Lucid Motors has just completed the initial phase of its $700 million factory. The first cars should leave the factory this spring. This is the biggest step in becoming a mainstream car manufacturer. It is relatively easy and cheap to create a prototype, even a fully functional one when compared to putting it into production./cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65342104/Screen_Shot_2019_09_27_at_5.05.53_PM.0.png)
The best example of this is Dyson. The company has abandoned its electric car project that racked up $500 million in cost, even though the car got positive feedback from the press. As it turned out $2,7 billion that they’ve planned to spend in order to start producing electric cars wasn’t enough. Maybe in not so distant future, the leap from having a functional prototype to production won’t be as big, thanks to the manufacturing process I have described in my previous post on the Czinger 21C. For now, it’s still big, and Lucid has done it.
So what differs Lucid from Dyson?
There is no denying that Tesla is currently the leader in mainstream EV technology. In order to show why Lucid, in my opinion, is a force to be reckoned with I will compare it to the industry leaders.
Well, firstly there is the range. Lucid Air, Lucid Motors’ first car, promises 517 miles. That’s almost 130% of Tesla Model S’s 402 miles in the long range version they were so proud of. Some of the range comes from the bigger battery. Lucid has a 113kWh battery, while Tesla has 100kWh. The rest of it comes from increases in efficiency, which Tesla was a leader in for many years. This significant development comes from multiple marginal gains created in almost every bit of Lucid’s design. One of the gains was created in the motor. Lucid designed the whole car with a permanent magnet synchronous motor in mind, while Tesla started with induction motors, and only switched to the new technology in all of its cars when Model 3 was released. Lucid’s motor has only 30% of the cogging torque of similarly powerful engines. Cogging torque is the biggest downside of permanent magnet synchronous motors. It basically very quickly slows down the engine once it is not being powered. Other improvements are in the high voltage batteries, cooling, and packaging. All of them add up so that Lucid Air can drive 4.6 miles/kWh while Tesla Model S Long Range 4.1 miles/kWh making it the new efficiency leader in the EV market./cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67379387/8.0.jpg)
Secondly its experience. Even though Lucid Air is going to be Lucid’s first car the company is the only supplier of battery packs for Formula E. Those racecars are the pinnacle of EV development and the batteries endure truly extreme conditions. What’s more Lucid’s CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson has been Vice President of Vehicle Engineering at Tesla and Chief Engineer of the Model S. However it is important to note that Elon Musk tweeted “Rawlinson didn’t design Model S. Prototype was done before he joined & he left us in the lurch just as things got tough, which was not cool. He did make some contributions to body/chassis engineering, but not to powertrain, battery, electronics, or software.”
Is the tweet part of marketing or is it representing the truth? I’ll let you decide.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t look like Rawlinson is going to bail this time and hopefully, first Air’s will hit the road soon. Will it be a Tesla killer? Probably not, but surely it will create a challenge, which can only finish well for us, the customers.
https://www.lucidmotors.com/
https://www.caranddriver.com/lucid-motors/air