Update: Paragraph 2 removed “dispelled”; Paragraph 3 update to support Rawlinson’s past capacity at Tesla.
Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson’s whole shtick of undermining Tesla and claiming his company is ahead is continuing.
Rawlinson and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have a long-standing rivalry that dates back to the days when Rawlinson was an Engineer during the development of the Model S. He claims he was “Chief Engineer” and said he designed the vehicle, while Musk has challenged this, even to me directly.
Rawlinson didn’t design Model S. Prototype was done before he joined & he left us in the lurch just as things got tough, which was not cool. He did make some contributions to body/chassis engineering, but not to powertrain, battery, electronics or software.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2020
However, Tesla has said in promotional videos for Model S and SEC filings that Rawlinson was Chief Engineer, which contradicts what Musk claims:
Tesla Vehicle Engineering – Part 2 from Tesla on Vimeo.
It is no secret that Rawlinson and Musk truly have some sort of weird tension. However, Rawlinson continues to cast stones at Tesla as a whole, and takes nearly every opportunity to claim that Lucid has surpassed the unequivocal leader in the U.S. EV market.
Yahoo Finance’s Pras Subramanian talked to the CEO, and Rawlinson said Tesla seems “distracted” and claims Lucid has “taken the mantle” from them as the leader in EVs:
“Clearly, we have the best technology in the world. We’ve now taken the mantle from Tesla. We have the best tech, and that has been widely recognized…We’ve taken the mantle without a doubt. I mean, everyone is striving for “how far can you go with how little battery space?” We are considerably ahead of where Tesla is. We’ve taken that mantle. When I was at Tesla, Tesla was the tech leader. They’ve become distracted, and we have taken that place.”
There is no doubt Lucid has been able to offer more range than Tesla, especially as the Air sedan has accomplished the feat of being the first EV to be EPA-rated at over 500 miles on a charge.
Lucid CEO expects Tesla to match Lucid Air’s present efficiency in 2032
However, driving distance is not what sells EVs. If it were, Lucid would be out in front, but it is not. It’s about quality, price, affordability, software, and infrastructure. Tesla can offer EVs at much lower prices than Lucid currently can, and it also has the largest buildout of chargers of any company in the world.
Additionally, in software, Tesla has been able to establish dominance over a variety of competitors.
Lucid makes a great-looking vehicle with a lot of range and great performance specs, but as a company, it is still working through the early growing pains of EV production.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
