The Press Embargo Has Been Lifted

boydracing said:

To-mae-toe - ta-mae-ta. Technology is just technology that evolves or 'makes' things work.

Technology - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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100%. Then every company "that evolves or 'makes' things work" is a technology company.

kopik said:

An excellent and a very informative diagram. I would argue that the hidden part of the iceberg is present in any modern car (except for battery management/charging on ICE cars ofc). And the above water part of the iceberg is behind in Lucid. That's exactly what I meant.

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Given the choice any automotive company will position themselves as a “technology company”; the valuation multiples are far superior. It’s no accident that Tesla has been pushing the “tech company” narrative hard for the last decade, from full self driving to autonomous taxis to the “Optimus” robot and AI. But realize that’s somewhat aspirational: At this point Tesla’s dead in a heartbeat if they’re not also competitive as a traditional auto company, as cars currently pay the bills.
P
So my take is that “car company” <> “tech company” is a continuum. Lucid’s still focusing mainly on the “car” end of that continuum, which unfortunately is also the lower valuation end. I’m not sure to what extent Lucid will follow |Tesla’s lead and almost expand beyond cars. In my mind that’s when the real “tech company” comparisons kick in, because before then the ztech is really just selling cars, which means I’d vale then as a “better” car company- still not worth much.

PetevB said:

Given the choice any automotive company will position themselves as a “technology company”; the valuation multiples are far superior. It’s no accident that Tesla has been pushing the “tech company” narrative hard for the last decade, from full self driving to autonomous taxis to the “Optimus” robot and AI. But realize that’s somewhat aspirational: At this point Tesla’s dead in a heartbeat if they’re not also competitive as a traditional auto company, as cars currently pay the bills.
P
So my take is that “car company” <> “tech company” is a continuum. Lucid’s still focusing mainly on the “car” end of that continuum, which unfortunately is also the lower valuation end. I’m not sure to what extent Lucid will follow |Tesla’s lead and almost expand beyond cars. In my mind that’s when the real “tech company” comparisons kick in, because before then the ztech is really just selling cars, which means I’d vale then as a “better” car company- still not worth much.

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I agree with you. I think Tesla made the car around software, making it a kind of appliance or a "fast iPad" if you will. Lucid is making it's cars for driving and they are pretty good about it. I hope their software part will catch up soon...

hmp10 said:

Can someone please tell me what the purpose of this feature is . . . unless you're wanting to run the body up over something without hitting the wheels?

Oh, wait. I just thought of something: when trying to plant the front left wheel between the rails of the track at the automatic carwash. But I wonder if it's really accurate enough for that? By then the attendant has usually already sprayed the car and cameras (and windshield) with foam, leaving me to depend on the attendant's hand signals.

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Driving onto the tracks at Jiffy Lube for super easy oil changes

Found this on the media site.

The 21" wheels list different tire sizes in that spec doc. They should be the same sizes as the other wheel combos according to the info in the configurator.

HC_79 said:

Lucid’s cars are very software driven. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Lucid is a technology company, what automaker with decades of engineering has been able to achieve what Lucid has in a short span of time? None of them!

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This is a great picture! Bravo!! But can someone please add the keyfob to it in an appropriate way.

I think it will be a obvious Tech AI company once they get their Earth to the market and start collecting driving data from millions of vehicles for selfdriving. or they could go an alternative road like Faraday Future and focus on On-Vehicle AI by predicating what the user wants and needs, build more robust AI assistant ,because we never say no to robustness , Ai Apps, AI Services, ordering my ice latte while driving and all that.

if I were Lucid , I would just partner with Waymo and call it a day. Lucid will have FSD from day one with the best player, Waymo is way ahead of Tesla.

I should charge now Lucid for market consultancy services

Don’t know about others it I definitely “see” my ADAS.

And ABS… and Traction Control…

kopik said:

Agreed. But that all comes under "automotive" or "EV-making" umbrellas. Making airplanes involves a lot of technology as well, but nobody calls Boeing a tech company... When talking about technology people mostly mean communications, IT etc, where Lucid is lagging behind (hope not for long).

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I know computer and software types like to think theirs is the only technology that matters these days, but they've yet to figure out how to make a vehicle move without a motor or an air conditioner to cool without a compressor or an airplane take to the skies without an engine.

Here is what the Oxford dictionary says technology is:

- the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry
- machinery and equipment developed from the application of scientific knowledge
- the branch of knowledge dealing with engineering or applied sciences.

It is arrogant and insulting to Lucid's engineers to make fun of a reviewer for saying Lucid is a technology company. Lucid's engineers are in the top tier of the complex automotive technologies in which they work, and they have attained results in areas such as efficiency, power density, and charging speeds beyond most of the competition from more established companies.

You guys are all wrong; LCID is a obviously a marketing company.

WeighingGravity said:

You guys are all wrong; LCID is a obviously a marketing company.

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hhhh I can see their Ads everywhere
Coca-Cola is even taking a page from Lucid marketing book

flarbear said:

The 21" wheels list different tire sizes in that spec doc. They should be the same sizes as the other wheel combos according to the info in the configurator.

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Yeah, the tire data on that spec sheet is a bit of a mess.



It's interesting that the Hankook and the Michelin LM1's still have the XL load rating but that the Pirelli LM1 has the newer, higher HL load rating (and this is not an error on the spec sheet) which was first introduced by several tire makers around the time the Air launched.

hmp10 said:

Can someone please tell me what the purpose of this feature is . . . unless you're wanting to run the body up over something without hitting the wheels?

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It'll be very useful in parking lots to know where that front bumper curb is in relation to your front wheels, and those little air dams that some people keep breaking off.

DeaneG said:

It'll be very useful in parking lots to know where that front bumper curb is in relation to your front wheels, and those little air dams that some people keep breaking off.

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Of course, those air dams sit ahead of the front wheels. In the Air, once the front edge of the bumper reaches a curb or parking chock, you're already courting trouble. There's a narrow grayed out band at the front of the car on the birds-eye-view display, probably from where the absence of a camera image keeps the software from simulating an overhead view. I've found that it you stop at the leading edge of that area, you'll always avoid trouble.

Although the Gravity seems to have the air dams, too, at least the height adjustment is available to help.

hmp10 said:

Can someone please tell me what the purpose of this feature is . . . unless you're wanting to run the body up over something without hitting the wheels?

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Judging from Lucid's illustration, the artist couldn't think of a use case either.
I'll be very glad to have it for my typical parking situations.

The iceberg slide is accurate, although it would be a lot more informative if it highlighted which portions were designed in-house.

I was part of the team that launched a new division where I work specifically to develop next-generation automotive software. (I'm not directly involved today because of my job function.) The E/E supply chain looks a lot like the mechanical supply chain -- a modern car can have 100 or more microcontrollers for each function, because they are sourced separately from experienced suppliers (Bosch, Continental, etc). As a simple example, the software that runs your ABS is not running on your infotainment system. In a traditional design, everything is a separate system with a separate controller, from the door locks, to the battery management, to the backup camera, to the cluster telltales, and on, and on. Lucid isn't making the brakes, and they're not making the brake controller either.

Tesla changed the system by driving more vertical integration and bringing more components in-house, and Lucid (from their history) has probably done the same -- I'm just guessing here, but everything about battery management and motor control is probably Lucid-internal, whereas BMW is probably getting these things from suppliers. I would assume that Lucid is getting things like the air suspension from a manufacturer with a long history of suspension design. They're not making their own seats. They're not building their own telematics. These are all very specialized technologies with deep supply chains, and it doesn't make sense to build in-house. Companies with 10s of millions of units in production don't, and so it'd be crazy for a company making 10s of thousands to do so.

At the same time, the traditional suppliers have gotten more integrated -- that's the "Zonal Architecture" talked about above. Instead of miles of wires running through the car because all door locks and window controls from vendor X have to go to the central door controller, and all the power seats have to go to the central seat controller, and then all the controllers have to talk via serial to the infotainment platform and everything looks patched together -- you have one more capable computer in each quarter of the car and it can control and talk to the devices and more of the systems come from a single vendor, or at least the software interfaces are more standardized.

So, it'd be really interesting to hear what's getting built in-house. Clearly the infotainment and cluster software, battery, thermals, and motor control. Probably not the HUD (the eye-tracking, in particular, is really specialized). I would bet the ADAS is a bit mix-and-match today. Most car companies "just" put the parts together, but Lucid is definitely doing more than, say, Ford.

fadooly said:

if I were Lucid , I would just partner with Waymo and call it a day. Lucid will have FSD from day one with the best player, Waymo is way ahead of Tesla.

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Lucid isn't building its own FSD, they're using Nvidia. The problem seems to be Nvidia has been stating "Level 3" capable driving for the last 2 or 3 iterations of Nvidia Drive and no automaker can seem to get it working. Keep an eye on what Mercedes and Rivian are doing (to name a few) as they're using Nvidia also.

HC_79 said:

Lucid isn't building its own FSD, they're using Nvidia. The problem seems to be Nvidia has been stating "Level 3" capable driving for the last 2 or 3 iterations of Nvidia Drive and no automaker can seem to get it working. Keep an eye on what Mercedes and Rivian are doing (to name a few) as they're using Nvidia also.

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It's those god damn squirrels that throw the algo off ...

jered said:

Probably not the HUD

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I'm not sure if it was in an interview or in the test drive I had but I'm sure I heard Lucid designed the HUD as they were promoting that it was one of the largest if not the largest on the market. Not sure if this is 100% but Google seems to think so also.