Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A new automaker pulled aside the curtain in Silicon Valley, revealing its name as Lucid Motors and showing off its prototype car, a premium electric sedan. The company previously existed under the name of Atieva, where it got its start developing battery packs for electric vehicle applications.
Impressively, in just two years of development the company is so far along with its first vehicle that it already has a body-in-white, an automotive term for a welded sheetmetal body.
Lucid Motors came out of stealth mode, but only issued a few detail photos of its car.
As part of a limited media gathering where photos were prohibited, I visited the company's Menlo Park, California headquarters, where it has secretly been developing its launch model. Along with seeing the body-in-white and a 90 to 95 percent complete version of the car, Lucid Motors showed off the car's components, from the electric drivetrain to interior design concepts.
Greeting me at Lucid Motors were two of the company's luminaries, Chief Technology Officer Peter Rawlinson who includes Tesla and Jaguar on his resume, and Vice President of Design Derek Jenkins. In Jenkins previous position at Mazda, he designed the latest generation of the MX-5 Miata. Other members of Lucid Motors' staff came over from Tesla.
When I asked for the name of Lucid Motors' electric sedan, Rawlinson demurred, saying that would be announced at a later date.
Lucid Motors builds on Atieva's battery research. The company's patented lithium-ion battery chemistry shows significant resistance to degradation over high power charging cycles, an important ingredient for electric cars. It also claims 20 percent greater energy density in its batteries than competitors, due to its cooling and power control technologies.
With its battery technology and a dual motor system developed for the launch car, Rawlinson said it will get well over 300 miles of range, and the company is considering a 400-mile version as well, much as Tesla sells models with different ranges. He also said the car, which will use a motor at each axle, could likely get to over 200 mph, although the production vehicle will have its speed limited.
Under the name Atieva, the company has released video of its test mule van, which it calls Edna. This van uses the dual motor system, with total horsepower adding to 1,200, although for stability reasons that amount has been restricted to 900 horsepower. Still, it gets to 60 mph in 2.69 seconds. Rawlinson says that the sedan will weigh about 1,000 pounds less and have much better aerodynamics, so is likely to be even quicker.
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The Saudi-backed builder of high-end EVs is not having an easy time:
When we saw our first Lucid Air prototype in 2017, we came away extremely impressed. This alpha build appeared far more realized than some prototypes, complete with functioning infotainment software as opposed to the pre-rendered demos that are often more common in such cases. But the startup automaker has had anything but an easy time since then. Yesterday, it announced its Q4 2023 deliveries ahead of an investor call in late February, and the numbers are bad.
Lucid originally planned to launch the Air sedan in 2019. Designed by Tesla's former VP and Chief Vehicle Engineer Peter Rawlinson, together with designer Derek Jenkins, the Air aimed for Mercedes-Benz S-Class levels of space and luxury on the interior but with the footprint of the smaller Mercedes E-Class. Under its ultra-low-drag body was a highly advanced electric vehicle powertrain capable of extremely rapid acceleration, a high top speed, and class-leading range.
But starting a new car company is neither easy nor cheap. Lucid struggled to obtain funding until Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund invested a billion dollars in the company in 2018, allowing Lucid to complete work on its factory in Arizona and push on with developing the Air.
[...] But those big numbers were matched by an equally big price—$169,000, or $139,000 for the slightly less powerful, slightly shorter-range Air Grand Touring.
[...] Since then, the company added some cheaper variants to its lineup—Lucid will sell you an Air Pure for $74,000 after its current incentives are taken into account. But that hasn't resulted in a glut of orders.
For the last three months of 2023, Lucid built just 2,231 Air EVs and delivered 1,734 of those to customers. The results for the whole year weren't any better—Lucid built 8,428 cars and delivered 6,001 of those.
Previously:
Elon Musk's Ex-Chief Engineer Creates a New Car
Lucid Air Demos Real World Electric Range of 490 Miles
Lucid Motors' Flagship 'Air' to Offer 200+ MPH Performance
Start-Up Lucid Motors Launches With 300-Mile Plus Premium Electric Sedan
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday October 24 2016, @07:49PM
But now, you guys have to execute.
Tesla didn't just deliver a souped-up go-kart. They changed the market with range, decent reliability (or responsiveness to teething issues), fast superchargers, live upgrades...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Sarasani on Tuesday October 25 2016, @02:38AM
My thoughts exactly: making an electric car is probably a relatively simple thing to do (compared to piecing together the zillion moving pieces that make up heavy combustion engines). But that's where the challenges only start. To name just a few of them:
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @08:28PM
You know what, forget about the number of homeless people displaced by this startup.
Let's find out how much homeless urine it will take to destroy an electric car.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VanessaE on Monday October 24 2016, @09:41PM
The article is missing the one crucial bit of info: how much the @%#$ing thing costs! All I could see is that they intend to target Mercedes and BMW customers.
Who cares if this new one has 300-400 miles of range, if it's out of the budget of the average person?
A Tesla model 3 is already expensive enough at $35k estimated. This new thing sounds like it'll cost twice as much.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arslan on Monday October 24 2016, @09:56PM
It is still competition though which is good for the market overall. Yes, peons like us won't see any benefit in the short term, but if this forces the likes of BMW and Merz to start producing more ECs and investing more research into the area and help drive up awareness, efficiency in economics, EC safety engineering, etc. it is a win win for us end consumers mid-long term.
Also, don't forget the Japanese and Koreans are masters at innovating upon technology discoveries. I do hope they keep that track record.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 24 2016, @11:26PM
The bigger brands are moving into EVs, which makes me think that the window for a Tesla clone might be closing fast. Its utility van could be a real winner, though. I don't think anybody's really making a push in that sector yet. No idea how many miles UPS vans and such rack up every day, so dunno if 3-400 miles range would be enough, but fuel costs are a significant cost for trucking/delivery outfits. Heavy duty EVs would also be attractive for cities and the EV manufacturer as well, because a municipality would be likely to order entire fleets at a stroke to lower fuel costs and air quality impacts while the EV company would be spared the vagaries of individual customer acceptance.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Username on Tuesday October 25 2016, @02:55AM
It would never work commercially until you’re able to recharge the vehicle in the same time it takes to fill a tank of gas, and maintenance can repair it themselves.
They would probably have to buy out one of the big established companies like unicarrier/nissan that have been making commerical/industrial electric vehicles since the 1940s in order to cross the line into the market and to get their patents.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Whoever on Tuesday October 25 2016, @02:49AM
If I can't buy one now, then it hasn't "launched" yet. It's yet more vaporware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:06PM
It doesn't even have an official name yet.