I couldn't get through much more than the first few minutes of the Lucid unveil. All this smooth blather. Perhaps people who like that sort of thing are their audience?
Let's start with the claim that they chose to "think completely different". Note they didn't say "think different" because that would be thinking the same as Apple, but they retained the recognizable grammatical anomaly so as to claim kinship with Apple's legendary design prowess. Only not.
And then they went through a bunch of things that somehow thinking completely different led them to, and amazingly they were almost exactly what Tesla did with the Model S, mostly back in 2012. Uncanny! They could have shortened their presentation significantly by just saying "Tesla got it all right, so we copied them. Only completely different, if you know what we mean."
And in market-speak that defied physics they decided to make "something that just flowed through the air without being overly aggressive, and through that vision we came up with this idea of a jet..." Umm... hard to get more aggressive than a jet. Maybe they meant a glider? I sure don't think they are using a propulsion system that flings mass out the back end.
And they were inspired to "simplify the vehicle down to its very core essence. The car really has just one line that goes all the way round, and that became this key defining feature and all of the other details flay [play?] off of that one line..." Maybe I just don't have enough patience with design-speak, but that struck me as seriously heavy on the bullshit.
And it all culminated in "the largest taillight ever". I had to stop at that point.
LOL, I agree. I didn't watch the show, just read the Teslarati article, which sounds like it came from Lucid PR:
The design also is drastically different from any other car on the road. While the differences are subtle, the modern proportions for the Air deliver a one-of-a-kind look that gives drivers a unique design.
Lucid Air unveiling: four variants,
Excuse me. Leaving aside the question of how a design can be "drastically different... while the differences are subtle," that car exterior looks like Model S with a chrome mustache. The interior has a floating instrument screen like Model 3/Y, except stretched and curved, and a second touchscreen below the center dashboard like Porsche Taycan. Which part is "one-of-a-kind" again?
This triggers several thoughts:
1) Even if Plaid fails to beat the Air's "unheard-of" specs, which I doubt... why would someone buy an obvious imitator of Model S when they can get the real thing? The only reason I can think of is to stand out from the crowd of Teslas already on the road.
2) If you are targeting buyers who want to stand out, why not
really stand out with a truly distinctive design... like an electric Lamborghini or Faraday's bat-mobile?
3) The world is changing fast. Young people seem increasing tolerant of and appreciative of real innovation. The most innovative design in history for a production auto is Tesla's Cybertruck, which split observers into two polarized camps of "Hideous!" and "Awesome!"
4) I predict that buyers who wanna stand out or who appreciate real innovation will make Cybertruck a phenomenal seller. And when Tesla releases a low-cost, high-performance, folded-steel Cybercar (like the fan concept below but better)... holy tsunami, Batman.
