Elon Musk's Ex-Chief Engineer Creates A New Car--And Says It Beats Tesla

[Zorro]

The $169,000 Lucid Air is coming this spring, and Peter Rawlinson claims it’ll be the fastest, longest-range electric vehicle on the planet. He should know. A decade ago, he engineered Tesla’s Model S.

Peter Rawlinson has many goals for the Lucid Air. One is that it be hailed as the world’s best electric car. “Nobody believes me, but we’re about to take it to another level,” he says in a pre-Christmas Zoom chat from the 300-year-old Warwickshire, England, farmhouse he calls home when not at Lucid Motors’ Silicon Valley headquarters.

It’s the same feeling he had a decade ago as chief engineer for Tesla’s Model S, the breakthrough all-electric car that took the auto world by storm in 2012. “No one believed me with Model S . . . the hostility to it was shocking. I’ve found the same with (Air). No one believes it.”

The “Dream” edition of the Air certainly seems set to wow. It tops the S with an industry-leading 517 miles per charge, faster recharging and the ability to go from 0 mph to 60 mph in just over 2 seconds. (Tesla is responding late this year with a “Plaid+” Model S that accelerates in just under 2 seconds and can go 520 miles per charge, Elon Musk said in January.) The first Air customers will take delivery this spring.

But Rawlinson’s ambitions go far beyond delighting wealthy drivers with a $169,000 luxury car.

His bigger goal is leveraging the Air’s 1,080-horsepower propulsion technology—which he claims is the world’s most efficient—to power cheaper electric vehicles. Within five years, Rawlinson wants to be selling hundreds of thousands of mid-$40,000 electric cars and helping big automakers sell $25,000 mass-market EVs–the very same objective that his old boss, Elon Musk, is chasing. If that weren’t enough, Rawlinson wants to build his cars at the first auto plant in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund owns two thirds of his company.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2021/02/04/elon-musks-ex-chief-engineer-creates-a-new-car-and-says-it-beats-tesla/

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1. Gas powered cars are fast becoming obsolete. It's a good thing.

Remember how air quality improved dramatically during the shutdown in the early months of the pandemic, when hardly anyone was driving and contributing emissions to the atmosphere?

[frazzled]

3. Not so fast at $169,000

Sure, he wants to have a $40,000 version in 5 years. That’s still beyond the means of the average person.

We drove our last Prius for 14 years, and hope to keep our new Prius for another 14. That will put us into 2034, when I think I’ll be too old to even drive much (I don’t even drive much now; we live in a city with buses and trains, when that’s possible to do again, and many walkable groceries and stores). All in all, I think we’ll be helping the air quality as much as getting an electric car in five years. Remember, manufacturing itself has a large carbon footprint.

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4. Ya gotta face it. Gas powered cars are on the way out. Ford just announced....

they're following GM in shifting to more emphasis on electric cars. And as far as 40k for a car now. That's not that unreasonable as most cars you see driving around right now are not paid for in cash. Most people aren't coughing up cash money to get a car. They're paying month by month and the average price for new cars is 38k, not far from 40k. And in five years it'll probably be about 40k.

Nothing stays the same forever. EVs are good for the planet.

[jb5150]

2. I'm a bit skeptical of the claims of any engineer who worked for Elon Musk ...

........ but who knows.

[Nitram]

5. I'm not sure why you would be skeptical of an engineer who helped develop the first practical

electric cars. A friend of mine has a Tesla and it is quite amazing. So few moving parts that it requires very little maintenance. The acceleration is phenomenal. The dashboard control panel is like an iPad. Fantastic GPS navigation, automatic compensation for movement of the car in front and great display of vehicles behind and passing. Detects road markings and the terrain on the edge of the road. Good mileage. My next (and last) car will be a Tesla.

[Initech]

6. $169K? That's 5.5 times the amount of money I paid for my car.

I would love to have a fully electric car but that's a bit too rich for my blood.

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7. He's shooting for a 40k model in five years. I can wait that long.

[babylonsister]

8. That's still too rich for my blood.

[dhill926]

9. mid $20,000 would be nice....

[mitch96]

10. Fast charge, long range and you have my attention. I believe nothing is gonna change

until we have something close to the convenience of a gasoline powered car. People are use to 300-350 mile range from fill up. And the recharge thing.. How long does it take to fill a normal car with gas? Just a few minutes. In this instant gratification world we live in the fill time and range time have to come down. .Then again that's my theory...
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