(Yicai Global) Dec. 9 -- Faraday Future, the US electric car startup founded by Chinese entrepreneur Jia Yueting, has enough funding to start production of its first vehicles on schedule, despite running up a total loss of USD2.8 billion, according to the luxury automaker’s chief financial officer.

Work on Faraday Future’s manufacturing plant in Hanford, California, is progressing smoothly and mass production of the FF91 will commence on time, Chuck Mc Bride said at an investors meeting yesterday. That is the company’s top priority, Global Chief Executive Carsten Breitfeld noted in the firm’s first business update since going public on the Nasdaq in July.

The FF91, California-based Faraday Future’s flagship model, is scheduled to start rolling off the assembly line next July. Breitfeld said equipment installation at the Hanford plant was complete and it would soon obtain final production and use qualification, while the FF91 is undergoing safety tests.

Faraday Future expects to have lost about USD280 million in the first three quarters of this year, McBride said, mainly due to costs associated with getting the plant ready. As of Sept. 30, the firm had a cumulative loss of about USD2.8 billion, and it will continue to generate operating losses in the foreseeable future, he said.

Faraday Future has not yet filed its third-quarter earnings report. The company did not submit it on time because it is looking into a short-seller’s report on the carmaker by J Capital Research, Securities Times said last month.

In a statement on Nov. 29, Faraday Future said it had received a warning letter from the Nasdaq urging it to submit the financial report within 60 days, or face delisting. The letter was standard procedure, the carmaker said, adding that as long as it submits the required documents to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in a timely manner, there is no real risk of delisting.

The company had about USD1.1 billion of total assets as of Sept. 20, of which USD667 million were cash and cash equivalent, it said yesterday. Total liabilities fell 62 percent to about USD354 million from the end of last year due to the settlement of supplier trusts and notes payable through the sale of shares and cash payments.

Editor: Futura Costaglione, Xiao Yi