The most costly Lucid Air, the Lucid Air Sapphire, will run you at the least $249,000. Now, for a automobile with 1,234 horsepower and the mantle of being the world’s strongest manufacturing four-door sedan, it is in all probability a good value – however definitely not for everyone’s funds. In the event you can reside with rather less unhinged velocity, a Lucid Air Pure begins at $77,400. And the brand new Lucid Gravity SUV that was unveiled on the Los Angeles Auto Present this week is anticipated to begin underneath $80,000.
Each Lucid fashions are a bit extra cheap than being out 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 {dollars} to your subsequent electrical automobile buy. However let’s face it: this California startup would not make low cost vehicles.
That will not all the time be the case, Lucid’s design boss Derek Jenkins informed me in Los Angeles this week. A lot to the shock of many who’ve a notion of Lucid as a high-end, luxurious automaker, the corporate has plans for a wider portfolio and vary of costs.
“It is vital to grasp that we’re not simply right here to make luxurious automobiles,” Jenkins stated. The long-term purpose is to attain excellence throughout the complete vary of automobiles from prime to backside.”
Jenkins introduced this up once I requested about Lucid’s long-awaited EV that is as a consequence of price round $50,000, which CEO Peter Rawlinson has alluded to prior to now. Jenkins additionally confirmed it could be a “crossover-type automobile,” which is sensible; that is what persons are shopping for proper now and that is what any EV maker must succeed with quantity. Simply have a look at the Tesla Mannequin Y, which isn’t solely the world’s best-selling EV however ostensibly the world’s best-selling automobile in sure markets. “All I can say about that’s the attributes which have confirmed to be our strengths, and the way we go about that, will discover its manner into this product household,” Jenkins stated.
Jenkins did not elaborate on what different fashions Lucid goals to do; the Lucid pickup truck clay seen just lately seems to be simply that, at the least for now.
40 Photographs
As a automobile designer, Jenkins has an astoundingly excessive batting common. He is the man behind the D3 Audi A8, the ND Mazda Miata, and now Lucid’s two-car lineup. Each of these EVs get excessive marks for styling. However styling hasn’t been Lucid’s drawback over the previous few years. Expertise is not both; the vehicles have among the greatest electrical vary to be discovered wherever. As an alternative, demand for its Air sedan, manufacturing prices, the same old EV startup complications and excessive value tags have been. The automaker is claimed to have misplaced $430,000 for each automobile it offered within the third quarter of this yr, whereas the Air has seen slowing gross sales for months.
Jenkins on the Lucid Air’s debut.
That is a part of why the brand new Gravity SUV is such an enormous deal for Lucid. The three-row, seven-seat SUV could not have some fire-sale price ticket, but it surely’s designed to attraction to mainstream consumers in a manner that the Air sedan hasn’t actually been capable of. It is an SUV world, and the Air has simply been dwelling in it. The Gravity, which is because of make 440 miles of vary on some trim stage, goals to make up for that. It is sized just a little smaller than a BMW X7 or Audi Q7, about so long as a Vary Rover, and never as tall as any; it is virtually a big wagon in some ways.
“The luxurious SUV phase has diverged into so many various classes, however the one factor you all the time understand is that even within the luxurious phase with prosperous households, the SUV tends to be the first automobile,” Jenkins stated. However Lucid thinks the Gravity can attraction to extra than simply households.
“For positive, these energetic professionals that do a whole lot of stuff on the weekends want to maneuver gear, or have mates have enterprise companions,” he stated. “Then, in fact, there is a standing set that simply likes the utility. And I really feel just like the accessibility of fine driving dynamics and vary attracts individuals who could or could not want the area.”
Jenkins additionally stated that the Gravity ended up being much less of an “Air crossover” than many individuals, myself included, believed it could; whereas it makes use of many parts from the sedan, it is truly on a special platform that features a new suspension. “Points of this it’s going to undoubtedly evolve into different fashions,” Jenkins stated.
So far as future Gravity trims and choices go, Jenkins was extra cagey. He stated that there will likely be a launch mannequin of the SUV known as the Dream Version and that can make up the primary few vehicles, “however then we’ll transfer down as rapidly as we probably can.” He added {that a} rear-wheel-drive model is unlikely for the foreseeable future.
Within the meantime, Lucid officers stated, extra emphasis will likely be on promoting the entry Lucid Air Pure till the Gravity goes into manufacturing in late 2024.
Contact the writer: [email protected]