Seven things you need to know about electric start-up Lucid Motors
The little-known US company currently builds the world’s longest-range electric car, and is reportedly more valuable than Kia, Honda, Mazda, or Hyundai.
It may seem hard to believe, but it wasn't that long ago Tesla was a little-known start-up brand.
Now Tesla is almost mainstream, and has brand recognition that goes way beyond the number of cars it sells (about 500,000 last year versus close to 10 million cars each by automotive giants Toyota and Volkswagen).
While the world's biggest automotive companies are embracing the electric-car era with a range of new models in showrooms – or on the horizon – there is a new challenger in the start-up electric-car space.
Here is everything you need to know about Lucid, a brand you may not have heard about – but could grow to become as big as Tesla.
1) Lucid Motors is based in California and was founded in 2007 under the name Atieva, by former Tesla executive Bernard Tse and businessman Sam Weng.
The name Lucid was adopted in 2016 during a company restructure, and this coincided with the announcement of an upcoming yet-to-be-named electric luxury sedan.
2) The ‘Air’ (shown above and below) is currently Lucid’s only production model. It has a claimed maximum driving range of 836km on the US EPA testing cycle. That's longer than any other electric car in production today.
For reference, the second-place Mercedes-Benz EQS has a claimed maximum driving range of 770km (WLTP), and the Tesla Model S Long Range is rated at 652km (WLTP).
3) Having floated publicly in July 2021, Lucid motors currently has a market capitalisation of $US59.87 billion ($AU80 billion).
This makes Lucid the 13th most valuable carmaker in the world – according to the stock market – despite having delivered only a handful of vehicles to customers. By this measure, Lucid is worth more than automotive giants Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Honda, or Volvo.
4) Lucid’s current CEO Peter Rawlinson – who secured the top job in 2019 – previously served as Tesla's chief vehicle engineer for the Model S between 2009 and 2012.
Earlier this year Elon Musk Tweeted "Rawlinson was never chief engineer. He arrived after Model S prototype was made, [and] left before things got tough." However Tesla website archives (accessed via the WayBack Machine by insideevs) suggests this is incorrect.
5) Lucid's primary headquarters are in Newark, California.
It operates a factory in Casa Grande, Arizona which was completed in 2020, and claims 34,000 vehicles can be built per year on the site.
6) Lucid designed an SUV concept last year (shown below), referred to in press material as 'Project Gravity.' At the time, it was suggested the off-road vehicle would share its running gear with its smaller sedan range-mate.
However, for now, it appears there are no plans to go into production.
7) Despite its extraordinary valuation and big plans for expansion, Lucid currently claims to have no timeline for right-hand drive production.
This suggests the Air sedan won’t be offered in Australia anytime soon.