US electric vehicle (EV) startup Lucid has confirmed it’s planning to develop right-hand drive versions of its Air sedan and recently revealed Gravity SUV.
As reported by Autocar, Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said the company has “got to do right-hand drive, but we need 18 months – at least”. That means the soonest we could see the Lucid locally is mid-2025.
He also said the company is definitely launching in the UK, but “it’s a matter of when”.
“There are two really big markets: Germany and the UK, and they’re massively bigger than any other country – for luxury EVs,” said Mr Rawlinson.
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Air
“We’ve got to do right-hand drive Air. To do that is probably going to take us 18 months, and we are absolutely slammed because I’ve got all my main engineering team doing all the design and development for Gravity, which is winter testing now in Minnesota.
“And then I’ve got my advanced team and the studio working on our mid-sized project, which is our Tesla Model Y/Model 3 competitor vehicle set.”
Lucid’s mid-sized models are expected to be revealed around 2027 and be priced around US$50,000 (~A$77,000).
“We’ve bitten off so much right now. It’s quite a project to make a right-hand drive Air; it would take us at least 18 months to do,” added Mr Rawlinson.
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Gravity
He said the company’s UK planned launch would “totally” include the Gravity SUV as well.
At this stage the US-based EV startup hasn’t disclosed any plans to launch in Australian market.
If Lucid does launch locally it could fill the void of the Tesla Model S and Model X. The two luxury EVs were offered Down Under pre-update, but are no longer available as they aren’t produced in right-hand drive.
As recently reported, Lucid has scaled back its production target for 2023 by almost 40 per cent amid tough competition from rival carmakers.
“We are seeing results from our targeted marketing approach, as the majority of new demand came from customers who had their first contact with Lucid in the quarter,” said Lucid CFO Sherry House.
“We’ve also made progress with the cost control program we implemented in the first half of the year and have identified further opportunities for 2024.
“We ended the third quarter with approximately US$5.45 billion (~A$8.43 billion) in liquidity, which we expect to lead us to our next major milestone, Gravity production, and beyond, into 2025.”
