This is how the EV rivals are and are not the same

Porsche, Audi, General Motors and other established carmakers are trying to beat Tesla with dazzling new electric vehicles, but the first real competition from an upstart may come from Lucid Motors, a company run by a former Tesla Model S chief engineer.

Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson follows his former boss Elon Musk’s playbook when it comes to manufacturing, some technology, dealers and service. But it is charting a different path in terms of electric vehicle charging stations, automated driving systems and advertising.

Here’s how Lucid, who announced plans to go public through a SPAC deal last week, compare with Tesla:

Unlike some newer electric car companies, Lucid plans to manufacture all of its vehicles in-house, as Tesla does today.

Rawlinson believes that “vertical integration of manufacturing is the way to go,” he said in an interview. The comments matched comments on a Lucid investor call last week.

“The simple fact is that manufacturing, which ensures the quality of our product is right, is too costly, too critical an activity to entrust to a third party,” he told investors. “We have to determine our own destiny.”

Lucid is building a brand new “greenfield” auto plant in Arizona, costing billions of dollars. When Tesla began its own vehicle assembly business, it took over the NUMMI plant that was once home to General Motors and Toyota Motor in California.

Lucid struck a deal with LG Chem to supply battery cells, the most expensive part of any electric vehicle, for the standard Air batteries. The company said it will announce more suppliers in the future.

Tesla has already signed deals with Panasonic, Samsung, LG and CATL for cell supply for both its battery packs and energy storage products, including the Powerwall.

Lucid has said it plans to produce energy storage products, both home batteries and utility-scale devices. But Lucid will not have the distraction and capital burden of running a solar power company, as Tesla has since acquiring SolarCity in the fall of 2016.

Tesla’s history with battery suppliers could prove to be a benefit to Tesla in the short term.

Through its long-standing partnership with Panasonic, Tesla committed to undisclosed pricing terms and investments from the Japanese battery maker. Together they own and operate a massive battery manufacturing facility outside of Reno, Nevada.

Tesla makes the battery packs for its vehicles on one side of the plant, while Panasonic produces cells for them on the other. However, Tesla told investors in September that it was also starting to manufacture its own cells at a pilot plant in Fremont, California.

Lucid expects to produce more than 500,000 vehicles per year by 2030. Musk, known for setting ambitious plans but missing self-imposed deadlines, has said Tesla is “likely” to produce 20 million electric vehicles a year by 2030.

Last year, Tesla produced 509,737 electric vehicles, with deliveries of less than half a million, even during a global slowdown in car sales caused by the Covid pandemic.

Rawlinson expects the Lucid Air to be the catalyst for a range of future all-electric vehicles, including an SUV that will go into production in early 2023 and more affordable vehicles later.

For starters, Lucid plans to sell a high-end version of its Lucid Air sedan, the Dream Edition, for $ 169,000.

In comparison, Tesla is selling its Model S sedan for $ 79,990 for the base model and $ 139,990 for the most advanced Plaid + version (without adding Tesla’s $ 10,000 premium software upgrade).

Lucid is expected to offer a version of the Air starting at $ 77,400 in 2022, which would compete directly with several Tesla models. Prices do not include federal tax credits up to $ 7,500 available to Lucid customers, but not Tesla buyers.

It’s unclear at this point how low Lucid prices could be after the first two vehicles hit the market.

Rawlinson said the company’s next planned vehicle platform will be the foundation for lower-cost models in the $ 40,000 to $ 45,000 range. But he’s not sure the company will ever offer a car for around $ 25,000, which is what Musk said Tesla plans to do.

“On the longer and fuller timescale, are we actually making a $ 25,000 car, as Tesla plans to do with its Model 2?” Rawlinson said. “My opinion is that as a company we are probably seven or eight years away from something like that. That’s a huge undertaking.”

Rawlinson claims Lucid has the leading battery technology for its vehicles. Its main measure is the efficiency of Lucid’s batteries in miles per kilowatt hour driven.

Lucid says its vehicles can reach more than 4.5 miles per kilowatt hour, while the company says Tesla’s Model S Long Range is greater than 4.

According to Rawlinson, Lucid has no plans to build and operate its own charging network, as Tesla has done with its Superchargers. “Do we want to have the capital burden of a fast-charging network? No, we can go asset light into that. That’s where we can save money,” he said.

Rather than building its own vehicle charging infrastructure, Lucid is partnering with Volkswagen-owned Electrify America, which expects to have 800 charging stations with approximately 3,500 chargers by the end of this year.

Tesla currently operates more than 20,000 Superchargers worldwide, according to its website.

Lucid, like Tesla, says it will offer customers home charging devices.

When it comes to developing self-driving vehicle technology, Elon Musk has called the famous lidar, or light range and detection sensors, ‘a silly message.’ The sensors work using pulsed lasers to create something like a live 3D map of a vehicle’s surroundings that can be read by on-board computer systems.

Many autonomous system engineers believe that lidar is critical to making cars truly driverless. Instead of lidar, Tesla’s driver assistance systems and long-awaited self-driving features rely on a host of other built-in cameras and sensors, including radar. Rawlinson believes that a choice is a mistake.

“Do we think lidar should be part of the (autonomous vehicle) sensor suite? Yes,” Rawlinson said.

Lucid has said the Air sedan, which was delayed from this spring to the second half of this year, will use lidar in its sensor suite for advanced driver assistance systems. The company expects the technology to “set a new benchmark” for the industry.

Tesla is today selling a premium, advanced, automated driving system for its vehicles for $ 10,000, with plans to roll out a subscription option as well. Although it is marketed as “Full Self Driving”, the functions of the system do not allow for a truly driverless, hands-free and unsupervised drive.

Instead, FSD enables features beyond Tesla’s standard Autopilot package. These include smart navigation, automatic lane changing and smart calling. Smart Summon allows a driver to call their car from a parking space using their mobile phone as a remote control.

Tesla vehicles do not have a robust driver tracking system that can detect whether a driver is using their systems responsibly.

Meanwhile, Lucid has pledged to include a driver monitoring system in its vehicles that ensures drivers use their advanced, automated driving systems as prescribed, remain attentive to the road and their surroundings, ready for manual steering at any time.

Tesla has become one of the world’s best-known car brands without the use of traditional advertising. It has instead created hype and attention through rousing events, nontraditional social media engagement, Tesla online forums and owner’s clubs, and almost constant involvement of Elon Musk himself with fans and shareholders. For example, Musk has built about 50 million followers on Twitter.

Lucid, on the other hand, ran a national television campaign for the Air from December 25 to the end of January to raise awareness of the company and the vehicle. Rawlinson said such a campaign wasn’t necessarily part of Lucid’s plans until last year’s coronavirus pandemic forced the company to cancel several events.

“I thought, well, damn, we’ll have to do it because we couldn’t get the message out,” Rawlinson said. “So we took a little foray into that, and I think that’s been pretty positive. So I’m not ruling that out just because Tesla isn’t doing it.”

Lucid is also embracing Tesla’s direct-to-consumer sales and service models rather than selling through traditional franchise dealers.

Lucid has already opened six retail locations in California and Florida. It plans to operate 20 retail locations and service centers in North America by the end of this year, in addition to selling its vehicles online. Tesla has approximately 160 retail locations in the US, according to its website.