Lucid Motors is one step nearer to delivering its subsequent car to prospects. On Tuesday, the California-based electrical car startup’s first preproduction Gravity SUV rolled off the manufacturing line.
Peter Rawlinson, Lucid’s CEO and CTO, introduced the milestone in a LinkedIn put up and shared a video of himself driving the SUV off the manufacturing line. Preproduction fashions are used for testing and to iron issues out earlier than manufacturing begins for buyer automobiles.
The Lucid Gravity
Lucid launched its debut car, the Air sedan, in 2021. The three-row, seven-seat Gravity is its subsequent act. Boasting 440-plus miles of vary and a beginning worth below $80,000, it is set to go on sale by the tip of 2024.
The Gravity, a three-row SUV, is Lucid’s follow-up to the Air sedan, which launched as its first mannequin in 2021. Lucid says the seven-seater will attain prospects by late 2024, begin at below $80,000 and supply a spread in extra of 440 miles.
It is powerful to overstate how vital the Gravity is to Lucid’s future and monetary stability. The Air is by all accounts a really superior EV. However the marketplace for giant luxurious sedans is relatively restricted. A giant SUV ought to open Lucid as much as a large new buyer base and provides it the sort of scale it wants to begin clawing its means towards profitability.
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Lucid nonetheless has a mountain to climb right here, although. Within the coming months, all eyes shall be on whether or not the corporate can efficiently and easily scale up manufacturing output to significant ranges. Tesla had a notoriously painful time ramping up manufacturing of its first mass-market car, the Mannequin 3. Making a number of early automobiles is one factor. Churning out a whole lot or 1000’s of advanced machines each week is a complete totally different ballgame.
Or as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, clearly scarred from the “manufacturing hell” interval of 2018, places it mainly each probability he will get: “Prototypes are straightforward. Manufacturing is tough.”
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