Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
As it prepares to start mass producing its second model later this year, the electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors has just opened a new engineering and research center in Southfield, Michigan.
Lucid will begin production of its second model, a three-row sports utility vehicle named Gravity, ‘later this year,’ and is planning a mid-size SUV for 2026.
Currently, 70 workers are based at the new $10 million hub with Lucid aiming to grow the team to 250 employees over the next three years. The EV maker has received a $6 million state grant to help establish it.
After securing a licensing deal with Aston Martin — which was recently affected by a delay from the luxury carmaker — Lucid’s senior vice president of product and chief engineer Eric Bach teased that new deals might come in the future.
Recent reports from local media outlet Sisa Journal claim that Hyundai Motor CEO Jang Jae-hoon visited Lucid‘s headquarters in California earlier this year to explore potential cooperation between the two automakers.
The executive reiterated that the company is open to licensing its technology to other manufacturers, stating that it is in discussions with “many” of them.
“We are open for business. We want that scale. We embrace our competition, and we want to be a partner to them,” Bach stated before noting how easy would be to use Lucid’s powertrain in models from other manufacturers.
“We can see that in the benchmarking portals. You pull up the scans of the competitive drive units, and ours always fits inside. That means everybody can just plug and play technically,” the executive added.
Lucid Motors has also recently hired former Apple Inc. veteran Robert Windel to join its in-car audio tuning team, bringing in an expert who helped the tech giant fine-tune the audio for all its products, including iPhones, AirPods, and Macs.
Lucid has recently reaffirmed the annual production guidance of 9,000 vehicles. If it reaches its annual production target, the company’s annual production figures will increase by about 6.79 per cent from 2023.
With 1,728 vehicles produced in the first quarter and 2,110 vehicles in the second quarter, the California-based EV maker expects to produce 5,162 vehicles between July and December of 2024.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
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