What's new
By:

New CTO

P

psulightning

Member

Joined
May 29, 2026
Messages
44
Reaction score
55
Location
Baltimore County, MD
Cars
2026 Kia EV9 Land
Came across this on LinkedIn today:
1784335987232.webp

www.linkedin.com

#engineering #innovation #leadership | Raja Ramana Macha | 131 comments

This week, I had the privilege of joining Lucid Motors as Chief Technology Officer. From my first interactions with the team, one thing has been very clear: Lucid is home to extraordinary talent building phenomenal products. When I drove a Lucid Gravity for the first time, I was struck by the...
www.linkedin.com www.linkedin.com
 
Related, from “eletric”:

(We all want to hear from Billy!)

Billy Hayes, a veteran of Nissan and Stellantis, became chief customer officer with profit-and-loss responsibility across the US, the Middle East and Europe, and Hugo Martinho, another Schindler alumnus, joined as chief transformation officer to run a new business-process function.

Kay Stepper, previously at Bosch and Qualcomm, was named president of a new Lucid Technologies unit with control of robotaxis, AI, autonomy and driver-assistance systems, carving the company’s most advanced software work out from under the new chief technology officer.

Christian Appel, who had run production control at Lucid‘s Arizona factory, was promoted to vice president of program management, while Napoli also eliminated the chief operating officer role.
 
DS9 said:
I met Billy today @ the Lucid owner's event in Charlotte. Looking forward to changes in Support and Service that he spoke about.
Click to expand...
Any generalities or specifics that he shared?
 
jedwin said:
Kay Stepper, previously at Bosch and Qualcomm, was named president of a new Lucid Technologies unit with control of robotaxis, AI, autonomy and driver-assistance systems, carving the company’s most advanced software work out from under the new chief technology officer.
Click to expand...
Kai is also Lucid and has been since May 2025, so not new, but an internal promotion.
 
jedwin said:
Any generalities or specifics that he shared?
Click to expand...
He said that he wasn't able to reveal any numbers yet, but that they were working out the details right now for a pretty big expansion to the service side of the business. He said he's only been in the role for a couple of weeks, but the feedback on service has come through loud and clear. My wife and I spoke to him for several minutes afterwards. Seems like a solid guy who is excited to be working here.
 
Interesting choice for CTO. I'm reading between the lines, but he seems to be more of a software and process guy than a hardware guy, and seems to be more of a manager than an inventor. Maybe that's what Lucid needs now. It seems obvious that the new CEO is bringing on lieutenants he already has a relationship with and feels he can trust.
 
TahoeMichael said:
Interesting choice for CTO. I'm reading between the lines, but he seems to be more of a software and process guy than a hardware guy, and seems to be more of a manager than an inventor. Maybe that's what Lucid needs now. It seems obvious that the new CEO is bringing on lieutenants he already has a relationship with and feels he can trust.
Click to expand...
Adding to this, I'm reading it as the leadership sees the technical team as mature enough to handle the hands-on matters on their own, and that Raja will be making sure they get the resources they need, especially on a more global scale/perspective with midsize rolling out
 
Just from what I’ve heard through the grapevine, morale at Lucid seems largely up. People seem very happy with Silvio and they’re starting to see action come from his words, and he’s preaching a lot of what some folks have been saying for years, particularly around a customer focus.

So that’s all very good in my book.
 
TahoeMichael said:
Interesting choice for CTO. I'm reading between the lines, but he seems to be more of a software and process guy than a hardware guy, and seems to be more of a manager than an inventor. Maybe that's what Lucid needs now. It seems obvious that the new CEO is bringing on lieutenants he already has a relationship with and feels he can trust.
Click to expand...
Lucid has great hardware. Software is their achilles heel and needs someone who can turn that around. We've had an inventor type with Peter as a CEO/CTO already and didn't work out well. I'm optimistic these executive changes will yield positive results.
 
That’s awesome. Can I get my gravity now or at least know the ETA? :-/
 
LucidfanAZ said:
Lucid has great hardware. Software is their achilles heel and needs someone who can turn that around. We've had an inventor type with Peter as a CEO/CTO already and didn't work out well. I'm optimistic these executive changes will yield positive results.
Click to expand...
My own view is that it's risky to hire a manager as a CTO. There are plenty of executives at every company who could be tasked with operations and process. The CTO is the executive who is responsible for the technology strategy and direction of the company, and it's hard to do that well without deep technical chops. Hiring a manager to fill the roll means you have to lean on less nominally senior technologists, and make sure that their voice gets the audience it deserves even though they're down the org chart somewhere. Hiring a manager instead doesn't at all guarantee failure. But when it does go wrong it tends to leave a company with a years long legacy of poor technology investment decisions that cannot be quickly fixed.
 
borski said:
Kai is also Lucid and has been since May 2025, so not new, but an internal promotion.
Click to expand...
Most people have missed they created a dedicated P&L in the org focused on technology and partnerships (read as a B2B business for Uber and maybe still the motor licensing seeing as Aston is still committed but delayed)....
 
Leftlane said:
Nissan and Stellantis - two car companies that have been determined to stay on a death march for years, neither of which is known for outstanding customer service.
Click to expand...
Since when do you expect excellent customer service from non-luxury marques?
 
TahoeMichael said:
My own view is that it's risky to hire a manager as a CTO. There are plenty of executives at every company who could be tasked with operations and process. The CTO is the executive who is responsible for the technology strategy and direction of the company, and it's hard to do that well without deep technical chops. Hiring a manager to fill the roll means you have to lean on less nominally senior technologists, and make sure that their voice gets the audience it deserves even though they're down the org chart somewhere. Hiring a manager instead doesn't at all guarantee failure. But when it does go wrong it tends to leave a company with a years long legacy of poor technology investment decisions that cannot be quickly fixed.
Click to expand...
If you take a look at his LinkedIn profile, there's plenty there that speaks technical vs. just non-technical manager. There's only so much information you can derive from his profile. On the surface, he appears to at least have the correct background for the task at hand.

The project leads and managers underneath him are ultimately going to be the ones in the weeds and driving the day to day decisions. We don't have insight into those positions. There's been significant turmoil there, so any information is likely to be outdated and inaccurate at this point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top