Last week, Lucid announced that it plans to go public through a reverse merger, with a SPAC deal. The electric-vehicle startup could perhaps be in the best position to offer competition to Tesla, which is not only a pioneer but has remained the market leader in electric vehicles and has flourished during the pandemic.
Peter Rawlinson is the CEO of Lucid Motors. He was the former chief engineer at Tesla and molded Lucid, his new electric vehicle manufacturing startup by keeping the best of what he learnt from his former jobs, while correcting the shortfalls he encountered and couldn’t change as he was not in the top position to do so.
He has maintained a similar position as Tesla for the following:
- Production
- Some of the technology remains while some is modified
- Dealerships
- Service
Lucid Motors differs from Tesla in the following aspects
- EV charging stations
- Automated driving systems
- Advertising
Lucid outlined plans of manufacturing all its vehicles in-house. It is building a “greenfield” manufacturing factory in Arizona. It has worked out a deal with LG Chem who will supply the battery cells for its battery pack in its Lucid Air Sedan.
The first electric vehicle (EV) that Lucid is expecting to rollout of its plant is the high-end dream edition of the Air at a cost of $169,000. The company is accepting reservations for the EV with a refundable $ 1,000 deposit.
The vehicle has been independently tested and achieved an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rated range of 517 miles with one charge. Lucid said that they got the results verified by FEV North America, which is an engineering consultant company This rating is much higher than Tesla’s Model S sedan which has an EPA-rated range of 402 miles for a single charge.
Although Rawlinson is ambitious about its EV, he also said that “none of this matters” till when the company starts producing the vehicles. Production is expected to start this year as the pandemic put earlier production plans on hold.
Photo– Lucid Twitter
