Electric car company to create hundreds of jobs with new Hanford plant
HANFORD, Calif. (KFSN) -- Pirelli used to make tires in Hanford's Industrial Park. Now, more than a decade after they left, a California company wants to build cars in the same one million square-foot space, but they're not just any cars.
Faraday Future leaders say the FF 91 electric car will be faster and have a higher range than Tesla vehicles. They believe that by leasing the new property, they'll be able to get it to market faster.
"We are bringing a high technology project to an area that obviously doesn't have as much industry right now," said Faraday Future COO and CFO Stefan Krause. "I think we're doing the right thing. We decided to be in California and stay in California, a state that supports clean energy and that supports environment protection."
Last weekend, company employees spent time cleaning up the old factory, getting it ready for production. The company plans to hire 1,300 more people for the plant, including 600 at first.They'll work in three different shifts.
"FF intends to hire in various areas including manufacturing, engineering, production, and administrative functions," said company spokesman Richard Otto. "Contract jobs could include IT infrastructure, security, select building maintenance, janitorial and more."
Hanford city officials say the Kings County Economic Development Corporation will help the company hire locally.
"It's the type of company that will be an exciting employer for our young people," Hanford City Manager Darrel Pyle said. "They're going to go off to college and get smart and they're going to want to come home and work at this factory in Hanford."
The company says Hanford is an ideal location for building electric cars, being halfway between the two largest EV markets in the country-San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Pyle says the announcement was a pleasant surprise.
The area could also soon see medical marijuana companies moving in to neighboring buildings.
"If what we saw in terms of one of the many prototypes of the FF 91 vehicle we saw on site Saturday is a glimpse of what's to come, these are exciting times for the motoring public and exciting times for the folks in Hanford as well as Kings County and the region," Pyle said.
Faraday Future wants its first vehicle on the market and on the road by the end of 2018, so production will pick up within a matter of months.
