Chief Technology Officer Peter Rawlinson, takes part in a press event for the new “air” electric car … [+]
Lucid Motors rolled out a retail plan on Wednesday designed to make it a serious alternative to Tesla Motors for consumers looking for upscale electric vehicles.
The Newark, California-based EV manufacturer intends to open eight showrooms by the end of this year, five in California, and additional locations in 2021.
The company recently opened a showroom at its corporate headquarters. The others will be in New York City, Miami, West Palm Beach, San Jose, three in Los Angeles and one in Orange County, California.
Additional showrooms and service centers are planned to open in 2021 in New York, Florida, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Diego, and in a few European countries where electric vehicle sales have grown significantly.
The showrooms will use virtual reality technology to introduce customers to the Lucid Air, the company’s only product, because there won’t be any significant number of cars to show. Production doesn’t start until late in 2020.
“We thoughtfully developed Lucid’s retail strategy to provide customers with very specific experiences when they enter our showrooms and speak with our representatives,” said Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson.
Lucid will unveil the Air in April at the New York Auto Show. The luxury sedan will have 1,000 horsepower, a range of 400 miles when fully charged. A base model with less range will start at about $60,000. Higher performing versions will cost considerably more.
Whether Lucid can become a serious competitor to Tesla remains to be seen. Tesla has more than 200 stores or galleries world wide, about 120 of which are in the U.S. Tesla also has three models, the S, X and 3.
Rawlinson came from Tesla where he was vice president of engineering. Lucid’s roots can be traced to the battery supplier Atieva that made batteries for Formula E racing cars, a competitive circuit of electric vehicles that began in 2014.
Rawlinson told the website Mashable in February that he also wants to pursue customers who are attracted to luxury sedans offered by Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi.
In the beginning of the Formula E competition the cars had to have their batteries replaced before completing the race. Now the Atieva batteries are strong enough to power the cars through the entire race.
After announcing the Air in 2017, the company struggled to raise enough capital to build an assembly plant. But in late 2018 Lucid secured more than $1 billion from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.
It is building about 80 prototypes at its Newark headquarters that will be used for testing, validation and crash testing.
Lucid broke ground last December on its first assembly plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, where it expects to launch production by the end of 2020.
In the first full year, the goal is to make 10,000 vehicles, but by the middle of the decade Rawlinson plans to increase that capacity to 60,000.
