(Yicai Global) Nov. 16 -- Faraday Future, a pre-production US electric car startup founded by Chinese entrepreneur Jia Yueting, declined to comment on speculation it plans to build a production base in China’s northern Shanxi province.

The Nasdaq-listed firm’s public relations department told Yicai Global that it had nothing to say after a photo circulating online purported to show representatives of Faraday Future and Changzhi High-tech Industrial Development Area in the city of Changzhi discussing plans for a factory in a virtual meeting.

Jia hails from Shanxi and Changzhi has a factory for Victory Automobile, which has yet to sell any vehicles.

Faraday Future China is in talks with local governments in five to six Chinese provinces, including that of Zhuhai in southern Guangdong, to speed up the search for a suitable headquarters location. Chen Xuefeng, president of Faraday Future China, even led a team to Wuhan in Hubei province in September.

Headquartered in Gardena, California, Faraday Future has 400 employees. Deliveries of its first model, the FF91, are expected to start next July.

Faraday Future also announced yesterday that it would delay its third-quarter earnings results and is looking into “allegations of inaccurate disclosures” made by J Capital Research.

The US research company said in a report published early last month that Faraday Future had falsified it booking numbers and questioned the automaker’s capacity to mass-produce electric vehicles. Faraday Future lost USD280 million in the third quarter, the report said.

Editor: Peter Thomas