Elon Musk's Ex-Chief Engineer Creates A New Car:
Peter Rawlinson has many goals for the Lucid Air. One is that it be hailed as the world's best electric car. "Nobody believes me, but we're about to take it to another level," he says in a pre-Christmas Zoom chat from the 300-year-old Warwickshire, England, farmhouse he calls home when not at Lucid Motors' Silicon Valley headquarters.
It's the same feeling he had a decade ago as chief engineer for Tesla's Model S, the breakthrough all-electric car that took the auto world by storm in 2012. "No one believed me with Model S . . . the hostility to it was shocking. I've found the same with (Air). No one believes it."
[...] His bigger goal is leveraging the Air's 1,080-horsepower propulsion technology—which he claims is the world's most efficient—to power cheaper electric vehicles. Within five years, Rawlinson wants to be selling hundreds of thousands of mid-$40,000 electric cars and helping big automakers sell $25,000 mass-market EVs–the very same objective that his old boss, Elon Musk, is chasing. If that weren't enough, Rawlinson wants to build his cars at the first auto plant in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund owns two thirds of his company.
"There's a really big misunderstanding about our business model," says the Welsh engineer, 63. "This is not about making an expensive car for wealthy people. That's not why I'm here. That's not what drives me. . . . I want us to be making a million cars a year. The ambition of Lucid is to have a profound effect. We are not a minority play."
[...] Of course, Lucid and Tesla aren't the only beneficiaries of growing demand for electric cars. Amazon-backed Rivian starts delivering electric pickups and SUVs this year. Famed car designer Henrik Fisker is due to start selling the Ocean, his stylish $37,499 electric crossover in 2022. Apple is perennially rumored to be eying the space. Dozens more EVs are coming from General Motors, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Nissan and other major automakers, starting this year with Ford's high-powered Mustang Mach-E.
Gartner analyst Mike Ramsey thinks Lucid's plan to work its way down to more affordable cars from ultra-premium ones is the right approach. "What's been proven is in this technology the way that you get in is that you aim at the high market, then build a loyal customer base, use the cachet, the brand awareness, and then spread and go further."
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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: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @07:50PM (7 children)
Without Ol' Muskie to provide stable leadership, how can an electric car company survive?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @07:54PM (4 children)
By submitting millions of hype articles like this one.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:04PM (1 child)
Jokes on them, I can't afford their car.
Looks nice though.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday March 15 2021, @02:14PM
The article says he's targetting $25k and $40k cars, he's just following a similar path as Tesla: start with the high-dollar, high-profit models as the technology and production capacity are maturing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @09:01PM (1 child)
Built in Saudi Arabia?
Does it come with ashtrays to hide the incinerated body parts?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 14 2021, @10:34PM
No body is selling a Saudi-built car in the West, because Saudis won't work in a factory and the imported labour will be slaves from Asia.
The headlines write themselves really.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:46PM (1 child)
They said it wasn't possible, can't be done. But they hadn't factored in the Lone Genius. Who probably wears a leather jacket when doing TED talks on management.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:48PM
Who is John Galt?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:15PM (10 children)
Although he is almost certain to fail, the possibility of success is worrisome.
He is a particularly awful outsourcer. He takes skill and trade secrets created in Silicon Valley and in England, then tries to get it going in an oppressive horrible place. He is an enabler for the enemies of western civilization and freedom. He turns his back on the society that made him, refusing to provide factory jobs to westerners. For that, I really really hate him.
On the bright side, this is nuts. All of those islamic oil countries have severe problems with workplace culture. They bring in lots of foreign workers because the natives are unwilling to work very much. There is a weird sort of affirmative action for locals. Local people must be hired. So to operate a business, you hire some capable foreigners (hard working, educated, or both) and you hire some locals to meet your legal minimum. Those locals damn well know they are only there to meet the legal minimum. The business knows it too. The locals just sit around while the foreign workers do all the work. The foreign workers can't even leave without permission from the employer. It's sort of like slavery, but maybe indentured servitude is a better comparison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:42PM (1 child)
That's what we call a "business friendly" economy.
Style points if you hire foreigners from America to work in Dubai under local employment laws.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @01:20AM
I believe this is what outfits like Emirates do.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 14 2021, @10:37PM
It's nearly as bad as the fishing industry.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @11:58PM
> He takes skill and trade secrets created in Silicon Valley and in England, then tries to get it going in an oppressive horrible place.
I guess you haven't been paying attention? Saudi Arabia has been a (the?) biggest market for top end luxury and hypercars for a very long time now, think Rolls-Royce, McLaren, Bugatti, etc. More than one Formula 1 team has had huge funding by Saudi money, a good chunk of F1 high-tech is already available to Saudi Arabia (I don't know if they have taken advantage of it, but they certainly own it). The sheiks have been in the car business for a good while, spending all that oil money we gave them, along with most of the rest of the world.
What I see is that either the Saudis insisted that Lucid/Rawlinson build some cars locally, or perhaps it was offered as a bargaining chip when Lucid went looking for money.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday March 15 2021, @12:16AM
On the brighter side, they'll probably all be made by robots [youtu.be] anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @01:29AM
I would like to take a closer look at those countries. I hear that those governments guarantee a nice standard of living to their citizens, but there are bound to be people wanting to do something with their existence.
So do the citizens that don't want to be couch potatoes set up small engineering shops, restaurants or art studios?
(Score: 2) by corey on Monday March 15 2021, @05:40AM (1 child)
Are you talking about Musk or the Chief Engineer?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday March 15 2021, @12:56PM
Sounds like both of them.
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Monday March 15 2021, @05:48AM
He has only to be “successful” enough to be bought out.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 15 2021, @06:40PM
The stench of undeserved entitlement is strong here. That oppressive, horrible place has done much to support and enable the western society you claim to care so much about. They earned a chance to make cars.
At some point, we need to consider instead how to make the world a better place. My take is that globalism (global trade and such) actually is one of the more positive forces in existence today which is continuing to help benighted places like Saudi Arabia become better and more humane.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:16PM (14 children)
Affordable
20yr/500,000 mile lifespan
Absolute minimum of electronic/computerized crap
(Score: 4, Insightful) by istartedi on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:29PM (5 children)
I'm right there with you. As geeks we care about: privacy, right to repair.
Unfortunately, what seems to make money is: status symbols.
So. iPhones on wheels. No equivalent of Pine Phones or flips.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Sunday March 14 2021, @09:36PM (3 children)
All PinePhones are out of stock ATM. Like... non-existent, you can't buy one.
Methinks that's a point of resemblance already.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday March 14 2021, @09:42PM (2 children)
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-drought-raspberry-pi [tomshardware.com]
https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/03/12/chip-shortage-and-high-prices-threaten-supplies-of-sbcs-and-other-maker-products/ [cnx-software.com]
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/qualcomm-smartphones-are-the-next-to-get-hit-by-the-global-chip-shortage/ [arstechnica.com]
Yup. I'll submit that later.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @12:05AM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday March 15 2021, @01:27AM
Good point. I'd need to replace my 3yo old Pixel, the battery started to die (fucking planned obsolescence. I miss my dumb-phones, with 5 days between recharges)
Actually... hang on... what other solutions do I have?
1. spend some time finding a repair shop able to replace the battery *or*
2. find a "power bank" that's slim enough to carry with the phone (and craft a cover that fits both)
3. (no, ditching it is not a solution. Because WFH requires a 2FA which is not available over SMS)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @01:27AM
They're outlawed anyway. If you want something basic in the USA, you'd have to first buy something with vast quantities of electronic wizardry, and then spend three weeks tearing it all out, and getting the gutted remains to work, and that's not because the auto industry doesn't want to provide it; the government has flat-out outlawed vehicles without a lot of very tightly controlled requirements. The regulations on airbags alone are a massive pain.
If you really want basic, you'd have to start with some kind of three-wheeler, where the same car-based laws don't apply.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday March 14 2021, @10:35PM (5 children)
With mechanical controls, buttons, switches, and knobs. A touchscreen is ok for the nav system, but nothing else.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @11:40PM (3 children)
road maps in the glove box
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @12:07AM (1 child)
> road maps in the glove box
All of the above, except the road maps are in the door pocket(grin). A handful of years back, a good friend was dying of cancer (mid-70s, too young) and no one in his family wanted his stick shift Pontiac Vibe (sibling of Toyota Matrix)...so he gave it to me with 120K miles on it.
It came from an area with no winter road salt, so no rust. I'm keeping it out of the salt here (have a winter car to sacrifice). As well as the stick shift, it has crank windows, manual locks and a simple CD stereo. At the rate I put on miles (not very fast), I figure it's got at least another 10 years. It's not a great car, but keeping current with the stick shift is plenty of fun for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @09:33PM
Nice sentiment, but I can tell you from experience that MILES are only ONE of things that wear out a car.
Simple age (esp. with exposure to car fluids) will cause rubber and plastic parts especially to fail. (Metal to a much lesser extent.) Your car is rotting just sitting there...
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Monday March 15 2021, @12:37AM
I do have map books in both cars as a backup. Never know when the NEXT apocalypse is going to happen, or what kind it will be.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @12:13AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @04:35PM
They will start throttling it with updates after 5!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @08:31PM
and open source, so we can build and sell parts to each other.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:21PM (9 children)
It looks like the charging network is Tesla's real moat, at least for now. Any old ICE can be used for a long trip whenever you feel like it. Tesla has managed to come very close to the ICE spontaneity experience. Alternative chargers are a hodge-podge of companies and pricing schemes. Imagine that Chevron had the most gas stations, and you could only fill up a Chevron car there. That's where we are with EVs. There's going to have to be a day of reckoning here--some of the charging systems are doing things that are really annoying like requiring an app and/or membership to lock you in to their network. They're going to have stop fighting amongst themselves to beat the Tesla network, and I haven't heard of that happening.
Change my mind. If you buy something other than a Tesla, can you match the certainty that after driving most of you're range you'll be able to pull up somewhere and get back on the road in an hour?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:28PM (8 children)
How long does it take to recharge an EV at a station these days? Doesn't it still kill the long trip spontaneity if you have to stop for many hours every 250 miles or so?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Sunday March 14 2021, @08:36PM (7 children)
After 250 miles I'm generally going to stop for food or something anyway. I think the Super Chargers can get you quite a bit of range in less than an hour, if not full range.
AFAIK no EV can do the kind of stuff we used to do as teens and twenties where you road-trip with shift driving virtually non-stop. I couldn't bear the thought of that now simply from a comfort standpoint. I don't know what percentage of drivers push it that hard, other than truckers and that's a whole different market.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @10:16PM (1 child)
Truckers don't really push it that hard, since they've got ten hours max of driving a day by law (and only long haul can ever actually get that much), and it's very hard (not quite impossible) to cheat on that now with electronic logs.
I guess how much time charging actually costs depends on how long it takes to charge in practice. Tesla says it takes about 15 minutes to add 200 miles of range. If that's realistic, it's worse than gasoline, but it's not awful. You have to stop about twice as often as you do with gasoline, for about twice as long. Charging at a Supercharger is more expensive than buying fuel, too (but they're in the same ballpark).
What Superchargers do is make road trips viable, but a Tesla is still a worse option than a combustion powered car for taking them.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @01:30AM
Some truckers push it to that ballpark. They're generally husband/wife owner-operator teams, and they can pick up some plum rush jobs because they can do what pretty much nobody else can legally do.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday March 15 2021, @03:28AM (3 children)
When I was about 19 and driving across country one summer on I90, I stopped in a truck stop in eastern Montana and bought a giant coffee and some no-doze caffeine pills. The next thing I remember the sun is rising, a blinding glare in my eyes while I'm pulling into a rest area in western Minnesota because I didn't feel I could keep my eyes open for another second. I have no memory of that night's drive at all. None whatsoever. I drove through a bit of WY and all of S. Dakota basically in a sleep deprivation imposed state of mental blackout. It's kind of scary sometimes to think about one's own braindead decisions in youth. Anyway, if I had had a kid, I would consider an electric car for the sprog just because it makes some stupid decision impossible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @05:57AM (1 child)
Many gas powered cars have lane keeping / lane departure / autobrake facilities now.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday March 15 2021, @12:42PM
> autobrake
As long as there are no white trucks pulling out in front of you.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday March 15 2021, @06:09AM
For me the height of insanity was non-stop from Northern Virginia to West Palm Beach, FL. For the last hour or two, I rolled down the window and *yelled* periodically to keep myself awake. If the cops had seen this, they might have pulled me over. I had Virginia plates and was thus not a Florida Man, so they probably would have figured it wasn't normal. Fortunately, nothing bad came of that insane journey, but I swore "never again" on that.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday March 15 2021, @01:03PM
My need for food stops is rarely in phase with my need for re-fuelling stops. Nor do I want to eat at the kind of places that offer re-fuelling.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 14 2021, @09:32PM (2 children)
Toyota is entering the electric car market.
This company, and Tesla are screwed.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @12:21AM
> This company, and Tesla are screwed.
Lots of casualties in the electric car business, the high end (like Tesla and Lucid):
. Byton looks to be gone, https://www.electrive.com/2020/06/30/byton-may-be-facing-bankruptcy/ [electrive.com] They had money from China, a production plant in China, and more recently additional money from Japan too.
. Faraday Future hit CES with a big splash a few years ago, all gone now.
. Fisker was in early, ran out of money and now survives at a trickle (some people are so desperate to have something unique that the present incarnation of Fisker can still sell a few cars).
At the low end, there is China where, I think I read, there were something like 50 electric car startups, many making smaller cars. Who knows how many of them will survive, but there is bound to be a big shakeout there. We will not see many of these in USA/Europe because they don't pass crash test regulations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15 2021, @04:58PM
They are getting in again?