We have driven, reported on, road-tripped, and talked about our fair share of electric and hybrid vehicles at Business Insider. These are exciting times for a technology that was born more than 100 years ago, but only started to gain steam in the last 20 years with the Toyota Prius.
Electric-vehicle sales in the US jumped by 37% in 2016, according to Forbes. There are now more than 30 battery-powered and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the market in the US right now. That growth has spurred a whole new class of EVs from investor-funded startups. Though many of these companies poach engineering and design talent from big-name automakers, the new companies themselves have never mass-produced a car before. It might be a stretch to call it an automotive renaissance, but it looks that way.
Still, one thing remains the same — it is incredibly difficult to start a car company. Tesla CEO Elon Musk probably knows this better than anyone. Tesla is the first American automaker to go public since Ford Motor Company in 1956, but it took Tesla and its stakeholders nearly two decades and many hundreds of millions of dollars to get there.
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Lucid Air electric sedan from Lucid Motors.
(Lucid Motors)
And as we have learned recently from the embattled electric-car startup, Faraday Future, the business of designing and building cars can easily lose traction if just enough things go wrong.
Nevertheless, a handful of electric-car startups in California are undeterred, and they are vying to bring the next mass-produced luxury electric vehicle to market.
Lucid Motors is one of those companies. Founded in 2007 under its former name, Atieva, the Menlo Park-based company began developing its first electric vehicle in 2014.
The car, called Lucid Air, debuted last year as a 1,000-horsepower electric luxury sedan that Lucid said would rival Tesla's highly successful Model S.
Lucid has 300 employees and is backed by Venrock — the same venture capital firm that led Apple's Series A round in 1978. Lucid also counts China's Beijing Automotive Industry Holding and Japan's Mitsui as investors. Interestingly, Jia Yueting, Faraday Future's only publicly known backer, is also an investor in Lucid.
A company spokesman told Business Insider Lucid has raised several hundred million dollars to date. The spokesman declined to give specific dollar figures. Lucid has a Series D round in the works.
The Lucid Air will be the first vehicle out of the company's stable when it goes into production in early 2019, the company said. Lucid invited Business Insider to check out a nearly finished representation of the car at its headquarters in Menlo Park. Here's how it went.
The Lucid Air is almost surreal when seen outside in natural light. It's not a complete stretch to say it looks like a road-bound spacecraft.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)Everything from the windshield forward evokes a nearly seamless appearance. It has a quietly commanding presence.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)Quiet because it's electric, of course. The Air will have either a 100 kWh battery capable of about 315 miles of range, or an optional 130 kWh battery that could offer 400 miles of range on a full charge.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)Here are the headlights in case you missed them.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)And an even closer headlight view.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)The car's dimensions are deceiving. From certain angles it looks as large as your typical full-size luxury sedan, like a Mercedes S-Class. It's actually smaller.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)Here's a disguised Lucid Air prototype sitting between a Mercedes S-Class and a BMW 7 Series.
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Here's a disguised Lucid Air prototype sitting between a Mercedes S-Class and a BMW 7 Series.
(Lucid Motors)Same car, just inside Lucid Motors' studio.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)Lucid's design team says the Air's passenger cabin is larger than the Tesla Model S.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)This 6-foot-2 reporter can confirm. The car is spacious.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)The rear cabin is where the real show is.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)Here's what you use to adjust your seat, which can recline to give you a better view of the sky above. You'll see that in the video at the end of this slideshow.
Time to hop in the driver's seat.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)Like most vehicles in this class, the Lucid Air will have autonomous-driving capabilities.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)The Air's multi-screen driver interface was engineered entirely in-house, with an eye toward seamless, intuitive connectivity.
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A view of the Lucid Air at Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)Business Insider was the first media outlet to ride in the Lucid Air alpha car with the full interior installed. Check out the video of our drive below.
Final impressions: This one seems different.
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A view of the Lucid Air outside of Lucid Motors' headquarters in Menlo Park, California, February 16, 2017.
(Bryan Logan/Business Insider)
The Lucid Air and the company that built it seem to be playing by a different rule book from its counterparts in the EV startup space.
Lucid Motors deliberately stayed out of the spotlight, even as other new electric-car companies — for better or worse — actively pursued it. And while other companies tend to traffic in buzzy social media campaigns with little evidence of real progress, Lucid remained in stealth mode until it had a real, nearly complete representation of its product to showcase.
As Lucid's Chief Technology Officer Peter Rawlinson told Business Insider in an interview at the company's headquarters,"We believe we have the next-level electric vehicle — one that is so well-suited to this new era of luxury mobility. I believe in the product and I would rather that product do the talking." Rawlinson was the chief engineer of the Tesla Model S and has more than 30 years of experience in the industry.
Once Lucid's Series D funding round closes in the second quarter, Rawlinson says a portion of that money will go toward jump-starting the company's factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, and moving the Air to beta-stage development.
Lucid will be a company to watch. Of course, it's impossible to know whether it ends up being a viable, perhaps even profitable, automaker, but it's clear they are serious.
"This team realizes the enormity of the task," Rawlinson said. "We're car guys. This is the team that has done it before. We know how to do this."
Source: Business Insider
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