Faraday Future Establishes a New Bar for Electric Vehicle Power Inverters
By earning its first patent, the futuristic electric car manufacturer challenges Tesla.
Faraday Future, the electric car manufacturer perhaps from another planet, announced today its first-ever patent for the “FF Echelon Inverter,” a milestone for the company that only just revealed what the car will look like back in January. So while a patent being approved isn’t news for most, it’s big news for the new company.
The FF Echelon Inverter converts the battery’s direct current to the power in the engine’s requisite alternating current, and Faraday Future claims that its own “achieves 20-30 percent greater power density than our competitors’ applications.”
This inverter was designed in the device from the ground up, which Silva Hiti, Senior Director of Electric Drive at FF, says was intended to “solve several long-standing challenges facing current production inverters.” Specifically, Hiti et al. wanted to improve “reliability, manufacturability, and power density.” They decreased the components necessary for power inversion which they say both lowers costs and increases reliability.
FF has done well to maintain an air of secrecy. Back in January, we got a first look at its concept car — the FFZERO1 — and, like Tesla, the company is hoping to develop an enormous production facility in Nevada.
But FF is proud of this accomplishment, and proud of earning its patent.
Here’s the inverter, in all of its small, shiny, and efficient glory:
Google recently announced the winner of its Little Box Challenge, though, which rewarded $1 million to the team that could create the smallest, most efficient power inverter. Though FF’s inverter is probably impressive in its own right, and more at home in a vehicle, odds are it can’t compare to that of the Red Electrical Devils.
But those same Red Electrical Devils can’t boast of a futuristic concept car:
