It's do or die for Faraday Future

At CES 2017, Faraday Future was one of the biggest draws.

The upstart automaker gave the first buzzy (if not a bit nauseating) presentation of the show when it unveiled the FF 91, complete with a record breaking 0 to 60 mph acceleration down a test track.

It was an exciting moment — up until the event, the public had never seen anything close to a working production vehicle. While the autonomous system hit a few snags during its own demo, this was the first proof the automaker might be able to fulfill its initial promise to challenge Tesla's reign as the preeminent name in the all-electric car space.

But if a report published today by Business Insider is to be believed, it was all a charade meant to distract from the company's impending implosion. Representatives for Faraday Future and its partner/backer LeEco, the Chinese electronics company, called the report "speculation" and gave no further comment.

According to the report, which cites eight "executives" said to have intimate knowledge of Faraday Future's business, the company is apparently "in shambles," being abandoned by executive-level employees and facing a shortage of cash in the face of mounting debts.

Faraday's executive and financial woes aren't exactly news — but the scope of the company's problems, especially after the FF91 debut, could be.

BI claims that many of Faraday's issues stem from the disconnect between Chinese investor Jia Yueting's LeEco team and its US-based executives. According to one of the sources, the way the automaker is being treated by Yueting makes it more of "a subsidiary" than a standalone priority.

"If they can't figure out a way to get the money out of China in the next 60 days, the suppliers would essentially force them into bankruptcy," one of the sources told BI.

The one surefire way the company could stay afloat would be the success of the its FF91 car. However, the company says it won't ship until 2018.

One source told BI even that timeline was highly unlikely, calling the demo of the car "a bunch of bulls---."

Still, the FF91 turned a lot of heads at CES, so and things looked even better when Faraday announced it received more than 64,000 preoders for the car following the show.

But the company didn't disclose the breakdown of those reservations — anyone preordering could do so without putting any money down, although Faraday offered a "priority" sign-up that required a $5,000 deposit. Faraday has not disclosed how many priority orders it received, but the report claims that real number is comically low: Only 60 people submitted a paid reservation.

When reached for comment by Mashable about the reservation numbers and BI's other claims, a Faraday Future rep had nothing to share. "We are unable to provide specific details with regards to reservation type," he said via email. "The specific number mentioned in the BI article came from an anonymous source and therefore we cannot comment on speculation."