Faraday Future Appoints Morris Gao as CMO and The Head of Business Development in China

Los Angeles, April 23, 2020 - Faraday Future (FF), a California-based global shared intelligent mobility eco-system company, today appointed Morris Gao to the post of FF China CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) and the Head of Business Development, in charge of the implementation of the end-to-end China UP2U (User planning to user)businesses and activities in joint ventures and B2B business development. Gao is an auto industry veteran who specialized in luxury cars sales and led Maserati China to brand and sales achievements.

Morris Gao holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from Tsinghua University, a master's degree in marine engineering from Norwegian Royal Institute of Technology, and an EMBA from China Europe International Business School. With over 20 years of automotive marketing experience under his belt, Morris has worked at various OEMs including Volvo, General Motors, Ford, and Maserati.

Morris joined the Italian super-luxury car brand Maserati in 2007, where he was in charge of product introductions, channel building and sales. During his ten-year tenure at Maserati, he was instrumental in helping the brand grow from a niche ultra-luxury brand with annual sales in the hundreds to a first-tier ultra-luxury brand with annual sales of over 15,000 units in 2016. Morris and his team, while overseeing the sales arm at the time, contributed significantly to this success.

Since 2017, Gao plunged into the wave of "Electric, Intelligent, Internet and shared" in the automotive industry and joined intelligent internet EV companies FF and Byton, respectively, as Head of Sales, actively participating in and implementing various innovative brand promotion and channel sales concepts.

FF started implementing its Global Partnership program last year, which transferred the company’s top-level governance rights to the Partnership Executive Committee (PEC). Internally, FF selects outstanding employees or high-potential talents from all ranks; externally, the program enables FF to attract top talents, changing their position as professional managers to actual owners of the company. Currently FF's Global Partnership team consists of 26 members, all coming from world-class technology companies, internet companies and automotive companies, with some of them having followed FF's founder YT Jia in his internet entrepreneurship for many years.

Over the past 6 months, FF has attracted the creator of BMW i8, Dr. Carsten Breitfeld, ex-VP of supply chain at BMW-Brilliance, Benedikt Hartmann, ex-CTO of Qoros and Karma, Bob Kruse, and other top-level talents, which confirms the huge advantage FF has in product and technology of intelligent internet EVs and in attracting talent through the Global Partnership program.

Dr. Carsten Breitfeld, FF Global CEO, stated “Morris' joining is yet another solid proof of the partnership program's strong pull for high-end talent. His rich experience in luxury automotive branding, marketing, sales and user operations will undoubtedly improve FF's branding operations and FF's local business in China, as well as significantly boosting FF's equity financing efforts.”