I'm also curious what they're going to say at this Cantor conference in advance of the Investor Day... some more bread crumbs to keep people interested?
Here are some of my notes from the conference recording. To preface, both Marc Winterhoff and Taoufiq Boussaid emphasized that they can only talk about so much before the official investor day.
- Q4 production rates mentioned previously are the rates that could be used to take production to 25-27k units per year, but 2025 being the year that it was showed how much of a headache all the challengers were. The vast majority of their production and deliveries are expected to be Gravity, as the sedan market is admittedly shrinking.
- The partnership with Uber is just the start, with expected deployment on both personal-owned vehicles and robotaxi market.
- On midsize:
-> Platform is meant to scale and that they are still confident on <$50k price point. Further details to be discussed on investor day.
-> First 2 variants will mostly have the same parts for economies of scale and for allowing Lucid to do things relatively quickly.
-> Focus has been on cost, efficiency, and simplification.
-> They do see L4 autonomy being deployed to midsize first because it's already prepared for it. Air and Gravity will require more investment to bring to L4, so that's why they'll do L4 on midsize first.
-> Significant part reduction (even compared to Air, Gravity, and other midsize competition) will allow big change for procurement and production.
-> On tech side, they still expect to have lidar, radar, and cameras (Interestingly, no mention of ultrasonic sensors. Have they achieved the level of precision on radar that they can ditch ultrasonic sensors just like what Rivian did?)
-> Nvidia has helped reduce the BOM cost on the compute side.
- On PIF and Saudi Arabia:
-> Saudi Arabia's goal to diversify beyond oil is still in effect.
-> AMP2 is still on track to be ready for SOP for midsize by end-of-year.
-> Amidst current events, so far everything remains the same for them. Lucid does not foresee a lot of impact so they can continue as planned. (I will not dive into this further because I don't want to derail into politics and global events)
-> AMP2 has a planned capacity of 150k. All vehicles with full build-up there will be the three midsize variants. Air and Gravity will continue being assembled via kits.
-> On referencing
Saudi Arabia's deal to purchase 50k vehicles with option of an additional 50k, though the Air and Gravity are part of that delivery, the bulk of the order will be on midsize, and the ramp-up of deliveries for this agreement will be when midsize comes out.
All in all, this makes me more excited for the investor day!
I've previously commented that of the three midsize, variants, I've speculated one variant focused towards on-road driving dynamics, another for "soft" off-roading (like the Volvo EX 60 vs EX 60 Cross Country), and the third for hardcore off-roading (to take on Rivian directly). I think the comment on the first 2 variants having mostly the same parts further fuels this speculation. Only time will tell!
