News
Lucid CEO and former Model S designer throws shade at Tesla fans, likens group to ‘old petrol fanboys’
When Peter Rawlinson left Tesla in 2012 just before the Model S launched, he probably did not think that his former employer would one day end up becoming the leading force in the electric vehicle industry.
Now the CEO and CTO of Lucid Motors, Rawlinson is gunning for Tesla’s title as the supreme EV maker. He believes the company’s first sedan, called the “Air,” has all the potential to help Lucid overtake Tesla, effectively silencing the “fanboys,” a group of enthusiasts who are widely supportive of the electric car maker and its CEO, Elon Musk.
Peter Rawlinson spent his illustrious automotive sector career at Jaguar and Lotus before joining Tesla in 2008. He left Elon Musk’s Model S engineering team in 2012 and joined Atieva, now Lucid Motors, in 2013 as the Chief Technology Officer. He still holds that title, but another accompanies it as of April 2019: Chief Executive Officer.
In a recent interview with Motortrend, Rawlinson talked about his company’s technology that he believes will pass Tesla, the “fanboys” of Elon Musk’s company, and why the success of the Model S is, at least in part, because of him.
Lucid unveiled the Air in December 2016. Lucid and Rawlinson both claim the vehicle will be capable of 1,000 horsepower and 400 miles of range per charge. While a prototype of the Air managed to prove its range is for real, the horsepower claim is still untested, and Rawlinson knows the doubters still exist. “When I claimed that we would have a 1,000-hp car, or have over 400 miles of EPA five-cycle range, nobody believed it,” he said to MotorTrend’s Kim Reynolds.
His claims do not stop there, however. Rawlinson says the Air will be better than the Model S in every way possible as it equips a power unit capable of more power density than Tesla’s most powerful vehicles. “We’ve got 16.7 kW-per-liter [power density] in our power unit. No one has done that. Tesla hasn’t done that,” he said.
Rawlinson certainly seems like he is motivated by those who speak about Lucid in a bad light, and it is all too familiar for him. “Now I’m having a sense of déjà vu, with history repeating itself,” he says. “Lucid is being put down by Tesla fans. Those old petrol fanboys are the current Tesla fanboys. Very similar rhetoric.”
However, Rawlinson’s rhetoric about his former employer isn’t squeaky clean, either. In 2019, he stated Tesla is not a real luxury brand. “You only have to get inside a Tesla to recognize it’s not really a luxury car. It’s a premium car but not true luxury,” he said.
Perhaps this is why Tesla “fanboys” have been critical of Rawlinson’s new project. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has always said that its competitors are never going to be companies with the same sustainable mission. The companies that are looking to advance petrol-based technology are the real enemy. While there are Tesla fans who are competitive, many are embracing the transition to electrification as a positive thing. Perhaps it is not about the cars at all, but what Rawlinson has said about Tesla in the past.
Additionally, during the interview, Rawlinson says his influence is the reason for the Model S’ success in the electric industry. “Model S was actually styled before I joined Tesla. My task was to retrospectively fit all the bits into it. It was a pretty interesting intellectual puzzle to design a car from the inside out,” he says.
Later in the interview, Rawlinson goes on to say that his thirst for perfection was the reason the Model S became such a successful vehicle. His constant nit-picks and desire to do better drove Tesla’s first sedan to become the pioneer of electric transportation. “But everybody on the Model S team knows I was all over every detail and drove everybody crazy trying to create a car that had to be better and better in every way,” he said.
Rawlinson’s project with Lucid was to be unveiled at the New York International Auto Show last week, but the COVID-19 pandemic effectively shut down all large gatherings. However, the vehicle is scheduled to begin production in late 2020 after its new facility in Casa Grande, Arizona, is complete. Whether the car will live up to its lofty expectations remains to be seen. Still, Rawlinson’s development of the Model S shows he is capable of breaking barriers, and the Air could be the electric industry’s next big thing.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk spotlights the Starlink rescue that got through where no cell tower could
Elon Musk spotlighted how Starlink helped rescuers reach five people stranded in Kazakhstan’s snowy mountains.
Elon Musk put a spotlight on a mountain rescue in eastern Kazakhstan on Sunday, writing “Starlink saves lives” in response to a post describing how SpaceX’s satellite internet helped five stranded people reach emergency crews.
The post from DogeDesigner, which had been viewed more than 500,000 times by Sunday afternoon, said the group’s SUV broke down about 15 kilometers from the village of Kystau Kurchum in an area with no usable mobile network. Starlink carried their call for help and kept them in contact with rescuers, who used the connection to locate them.
The rescue itself took place in October. Local outlet YK.kz reported on October 22 that Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Emergency Situations responded to the breakdown in the Kurchum district of East Kazakhstan region and noted that the group stayed in touch through Starlink. Rescuers covered roughly 100 kilometers in a Trekol, a low pressure tire vehicle built for snow and marshland, then escorted the disabled SUV back to Kystau Kurchum. Nobody needed medical attention.
Starlink saves lives
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 8, 2026
Conditions in the region were rough at the time. Kazakh broadcaster Channel 7 identified the five as hunters caught in a snow trap and said satellite communication allowed rescuers to pinpoint where they were. A spokesperson for the East Kazakhstan emergency department said a storm warning was in effect and urged residents not to leave populated areas unless necessary. The same weather stranded seven utility workers repairing power lines in the nearby Kuygan rural district, according to Tengrinews.
Kazakhstan has been one of Starlink’s more notable markets in Central Asia. Teslarati reported in 2024 that Starlink was serving 1,731 of the country’s 1,879 schools, with the country’s Education Minister saying it had set a new standard for internet service in schools.
Rescue stories like this one have followed Starlink for years, usually in places where ground networks fail or never existed in the first place. Then Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis called Starlink a “game changer” for search and rescue crews during Hurricane Milton, and SpaceX and T-Mobile switched on Starlink Direct to Cell in North Carolina to push emergency alerts to phones after Hurricane Helene.
The next target is dead zones for people who do not carry a dish at all. SpaceX is building out Starlink Mobile and earlier this week selected Qualcomm to supply core infrastructure for a planned terrestrial 5G network in the United States, which it intends to pair with its next generation satellite constellation.
Sunday’s post is at least the third time Musk has written “Starlink saves lives” on X this week, following identical posts on November 5 and November 7.
SpaceX plans to attempt what will be a defining moment in rocket reusability on Starship Flight 15.
As Elon Musk announced in a recent X post, SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy Booster and the Starship upper stage during the upcoming orbital flight. If successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact, a breakthrough Musk has called essential to making life multiplanetary.
SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and Starship on the upcoming flight.
If both are successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact.
This is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2026
Previous flights have demonstrated the tower-catch technique with Super Heavy. SpaceX has successfully caught V1 boosters three times (on Flights 5, 7, and 8), with some even reflown. The Ship upper stage has never been caught.
Returning from orbital velocity after deploying payload makes it a significantly harder challenge due to higher energy, heat loads, and the need for precise belly-flop reentry, a flip maneuver, and a final landing burn to settle between the Mechazilla tower’s chopstick arms.
Flight 15, using Booster 22 and Ship 42 (both Block 3 vehicles), is targeted for no earlier than Friday, November 13, 2026, from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas. The 75-minute window opens at 4:45 p.m. CT, pending regulatory approval. After hot staging and separation, the booster is planned to return for a catch roughly 6 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff.
The Ship will insert into a roughly 275 km orbit, deploy 26 advanced Starlink V3 satellites, complete about 14 orbits over more than 22 hours, and—if systems check out—perform a deorbit burn, reentry, flip, and landing burn for a tower catch at approximately T+22 hours 32 minutes.
SpaceX confirms Starship 15 launch window with massive ambitions
A simulation shown during SpaceX’s October earnings call depicted the Ship descending in a belly-flop attitude, flipping upright with a short engine burn, and being captured by the arms:
From simulation to reality
SpaceX is just ONE WEEK away from attempting its most ambitious Starship catch yet https://t.co/nHrxSX6DSz
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) November 6, 2026
Contingency splashdown zones exist in the Gulf of Mexico (booster) and Pacific (Ship) if a catch is not viable. SpaceX has stressed rigorous health checks before committing the Ship to a return-to-launch-site trajectory.
Musk has described the odds of success on this first dual-catch attempt as “more likely than not,” noting a steady stream of additional flights is already scheduled if needed. Full recovery would enable rapid inspection, refurbishment, and reflight—slashing costs and supporting the high launch cadence required for Starlink expansion, lunar missions, and eventual Mars settlement.
As Musk put it, this is “the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.”
Tesla Cybercab is going to get some pretty substantial updates, including improvements to efficiency and a new color.
CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X on Saturday that Tesla would be working to refine the Cybercab even more, following the announcement during the week that the company would eliminate the Cybertruck lines within Giga Texas for more Cybercab manufacturing capacity.
“There are efficiency improvements coming that will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack,” Musk posted on X. “We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous.”
There are efficiency improvements coming that will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack. We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous.
The biggest thing most people fail to understand is that there are a very limited number of smart, dedicated people! They can only do so many things.
If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can’t use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2026
A new, more efficient model of the Cybercab will be engineered, which will only help Tesla’s profitability and margins, and it also boosts the argument for why the Cybertruck should be discontinued, at least from a business perspective.
The current Cybercab that operates in the Robotaxi platform in Austin, Texas, has a 48 kWh pack, and it sounds like Musk believes Tesla is on its way to introducing a version that has fewer cells but can manage the same workload thanks to engineering efficiencies.
Credit: Tesla
Musk also doubled down on the decision to prioritize Cybercab production over Cybertruck, which is a decision that has been extremely polarizing within the community, and many fans have made it abundantly clear that they are not particularly pleased with the plans.
“If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain, and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can’t use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport,” Musk said.
A good look at Tesla’s new Liquid Silver Cybercab, planned with a 40 kWh battery pack following new improvements
😍 https://t.co/IUYsUcCBMs
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 8, 2026
Cybercab is obviously Tesla’s path forward in an automotive sense. It seems that Tesla is less concerned about catering to the passenger vehicle market and is more prone to focus on transforming passenger transportation in a way that prioritizes autonomy. However, this requires some sacrifice on Tesla’s end, and the Cybertruck is unfortunately a victim of this.
Cybercab holds an extremely crucial part of Tesla’s future. With the company already revolutionizing passenger transportation once, this is the next phase, and Cybercab is the path forward.
Elon Musk spotlights the Starlink rescue that got through where no cell tower could
SpaceX will perform Starship double catch attempt with Flight 15
