Here’s how the EV competitors are and are not alike

Porsche, Audi, General Motors and other established carmakers are trying to take on Tesla with brand new electric vehicles, but the first real start-up competition is likely to come from Lucid Motors, a company run by a former chief engineer on the Tesla Model S. .

Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson follows his former book, Elon Musk’s playbook on production, technology, retailers and service. But it draws a different path to charging stations for electric vehicles, automated driving systems and advertising.

Here’s how Lucid, who planned to announce last week through a SPAC deal, and Tesla compare:

Unlike some newer electric vehicle companies, Lucid plans to manufacture all of its vehicles internally as Tesla does today.

Rawlinson believes “vertical integration of manufacturing is the right way,” he said in an interview. The comments reflect comments on a call from Lucid last week.

“The simple fact is that manufacturing, to ensure the quality of our product is right, too precious, too critical, is an activity to be entrusted to a third party,” he told investors. “We have to control our own destiny.”

Lucid is building a brand new, ‘greenfield’ car plant in Arizona that costs billions of dollars. When Tesla started its own vehicle collection, it took over the NUMMI factory, which used to be home to General Motors and Toyota Motor in California.

Lucid has entered into an agreement with LG Chem to supply battery cells, the most expensive part of any electric vehicle, for its standard battery packs for the Air. The company said it will announce additional suppliers in the future.

Tesla already has deals with Panasonic, Samsung, LG and CATL to supply cells for both its batteries and energy storage products, including the Powerwall.

Lucid said he plans to also manufacture energy storage products, both household batteries and appliances on the utility. But Lucid will not have the distraction and capital burdens to run a solar business, as Tesla has done since acquiring SolarCity in the fall of 2016.

Tesla’s history with battery delivery partners could be a benefit for Tesla in the short term.

Through its long-standing partnership with Panasonic, Tesla has locked up unknown pricing terms as well as investments from the Japanese battery maker. Together they own and operate a massive battery plant outside Reno, Nevada.

Tesla makes the battery packs for its vehicles on one side of the factory, while Panasonic manufactures cells for it on the other side. However, Tesla told investors in September that it had also started manufacturing its own cells at a pilot plant in Fremont, California.

Lucid expects to produce more than 500,000 vehicles a year by 2030. Musk, who is known for declaring ambitious plans but not having self-imposed deadlines, said Tesla is ‘likely’ to produce 20 million electric vehicles a year before 2030.

Last year, Tesla produced 509,737 electric vehicles, with deliveries of half a million even amid a worldwide slowdown in car sales due to the Covid pandemic.

Rawlinson expects the Lucid Air to be the catalyst for a range of future electric vehicles, including an SUV starting in early 2023 and more affordable vehicles.

To begin with, Lucid plans to sell a luxury version of its Lucid Air sedan, the Dream Edition, for $ 169,000.

By comparison, Tesla sells its Model S sedan for $ 79,990 for the base model and $ 139,990 for the best Plaid + version (without adding Tesla’s premium $ 10,000 software upgrade).

In 2022, Lucid is expected to offer a version of the Air starting at $ 77,400, which will compete directly with several Tesla models. The price excludes federal tax credits worth up to $ 7,500 that are available to Lucid customers, but not today to Tesla buyers.

It is unclear at this time how low Lucid’s price may be after the first two vehicles hit the market.

Rawlinson said the company’s next planned vehicle platform will be the basis for cheaper models in the range of $ 40,000 to $ 45,000. But he’s not sure the company will ever offer a vehicle for about $ 25,000, which Musk Tesla plans to do.

“In the longer and fuller time, are we making a $ 25,000 car like Tesla’s Model 2 plans to do?” Rawlinson said. “My opinion is that as a business, I probably have seven or eight years to consider something like that. It’s a big business.”

Rawlinson claims Lucid has leading-edge battery technology for his vehicles. Its most important measure is the efficiency of Lucid’s batteries in kilometers per kilowatt hour.

Lucid says its vehicles can be more than 4.5 miles per kilowatt hour, while the company says Tesla’s Model S Long Range is larger than 4.

According to Rawlinson, Lucid does not intend to build and operate its own charging network as Tesla did with its Superchargers. “Do we want the capital burden of a fast-charging network? No, we can succeed. This is where we can save money,” he said.

Instead of building its own vehicle charging infrastructure, Lucid has partnered with Volkswagen – owned Electrify America, which is expected to have 800 total charging station premises with approximately 3,500 chargers by this year.

Tesla currently operates more than 20,000 Superchargers worldwide, according to its website.

Lucid, like Tesla, says it will offer customers home charging devices.

As for the development of driverless vehicle technology, Elon Musk has made the lidar, or light-distance and detection sensors, known as a fool’s errand. The sensors work by creating pulsed lasers to create something like a vivid 3D map of the environment of a vehicle that can be read by computer systems on board.

Many autonomous systems engineers believe that lidar is crucial to make cars truly driverless. Instead of lidar, Tesla’s driver assistance systems and long-awaited self-driving functions depend on a number of other cameras and sensors on board, including radar. Rawlinson believes the choice is a mistake.

“Do we think lidar should be part of the sensor suites for (autonomous vehicles)? Yes, well,” Rawlinson said.

Lucid said the Air sedan, which has been delayed from this spring until the second half of this year, will use lidar in its sensor suite for advanced driver assistance systems. The company expects the technology to set a ‘new benchmark’ for the industry.

Tesla today sells a premium, advanced, automated driving system for its vehicles for $ 10,000, with plans to introduce a subscriber option as well. Although marketed as ‘Full Self Driving’, the system’s features do not allow for a real driverless, hands-free and unsupervised operation.

Instead, FSD enables features outside of Tesla’s standard Autopilot package. These include smart navigation, automatic lane change and smart calling. With Smart Summon, a driver can call their car from a parking lot using their cell phone as a remote control.

Tesla vehicles do not have a robust driver monitoring system, which can determine if drivers are using their systems responsibly.

Meanwhile, Lucid has promised to incorporate a driver monitoring system into his vehicles that will ensure drivers use their advanced, automated driving systems as prescribed, and stay alert on the road and surroundings, ready to drive manually at any time.

Tesla has become one of the world’s most famous car brands without the use of traditional advertising. Rather, it generated hype and attention through splashing events, non-traditional social media engagement, Tesla online forums and owner clubs, and almost constant engagement by Elon Musk himself with fans and shareholders. Musk, for example, has raised about 50 million on Twitter.

Lucid, on the other hand, hosted a national television campaign for the Air from December 25 to the end of January to create awareness of the company and vehicle. Rawlinson said such a campaign was not necessarily part of Lucid’s plans until the coronavirus pandemic last year forced the company to cancel several events.

“I thought, well, damn we should, because we could not get the message out,” Rawlinson said. ‘So there was a bit of an attack on it, and I think it was quite positive. So, I do not rule it out just because Tesla does not. ‘

Lucid also accepts Tesla’s direct-to-consumer sales and service models instead of selling through traditional franchise dealers.

Lucid already has six malls open in California and Florida. It plans to operate 20 retail and service centers in North America by the end of this year, in addition to selling vehicles online. According to its website, Tesla has about 160 retail locations in the US.