Blog Lucid Will Delay Electric Luxury Sedan

The Lucid Air, an all-electric sedan to challenge Tesla, will not hit its expected delivery date. Originally expected to hit the roads in spring, the vehicle is now slated for delivery in the second half of the year. 

Production will occur at a plant in Casa Grande, Arizona. Lucid Chief Executive Peter Rawlinson said in a letter on Friday that COVID-19-related issues caused the delay.

“Despite the excellent progress made in all areas, we now know that we won’t be able to start delivering Lucid Air this spring at the level of quality we insist on providing,” Rawlinson said. “I am wholly committed to delivering a breathtaking electric car. If this means it will take a bit more time, the this is what we must do.”

The entry-level Air sedan is priced at $69,900, while a limited edition Air Dream Edition will cost $161,500. The high-end Air will come with more than 1,000 horsepower and more than 500 miles of range.

 

[HVM]

Who would ever guess that? Good thing that production hell is only Tesla's problem, at least Rawlinson said that last time, we need to ask that again in the fall.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

Musk is the cause of his own hell due to his incredibly poor management skills. If there is a production hell it's because the CEO did not do his job both in terms of competent staffing, supply chain management, and operations. Lucid is Tesla without the crazy, incompetent CEO and I expect their early years to be much smoother than Tesla's.

 

[dauger]

This delay again proves how hard it is to actually start a new BEV company and how lucky we are to have Tesla be as successful as it is.

 

[No2DinosaurFuel]

Musk is the cause of his own hell due to his incredibly poor management skills. If there is a production hell it's because the CEO did not do his job both in terms of competent staffing, supply chain management, and operations. Lucid is Tesla without the crazy, incompetent CEO and I expect their early years to be much smoother than Tesla's.

I think his ego is the cause most of his incompetence. But some of it is warranted because he needed to keep the company alive.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

I think his ego is the cause most of his incompetence. But some of it is warranted because he needed to keep the company alive.

If Musk sidestepped his ego and went with tried and true manufacturing methods 10 years ago, Tesla would not have suffered many of its setbacks over the years, would not have been production constrained, and would be in a far different place today. They would have shipped far more cars with far fewer defects. We would have greater EV adoption by now. Tesla would have had much lower service costs. But no. Musk had to reinvent the wheel in Fremont in every possible way. With Model 3 Musk flushed over $200M down the toilet (google it for those here who don't know) on a failed "dreadnought" assembly line from his imagination. When reality set in, Musk had to build them in a tent in the parking lot. The resulting waste of money and ridiculous initial quality problems with Model 3 would have seen most CEOs fired and banished forever into the Fire Swamp.

When I bought my Model S in 2013, Tesla was a different company and Musk was much more humble. He and I exchanged a few emails, actually, as I was trying to decide on which flavor of Model S to buy. I foolishly believed he was highly competent like Steve Jobs, but I realized in the last 5 years that he is a very flawed human being protected and supported by those around him. Tesla is a success despite Elon Musk, not because of him. That concept is going to be very difficult for some of the highly evolved minds around here to grasp.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

If Musk sidestepped his ego and went with tried and true manufacturing methods 10 years ago, Tesla would not have suffered many of its setbacks over the years, would not have been production constrained, and would be in a far different place today. They would have shipped far more cars with far fewer defects. We would have greater EV adoption by now. Tesla would have had much lower service costs. But no. Musk had to reinvent the wheel in Fremont in every possible way. With Model 3 Musk flushed over $200M down the toilet (google it for those here who don't know) on a failed "dreadnought" assembly line from his imagination. When reality set in, Musk had to build them in a tent in the parking lot. The resulting waste of money and ridiculous initial quality problems with Model 3 would have seen most CEOs fired and banished forever into the Fire Swamp.

When I bought my Model S in 2013, Tesla was a different company and Musk was much more humble. He and I exchanged a few emails, actually, as I was trying to decide on which flavor of Model S to buy. I foolishly believed he was highly competent like Steve Jobs, but I realized in the last 5 years that he is a very flawed human being protected and supported by those around him. Tesla is a success despite Elon Musk, not because of him. That concept is going to be very difficult for some of the highly evolved minds around here to grasp.

You get a disagree for being disagreeable.

Musk also screwed up and cost Tesla a lot of money with the Model X development, when it was essentially redesigned and delayed for 2 years, during which time Musk bullshitted on progress during every quarterly call. (I'll give him credit that he's not picking other bullshitters, as the others on calls don't make his outlandish statements.)

He's taken 2 large risks that cost the company a lot of money. When he's eventually booted out, at least they'd have Jerome Guillen to take over.

However, i think that without Elon Musk, Tesla wouldn't exist at all. They'd have collapsed when the Roadster development failed.

 

[mark95476]

Yup. The media and other talking heads tells us that "production hell" is unique to Tesla and never happens at any other OEM. Scaling from proto to full production is easy and has been solved decades ago. Kinda funny how reality always seems to get in the way and punctures this meme.

I wonder how many vehicles Lucid will actually produce and sell compared their forecasts.

Who would ever guess that? Good thing that production hell is only Tesla's problem, at least Rawlinson said that last time, we need to ask that again in the fall.

 

[Sukhshanti]

Musk is the cause of his own hell due to his incredibly poor management skills. If there is a production hell it's because the CEO did not do his job both in terms of competent staffing, supply chain management, and operations. Lucid is Tesla without the crazy, incompetent CEO and I expect their early years to be much smoother than Tesla's.

Lucid hasn't even sold a car yet, you just sound like someone who got burnt on the Lucid/CCIV merger.

 

[ICUDoc]

Tesla would not have suffered many of its setbacks over the years, would not have been production constrained, and would be in a far different place today. They would have shipped far more cars with far fewer defects. We would have greater EV adoption by now. Tesla would have had much lower service costs.

You think this is true.
You (presumably) have some supportive data.
But, in fact, these comments are utterly unsupportable, because no-one can magically know what "would " have happened in a system as complex as a new EV startup in the context of the world economy / business / consumer community.
So perhaps you should consider inserting the odd "may" or "because of x, probably y" into your diatribe, lest you become guilty of flaws or a lack of humility yourself, AmpedRealtor.

 

[JamesBrown]

Musk is the cause of his own hell due to his incredibly poor management skills. If there is a production hell it's because the CEO did not do his job both in terms of competent staffing, supply chain management, and operations. Lucid is Tesla without the crazy, incompetent CEO and I expect their early years to be much smoother than Tesla's.

You realize that VW had huge production issues and delays on the iD.3 right? VW missed their initial delivery goal by nearly a year. In the initial production run, VW the world largest manufacture, was only able to produce 30 a day.

Ford also missed its delivery dates by more than a month and no where near production estimates on the Mach-E due to quality issues. Ford was only able to deliver 238 units in January, when they projected 4,200.

The Mercedes EQC was suppose to be released in US in early 2020, but barely launched in Europe last month and 2 weeks ago they announced Mercedes halted plans of coming to US due to production issues.

You are claiming that every single major auto manufacturing company has incompetent CEOs and operations staff? I bet you think you could do better than every single billion dollar auto manufacturing company.

 

[uujjj2]

Elon Musk admits he does make mistakes. Elon's business philosophy is that it's better to make decisions quickly, and if the decisions turn out wrong, correct them quickly, than to waste a lot of time making decisions. Elon's philosophy means Tesla will make plenty of mistakes, but also that it'll learn faster. Avoiding mistakes through extreme caution is not the Elon Musk way.

 

[alloverx]

Elon might admit mistakes but not sure he tolerates them.

I want Lucid to keep pushing Tesla (& others) to lift their game. Cant wait for a range test between Lucid & Model-S

 

[mark95476]

Lucid released an ad on YouTube and I took a snapshot. Drivers, motorcyclist especially, in the Bay Area will recognize this landmark.