Yet for now, investors seem to be betting that start-ups can innovate more easily than incumbents can change. "Not to mention they have major brand recognition and enviable ad budgets," she added. "Although the Detroit automakers have often been portrayed as dinosaurs by the Silicon Valley crowd, the reality is that they have decades more experience in truck development than their startup competitors and are resourced to produce high volumes at lower cost," Jessica Caldwell, with Edmunds, wrote after Rivian went public. you're unencumbered by these challenges and you can build an company from the ground up." "The fact that you're making millions of vehicles right now comes at a cost, and it's the cost of having invested so much in internal combustion," argues Asad Hussain, mobility analyst at PitchBook. Some investors think the auto giants can't move as nimbly as the disruptive new startups because they are still so heavily committed to producing gas-powered cars. Rivian and Lucid need to scale up from making a few hundred vehicles to making tens or hundreds of thousands.Īnd they face mounting competition from the big automakers, who are also racing to catch up with Tesla - and who are planning mass production vehicles much cheaper than the luxury cars Rivian and Lucid are starting out with.
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They may be attracting a lot of buzz, but the two models still face enormous challenges.
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The company is looking to compete with the luxurious Mercedes-S class.īut major challenges remain for both Rivian and Lucid
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Less expensive models, which have not started deliveries yet, will begin at $77,000.Ī Lucid Air Grand Touring electric luxury car is displayed at Lucid Motors' studio and service center on Feb. The Lucid Air just won Motortrend's Car of the Year award, and the Dream Edition is sold out. According to Lucid, with the right charger, the vehicle can add nearly 300 miles of range in 20 minutes. The vehicle also boasts some record-setting specs for an electric vehicle: more than 500 miles of range, and claims of unprecedentedly fast charging speeds. The first edition of the Lucid Air has an uninterrupted glass roof stretching over the driver's head, and the cabin is made of materials such as "silvered eucalyptus" wood, Napa full-grain leather and "naturally colored alpaca wool." Lucid says it's trying to compete with the Mercedes S-class, the famously luxurious sedan, rather than any electric vehicle that's on the market today. The Lucid Air Dream Edition is a cool $169,000. "Unashamedly, this is a high-end product," CEO Peter Rawlinson said in an interview with NPR earlier this year, as he drove around the streets of D.C. The luxury electric sedan won the 2022 Motortrend Car of the Year award this month. The Lucid Air takes the stage at the 2021 LA Autoshow on November 17, 2021. Lucid is led by Peter Rawlinson, who has had a long career in the automotive industry, including a key role at Tesla helping engineer the Model S. Lucid is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia's wealth fund, while Rivian got investments from Amazon (which is also buying 100,000 of its delivery trucks) as well as Ford.īoth have executive teams that investors and analysts praise for focusing on the fundamentals, in a field often seen as being more about hype than substance. But they have big ambitions to scale up in the coming years.Īnd a lot of smart investors are banking big money that they will be able to pull it off. The production volumes are still small - just a few hundred vehicles each so far. That has left them at the front of an epic race to recreate Tesla's astonishing success story, as the auto industry speeds toward a transition to electric vehicles. But, somehow, these two electric startups are each worth more than Ford.īoth companies are flush with cash, and they've reached a major milestone: They are actually producing and delivering vehicles to customers They're both produced by new electric start-ups that have attracted a lot of investments.Įlliot Ross/Courtesy of Rivian/Courtesy of Lucid Motors
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The Lucid Air (right) is a luxury sedan aiming to seduce buyers away from the Mercedes S-Class. The Rivian R1T (left) is a sporty pickup truck designed for off-road adventures.