Lucid: the company that in less than a month selling cars is already worth more than Ford
The Air Dream model travels 800 km on a battery charge
The automobile company Lucid started manufacturing its first cars in September this year and at the end of October it delivered a few dozen units to its first customers. But in that short time Lucid Motors has already exceeded the market value of century-old companies like Ford Motors.
Headquartered in Silicon Valley, USA, the company is seen as a promise of the emerging market for electric vehicles and has surpassed US$ 85 billion (more than R$ 441 billion) in market value.
The first car model, the Lucid Air Dream Edition, won the MotorTrend magazine's Car of the Year award. According to data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the model is the electric car that does the most kilometers on a single charge: around 852 km.
520 units of the first model will be sold in reference to that distance in miles. Each will cost from US$ 169 thousand.
The company is also making lower-value (but still far from cheap) models: the Air Grand Touring ($139,000), the Touring ($95,000) and the Air and Air Pure ($77,000).
The Air and Air Pure will only reach the market after 2022.
Lucid says that so far it has more than 17,000 reservations and that next year it expects to deliver around 20,000 units. It's a tiny fraction of the more than 4 million cars Ford sold worldwide in 2020 — a relatively smaller number because of the pandemic.
The company's assembly line is in Arizona, despite its headquarters in Silicon Valley
From super luxury to mass production
While it may not seem like it, Lucid's bet isn't the super-luxury car market, but the mass production of electric cars. Its CEO, Peter Rawlinson, 64, said in interviews that he considers the first model to be a step towards establishing the brand in the market, and then massing the electric vehicle market,
"We needed to create a technological feat and I think that's what we achieved with Lucid Air. We defined our brand, we defined our future," he said.
Rawlinson's fame is also one of the reasons investors are betting on Lucid. He was responsible for the development of Tesla's Model S, a company he left for personal reasons as well as a bad relationship with Elon Musk.
Rawlinson had previously worked with Jaguar and was chief engineer at Lotus. In addition, it has registered numerous patents for innovations in electric vehicle batteries.
Much of the Lucid Air's success stems from its obsession with reducing the weight and size of the car's engine and components, which not only allows for more power but also saves space that can be used for other conveniences.
Today the company is still heavily dependent on its creator, Peter Rawlinson
Rawlinson said he even weighs in on selling his technology to other companies that might make low-cost cars. To get there, however, it is first necessary to guarantee the viability of your own company, which has many challenges ahead and is still not profitable, but is loss-making.
A good part of these difficulties is included in the report that the company delivers to potential shareholders so that they are aware of the risks to which their investments will be subject.
According to The New York Times, the 44-page document highlights that the company has no experience in mass-producing vehicles, does not have a customer service network and is heavily dependent on Rawlinson. Add to this the fact that more and more companies are betting on the electric car market, many of them with decades of experience in large-scale production.
No comments:
Post a Comment