The beleaguered EV maker was originally saved by a company called Season Smart, which agreed to invest $2 billion, starting with an $800 million payment, in exchange for a 45 percent stake in the company. In June 2018, Season Smart was acquired by Evergrande Health, a subsidiary of a giant property developer in China, for roughly $853 million. Evergrande took control of Season Smart's stake and agreed to pay the remaining $1.2 billion, split into two $600 million chunks, in 2019 and 2020. As part of the updated deal, it took control of Faraday's assets and intellectual property.

"This marks a major milestone for Faraday Future to achieve the vision of delivering a clean, intelligent, connected and shared global mobility ecosystem," the company wrote in a statement on Twitter.

For a while, everything seemed OK. Faraday began constructing a long-overdue factory in Hanford, California, where a Pirelli tire factory once stood. The company hoped it could eventually match Tesla's enormous Gigafactory in splendor and efficiency.

But there was a problem. By July Faraday had already burned through its initial $800 million payment. To survive, the startup needed more money -- and it couldn't wait until 2019 for another cash injection.

Management required at least another $663 million to get the FF 91 into production before the end of the year. Evergrande agreed to pay an advance of $700 million -- $300 million in August, $200 million in October and a further $200 million sometime later -- with some conditions. These required Jia Yueting, the CEO of Faraday Future, to remove himself as director of various offshore companies tied to the electric vehicle maker "as soon as reasonably practicable," according to court documents. He also needed to turn over his 33-percent stake in Faraday to a non-affiliated third party.

The compromises were designed to mitigate Yueting's entrepreneurial baggage. The Chinese businessman, also known as YT, started a streaming company called LeTV in 2004, well before Netflix completely revamped its DVD-centric business model. He used the platform's reputation to borrow money and build out new businesses, including a film studio and smartphone initiative, under the LeEco umbrella. Few of these ventures were successful, however, and Yueting's debts eventually caught up with him. The businessman is now camped out in California, where Faraday is based, avoiding the Chinese government and companies he owes money.

Evergrande's demands were designed, presumably, to stabilize Faraday and distance Yueting's financial quagmire. The two companies couldn't agree, however, on whether the businessman had upheld his side of the bargain. Evergrande never made its first $300 million payment.

Faraday believes this move was "tactical." It suspects Evergrande is trying to force the company into bankruptcy, either to avoid future payments, seize Faraday assets in a fire sale or enter some kind of renegotiation that would favor the investor. The Chinese health subsidiary denies these claims.

While the two companies bickered, Faraday employees tried to complete the highly anticipated FF 91. By August, the company had finished its first preproduction car. The announcement was quickly overshadowed, however, by the startup's financial woes. According to The Verge, Faraday had just $18 million in the bank at the start of September. Then the company's one and only preproduction car reportedly caught fire after a Futurist Day event for employees and their families.