"Tesla's Killer" Asked Not To Call Him "Tesla's Killer"

2023 Author: Natalie MacDonald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 02:36

In an interview with Ars Technic, the head of the Lucid Motors startup, Peter Rawlinson, said he was not going to go to war with competitors. “Please don't call us Tesla killers,” he said. "The world is big enough for both of our companies to develop and prosper." In addition, Rawlinson shared the news about preparations for series production of the first Lucid model, the Air sedan.

Lucid Air was originally slated to launch in 2019, but the timing had to be revised due to funding delays. However, investors from Saudi Arabia ended up investing $ 1 billion in the project: enough to develop a model and build a plant in Casa Grande, Arizona.

According to Rawlinson, the timing of the commissioning of the factory is matched to the completion of fine-tuning work on the electric car - both events should coincide at the end of this year or early 2021. In addition, the Lucid Air has gone through many changes from the prototype shown in 2016.

• At first glance, the design is almost the same, but the final version does not have a single common body panel with the source. Everything was done primarily for the sake of optimizing aerodynamics and increasing the range.
• The technical stuffing has been seriously changed. It now uses a 900-volt electrical architecture, a record for the industry: for example, the Porsche Taycan uses an 800-volt grid.
• The Lucid Air is powered by direct current rather than AC electric motors. The new inverter is based on silicon carbide semiconductors, the planetary transmission and differential are redesigned. All of this is developed in-house by Lucid Motors and is characterized by unsurpassed efficiency, Rawlinson said. For example, the total weight of the inverter, motor, transmission and differential is only 73 kilograms.

• The batteries for the new electric sedan will be supplied by LG Chem, but the architecture and layout of the battery clusters have also been developed by Lucid Motors, using lessons learned from Formula E. Since 2019, the batteries for this racing series have been supplied by Atieva, the technology division of Lucid.
• The final specifications of Lucid Air have not yet been made public, but preliminary ones look like this: total power over a thousand horsepower, acceleration to hundreds in less than 2.5 seconds, top speed over 320 km / h. And all this with a range of more than 650 kilometers on a single charge.