I think you will have overall more issues with reliability with EQS than Tesla... but build quality will be way better in EQS.

 

I don't think Lucid will survive very long

 

What are you basing that on? Their top of the line $170K reservations sold out in a couple of months at over 10,000 units and they had to close reservations. The numbers would differ with you

 

And they have a ton of cash on hand

 

So I have no idea, but I how much cash do they actually have on hand?

 

You can look up their public filing. They have $4.80 Billion cash on hand and $7.96M in debt, and their current market CAP is $4.85B. Sounds like they are in a pretty good position for the long term to me

 

We have China to thank for EV sedans being important - they still buy a lot of sedans there so every maker that sells well in China will be making EV sedan....

 

So this door is the back door to my new office I just opened....EV parking spots right outside. Its a sign!

 

It is a sign...You gotta do it now. EV all the way for you for your next car

 

LOL yes it is! Does it belong to one of the other tenants or the building owners?

 

there's differences / pros to lucid air (greater range, greater interior room) but cons too (no air suspension, questionable looks).

i agree. the price on the only one available right now is ludicrous and a simple pent up demand money grab (gee, add $10K's worth of extras over their supposed $80k base model and double the price).

plenty want to have something unique though. like why buy a plaid for $130K+ that can exceed every nationwide speed limit in 3 seconds or less other than to have something unique. unique is a selling point.

huh? i looked through here https://ir.lucidmotors.com/ and saw cash but don't see any ~8M debt (can't be) and current market cap today is ~$61B.

and being awash in cash from an ipo and investors doesn't in fact mean much. let's say (outrageously) they can make $50K a car net profit. if they sell 20K cars that's just ONE billion in profit. besides the fact there's no chance they will make 50k a car net on anything but that top dream air, when do you expect them to sell their 20,000th vehicle? i wouldn't be surprised if that takes 2 years or more. and that means no major recalls, no major lawsuit distractions, no bad reviews, no hiccup in getting software updates out, no major bad press (cars killing people).

i'd say they need to execute to perfection to have even the remotest chance of survival.

 

The ONLY car I would park there is an Economy Vehicle (EV) like my beater 2004 Corolla.
It doesn't look like a 'Safe Space" for an expensive vehicle with potential for damage due to movement of all that junk nearby.
That's just me.

 

I may have looked up an older filing. There are a lot risks involved, but that's what startups are all about. I'm betting they will do well, even if there lower priced models don't start coming out until 2023

 

Nope, they are just open spaces, theres a whole row of them along that curb.

The junk that's there is left over from the construction of the office, that will be gone in a few days. They were using that space to stage materials for the build out. There's a whole row of spaces with EV charging there, that one just happens to be right in front of the back door to the office.

 

very interesting article.

Who the Hell Is Going to Buy a Lucid?

Christmas shopping went off without a hitch. In search of gifts just nice enough to hide the persistent odor of procrastination, I ended up at the sort of upscale outdoor mall that forces you outside to walk from Lululemon to Coach.

That open-air retail concept is catching on everywhere. But it must have sprung from some sun-bleached clime far from Seattle, where we've just endured the rainiest fall in recorded history. Some local developer decided that Rodeo Drive’s outdoor storefronts embodied luxury and didn't think about much else. The problem now is that Seattle's elite have soggy toes when the doors swing open at Cartier.

But I noticed something else at the mall: a fresh tangle of plywood and chainlink that will one day become a Lucid Motors showroom. The space sits next to one of Apple's Zen monuments to late-stage capitalism, a brutalist shoebox of glass and brushed steel. There's a Peloton showroom nearby, its austere windowed storefront allowing views of the sleek identical bikes. Lucid's new space is wedged right in there, where it's sat unfinished for months.

That gave me pause. When that showroom is finished, when its glass facade allows the Peloton shopper to peer in at gleaming demo units and interchangeable chatty salespeople, I wonder: Who the hell is going to buy a Lucid?

Welcome to Kinardi Line, mouthpiece of the free world’s most self-loathing auto writer. Home to questionable takes, reviews, and ****box worship.

Maybe it's a stupid question. Our own Lawrence Ulrich heaped praise on Lucid's opening salvo, a swept-back sedan called the Air.
On paper, the Lucid addresses many of our electric-car bugaboos. With a range of more than 500 miles in its top configuration, the Air strikes down most Americans' range anxiety. When recharging, Lucid claims the top-trim Air can add up to 300 miles of range in as little as 20 minutes. That's remarkable.

It goes like hell, too, muscling around with up to 1,111 horsepower (!!!), breaking off a quarter-mile in under ten seconds. And you can bet a good chunk of that three-ton curb weight is dedicated to isolating passengers from road noise, meaning the Air should ride on a magic carpet of solitude. On a clear-eyed checklist of electric-car must-haves, the new Lucid Air ticks seemingly every box.There's just one problem, Lucid is jumping into the electric car market from the top shelf. They're entering the market with exactly zero name recognition, aiming for a segment that requires S-Class money while providing none of Mercedes's brand cache.

Lucid itself doesn't view that as a hurdle. In a series of videos and interviews, They insist wealthy consumers no longer look toward old-school opulence in their expensive vehicles. On the contrary, they say, the modern luxury shopper considers issues of environmental impact and sustainability foremost and wants the whole shebang wrapped in a sort of Steve-Jobs's-Turtleneck minimalism.

It's an interesting idea: That the wealthy have turned the corner from self-gratification, rejecting gorgeous chrome-tanned leather and carbon-belching V-8s for the self-conscious restraint of synthetic-wool seating. Perhaps some deep-seated notion of privilege and altruism has pared back their desire to peacock about in a Bentley?

To me, that sounds absurd. "Post-luxury" is simply a rebranding of something we all know: Keeping Up With the Joneses may look different over time, but it's foundational to our culture. Back in the Sixties, driving a Cadillac meant you were Someone. Now those someones are called Tech Bros, and they want expensive electrics.

Need proof? Watch any Tech Bro sidle up to a bar, their Amazon work badge still attached to the outside of their vest, hours after their day has ended. What do they drive away in?

It's a Tesla, Lucid's biggest competitor in the luxury electric space. While Lucid will tell you they don't compete with Tesla, it's hard to imagine an automaker they need to draw more customers away from. Tesla is not a tech company, despite a popular line to the contrary. It's a luxury lifestyle brand; Nobody talks about their Macbook with the same reverence Tesla buyers reserve for the Model S.

But what is it, exactly, that Tesla buyers are so latched on to? They view themselves as first adopters, clever consumers, climate warriors, and techno-futurists. Some of that pride is surely rooted in the belief that a Tesla is a better mousetrap, and for many buyers, it is. All of that speaks to this idea of "post-luxury" as forward-thinking altruism.

More than just saving the turtles, Tesla owners are broadcasting those perceived values to others. Social awareness is indeed both virtue and commodity in 2021. And for the better part of the last decade, a certain segment of our population has decided that the best way to signal all the right virtues was to park a Tesla in front of their energy-efficient Silicon Valley condo. In that way, the "post-luxury" idea is identical to whatever brand of stuffy luxury Lucid aims to shoot down, even if it looks and feels a lot different.Post-luxury represents a contemporary change in taste, not a fundamental change in values. And taste has always changed with the wind.


Back to Lucid then, and the essential question: If a Tesla already sends the right signal to your neighbors, accelerates faster than any ICE car, and does both at a lower price and with a more recognizable name than the Lucid, how will Lucid draw customers?

Well, given Tesla's spotty history of build and reliability issues from bricked screens to rain-filled tail lights, further hobbled by a patchy network for servicing, I'm not sure their customers will look to Lucid for reliability. Many of the Tesla owners I've talked to have had an awful time getting their issues repaired, yet proclaim utterly loyalty; further proof that Tesla is indeed a lifestyle brand.

Maybe Lucid's styling separates the wheat from chaff. The Lucid Air predicates its vision for "post-luxury" on design, how the car looks and feels compared to the auto market at large. That's a fine proposition, but we first broke news about the Air more than five years ago, in 2016. If you take a look at renderings of the prototype, they appear nearly identical to the road cars leaving Lucid's factory as you read this.


We'll always applaud a car company for hewing this close to the vision of its designer. How many times has an automaker blown the doors off convention with their concept, only to build a wet-rag simulacrum in the end? But the Lucid Air's design no longer feels particularly fresh.

Perhaps that's because mainstream automakers were quicker on the draw with similar ideas of our post-luxury future. Consider the Hyundai Elantra Hybrid, which borrows more than a little from the Lucid Air's design (take a look at those wheels), but with a more angular take. It even has a better roofline, rid of the Lucid's awkward rump. When you see one on the road, it broadcasts The Future far better than any current Tesla. Then there's the Giugiaro-esque Hyundai Ioniq 5, another pure electric that borrows design elements from the same playbook.

This leads me to a more specific question: what consumer will pay S-Class money for a car that looks like Hyundai might've designed it? When your take on futurism is novel, you can sell it at a premium. But in that stretch between the Air's debut and production, the imitators closed the gap. Now they're here, pounding on Lucid's front door. Even the reigning luxobarge champ showed up. We'll soon have an electric S-Class, rolling around with rounded edges and a blunt snub nose and a long glass roof and an austere interior ripped straight from Gattaca. Look familiar?

That's not to say Lucid is doomed. Not by any means. The company has been bankrolled by the Saudi Public Investment Fund to the tune of billions. Lucid's public valuation is astronomic, and there's finally product making it out the front door of the factory. There's even a Lucid SUV on the horizon.

Still, I wonder. Who are these people spending $170,000 for a badass electric rocket that doesn't look or feel particularly futuristic anymore, shunning Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, Bentley, and yes, even Tesla, for a brand without name recognition? And who will continue buying Lucid when the aforementioned automakers all have skin in the game and are capable of manufacturing their cars in far greater numbers?

Maybe the answer's been around the whole time, written on the faceless glass facades of these luxury outdoor malls. The shoppers here yearn for this "post-luxury" design. Their coffee tables, refrigerators, and cars should be as sleek and sexless as a skipping stone. There's probably enough wealth out there to float Lucid along on the considerable performance merits of its vehicles, even as the market thickens around the company. I don't pretend to have a crystal ball, I'm just a skeptic.

We'll find out soon, at any rate, whenever that Lucid store opens. You'll see me first in line, eager to understand how this post-luxury sedan will appeal to athleisured buyers with Louis Vuitton handbags. Maybe I'm just not meant to get it. That’s probably why I'm always walking past those buildings, soggy toes and all.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-cul...o-buy-a-lucid/