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Lucid Air takes on NYC in urban testing session with CEO Peter Rawlinson

Credit: Lucid Motors

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Lucid Motors’ introductory all-electric vehicle, the Air, is primed for imminent release that is set to occur later this year. Until then, Lucid is refining the details that set the Air apart from its competitors, and its CEO Peter Rawlinson is also getting his hands dirty. Recently, he took the Air to Manhattan in New York City to test the vehicle’s performance in sleek, slender, and challenging urban settings. One thing is for sure, this luxury sedan from Lucid is set to be a disruptive force in the electric sector as it packs performance with comfortability in all the right ways. Rawlinson was sure to complement his company’s first production EV, but he also was vocal about some minor changes he’d like to see ahead of its initial deliveries.

Rawlinson started his trip through Manhattan on a stroll that took him down the Hudson River to the Financial District. After getting perfect views of One World Trade Center and lower Manhattan, Rawlinson continued his trek through the City that Never Sleeps, highlighting several changes that the Lucid team made to the Air’s design. Everything from pillars that created blind spots to the quality of the instrument panel buttons was broken down by Rawlinson, who has held a high standard for his company’s vehicles ever since they have been introduced prior to their production.

An all-too-common narrative that has been projected among the EV community is that of what company will change the game once again. While Tesla technically introduced the electric vehicle sector to the average car buyer, other companies are coming in to create competition and innovation. Lucid is just one of many, but their approach to the electric car is completely different from its competitors. While many are looking years into the future and how the “big picture” of the automotive industry is inevitably set for a massive change in the coming years, Lucid is focused on the short-term.

Rawlinson’s goal is to begin putting cars on the road as soon as possible, and it begins with ending the narrative that Lucid has accomplished something when it hasn’t yet delivered a car. “We are nothing until we’ve got anything into production,” Rawlinson once said, highlighting his inkling for a vehicle delivery by the end of 2021.

The hands-on approach that Rawlinson has taken is eerily similar to that of his former boss Elon Musk. The two worked together in the early 2010s while the development of the Model S was underway. Small, contested, and stressful car startups are becoming more frequent, and Rawlinson has already done this once before. It takes attention to detail from a crafty automotive veteran to ensure that things go smoothly, and Rawlinson may be the perfect man for the job. While he could be sitting in his ritzy office in California, he is instead taking his company’s first car and navigating it through some of the world’s busiest streets, working on perfecting the Lucid Air months before it begins arriving to customers.

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Lucid’s premier Air Dream Edition will begin deliveries later this year. While the company will build 500 Air Dream Edition variants, it has three other configurations that will be available in the coming months. Ultimately, Lucid’s big plan is relatable to Tesla’s Master Plan: build an expensive luxury vehicle, and use the funds from that to develop new, affordable, all-electric powertrains in the coming years.

Watch Lucid CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson take the Lucid Air through the streets of Manhattan below.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

Elon Musk

Jim Cramer chimes in on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s pay package

“Don’t be small-minded: Tesla is about robots, Full Self-Driving, the future. Give him his package.”

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Credit: The Street

Investor and host of Mad Money on MSNBC , Jim Cramer, has chimed in on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s pay package and whether it should be rewarded to the frontman or not.

Cramer has drawn a lot of attention regarding his sentiments on Tesla, as investors have routinely given him a pretty hard time over what he’s said about the company.

For the past few years, we have covered his comments on Tesla when he has something to say, mostly because his opinion on the stock seems to change pretty frequently; at a minimum, he has something different to say about it every few months.

However, Cramer knows Musk’s value to Tesla, and said on Thursday that he believes the CEO deserves his pay package:

“Don’t be small-minded: Tesla is about robots, Full Self-Driving, the future. Give him his package.”

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Cramer’s comments come just one day after Tesla’s Q3 2025 Earnings Call, where Musk took several opportunities to call out the importance of the pay package and how it could impact the company’s future — with or without him.

Musk said at one point that he would not feel comfortable continuing to develop the company’s massive fleet of Optimus bots without having appropriate control of the company from a voting perspective.

He said he does not want so much power that if he “were to lose his mind,” he could not be removed. However, he does feel he needs to be protected from “activist shareholders,” or “corporate terrorists” like proxy groups Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis:

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“My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future? …It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army, not current control, but a strong influence? That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”

At the end of the call, Musk said:

“Like I said, I just don’t feel comfortable building a robot army here and then being ousted because of some asinine recommendations from ISS and Glass Lewis, who have no freaking clue. I mean, those guys are corporate terrorists.”

Cramer is one of many who realize Musk’s importance to Tesla, and how the company would likely lack the guidance and prowess it does without his planning and drive. However, Tesla shareholders will have the ultimate say on November 6 when they vote on Musk’s compensation plan.

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Tesla is stumped on how to engineer this Optimus part, but they’re close

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has been stumped on how to engineer one crucial part of the Optimus bot, but CEO Elon Musk says the company is “on the cusp” of achieving something great with the project.

During the Q3 2025 Earnings Call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the company is moving closer to a major breakthrough with the Optimus project, and said they are “on the cusp of something really tremendous.”

However, it seems there is one specific portion of the robot that has truly stumped engineers at the company: the hand, fingers, and forearm.

Musk went into great detail about how incredibly complex and amazing the human hand is, highlighting its dexterity and capability, as its ability to perform a wide variety of tasks is especially impressive:

“I don’t want to downplay the difficulty, but it’s an incredibly difficult thing, especially to create a hand that is as dexterous and capable as the human hand, which is incredible. The human hand is an incredible thing. The more you study the human hand, the more incredible you realize it is, and why you need four fingers and a thumb, why the fingers have certain degrees of freedom, why the various muscles are of different strengths, and fingers are of different lengths. It turns out that those are all there for a reason.”

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It’s been pretty apparent that Tesla has made massive strides in the Optimus project, especially considering it has been able to walk down hills, learn things like Kung Fu, and even perform service tasks like serving food and drinks.

However, a recent look at a Gen 2.5 version of Optimus posted by Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, showed that Tesla was likely using mannequin hands until it developed something that was both useful and aesthetically pleasing:

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Musk continued on the call last night that the Tesla team was confronted with an “incredibly difficult” challenge from an engineering perspective, and the hands and actuators for that specific part were tough to figure out:

“Making the hand and forearm, because most of the actuators, just like the human hand, the muscles that control your hand are actually primarily in your forearm. The Optimus hand and forearm is an incredibly difficult engineering challenge. I’d say it’s more difficult than the rest of the robot from an electromechanical standpoint. The forearm and hand are more difficult than the entire rest of the robot. But really, in order to have a useful generalized robot, you do need an incredible hand.”

The CEO continued that developing a useful and effective robot was “crucial to the future of the company,” and that he works with Optimus’s design team each Friday night.

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Elon Musk sets definitive Tesla Cybercab production date and puts a rumor to rest

“The single biggest expansion in production will be the Cybercab, which starts production in Q2 next year.” -Elon Musk

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Credit: Teslarati

Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally set a definitive date for Tesla Cybercab production and, at the same time, put a substantial rumor regarding the vehicle that has been circulating within the community to rest.

Tesla’s Cybercab was unveiled last October as the company’s two-seater, affordable option that would ultimately be the car used for autonomous travel. It was initially slated for production in late 2025 or early 2026.

Tesla is ramping up its hiring for the Cybercab production team

However, Tesla has finally said it will start production of the Cybercab in Q2 2026, a more concrete date for the company, as it has moved the entire project forward in recent weeks by testing it at the Fremont Test Track and conducting crash safety assessments.

Musk said on the Q3 2025 Earnings Call:

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“The single biggest expansion in production will be the Cybercab, which starts production in Q2 next year. That’s really a vehicle that’s optimized for full autonomy. It, in fact, does not have a steering wheel or pedals and is really an enduring optimization on minimizing cost per mile for fully considered cost per mile of operation.”

In that quote, Musk also put a rumor that has been circulating within the community to rest. Some started to speculate whether Cybercab would be sold with a steering wheel and pedals, as many of the elements of the car seemed to hint toward not being exclusively autonomous, including side mirrors being equipped, among other things.

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It has been interesting to see some consider whether Tesla would sell the vehicle with the elements that would enable human control, especially as there have been a handful of images of the vehicle on company property with a steering wheel spotted.

However, Musk doubled down on the autonomous nature of the Cybercab with this confirmation during the earnings call, something that many investors likely wanted to hear because it was, in a way, a vote of confidence for the company’s path to autonomy.

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