Faraday Future offered a brief glimpse of what appears to be a very powerful electric SUV on Friday, in the latest sign that the would-be Tesla competitor is gearing up for a January product launch.

A 15-second YouTube video showed an SUV heavily disguised in black shrouds racing around a desert track. "Can't hear the engine?" the video's tagline asks. Answer: "You're not supposed to." In addition to generating hype, The Verge notes that the black camouflage is designed to prevent spy photographers from stealing shots of the car before it's ready to be revealed to the public.

Faraday Future first unveiled its concept car at CES this past January. The high-performance electric vehicle resembled a cross between a Corvette and the Batmobile. It was designed to be fully self-driving, and the company said it would offer "adaptive personalization, seamless transfer of custom vehicle configurations, access to live images and real time data visualization."

The vehicle in today's video bears little resemblance to that futuristic concept. Instead, it looks far more like a conventional crossover SUV. That's understandable since Faraday Future has dropped hints recently that it's getting ready to market its designs to consumers.

One of Faraday Future's principal investors is the CEO of Chinese electronics and entertainment giant LeEco, which announced this month that Faraday Future would launch its first car at CES 2017 in January.

In June, the company was rumored to be starting trials of its car in Michigan and California. It has also signed an agreement with the battery-making arm of Korean giant LG, which will supply Faraday Future with lithium-ion cells.