which one does what. The hardware is the patent. The “AI brain” meant to pick the mode is a separate system FF calls AIHER, and that’s where the company’s whole pivot is pointed.<\/p>\n
The grant is U.S. Patent No. 12,630,004, titled “Range-Extending Hybrid Transmission System,” issued in May 2026 from an application filed last June, with 13 claims. It went to a Faraday subsidiary saddled with the mouthful name Future AIHER.<\/p>\n
The mechanical idea is in how the pieces are linked, or rather how they’re deliberately not. Per Faraday’s own filing summary<\/a>, the system bundles a first rotary power source, a generator-motor, a differential and the driving wheels, strung along a set of shafts and clutches that can engage or disengage each part independently.<\/p>\n Most hybrids bolt the engine, motor and wheels together with a tightly choreographed run of gears and clutches. Faraday’s design lets them work concurrently or on their own. The engine can act purely as a generator, drive the wheels directly, do both, or shut off entirely while the motor handles things.<\/p>\n Faraday’s framing for the payoff is strong range extension with what it calls “weak hybridization” \u2014 long driving range without the full mechanical burden of a conventional hybrid. The layout is multi-shaft and multi-clutch, but the company argues each component carries fewer hard obligations to the others, so the routing logic ends up simpler.<\/p>\n One thing worth nailing down: the patent itself is the decoupled hardware. The AI part is AIHER (AI Hybrid Extended-Range), the range-extender platform Faraday set up as a dedicated subsidiary back in March 2025. The transmission gives a controller more modes to choose from. The AIHER system is the brain meant to choose between them, and that brain is still under development.<\/p>\n Extended-range EVs are suddenly everywhere in the U.S. Scout, Ram and a string of other brands<\/a> have all leaned toward the format. The pitch is simple: a battery big enough for daily driving, plus a small gasoline engine onboard to top up the pack on road trips. No charging anxiety, no highway range math.<\/p>\n What Faraday claims to add is decision-making. The premise is that an AI controller sitting on the decoupled hardware can pick the optimal mode \u2014 drive, charge, blended boost, full electric \u2014 faster than a rule-based hybrid controller, reading load, terrain, battery state and weather.<\/p>\n That last bit isn’t decoration. Faraday flags cold weather specifically, pointing to regions like the U.S. East Coast where lithium batteries shed usable range in deep cold. A range-extender that knows to lean on the engine earlier in a January cold-soak earns its keep.<\/p>\n The little engine doing the charging is its own rabbit hole \u2014 a Spanish shop has a crankshaft-free range-extender unit<\/a> that’ll burn hydrogen or gasoline \u2014 but Faraday’s patent is about the gearbox logic, not the engine itself.<\/p>\n Here’s the reality check. By any honest measure Faraday is still a startup that has barely shipped vehicles. The FF 91 has dribbled out since 2023 in tiny numbers, the company shifted focus to the cheaper Super One under the FX brand it set up in late 2024, and the original Super One plan got reshuffled in May.<\/p>\n Per Faraday’s own May announcement<\/a>, the first batch of mass-production Super Ones will be either an 800-volt battery-electric model or the AIHER hybrid, with the 400-volt project paused. The 800V route would put it in the same architectural club as the first 800-volt extended-range vehicles now coming out of China<\/a>.<\/p>\n The production targets are where you raise an eyebrow. Faraday’s baseline business plan<\/a> climbs from a few hundred cars to a quarter-million in five years.<\/p>\n Ambitious is one word for it.<\/p>\n The money tells its own story. Faraday raised $70 million across April and May, including a $45 million note agreement on April 17. But the company has been clear that the cash is earmarked for its robotics business<\/a>, not car tooling \u2014 and the 800V\/AIHER pivot is partly about freeing up resources for robots during their ramp.<\/p>\nRange-extenders are having a moment, and FF wants the brain<\/h2>\n
Faraday hasn’t exactly sold 1,000 cars yet<\/h2>\n