Anyone know the email address of a higher up at Lucid that can help me cut through the red tape? Tired of being told BS from SA's and DA's. Thanks in advance.
Any suggestions who to email at Lucid to get a response from a higher up who can get things done?
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lnirenberg
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Lucid email addresses are 1st and last name @lucidmotors.com. I have sent emails to higher ups that didn't bounce back and they have stimulated phone calls from worker bees following up on my issues. Not that it accomplished anything but I felt better.
What issues are you running into?
lnirenberg
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Leasing--Bank of America runs the program. After being approved I was then declined because I couldn't answer a security question re.: if I leased a car in 2003,4,5 or 6. They told me I'd have to reapply. Got Lucid involved and it was solved. Sunday they sent me the lease to sign electronically even though I haven't read a copy of it and don't have a firm delivery date. Follow up from lucid to resolve still no answer. On my 4th delivery specialist and communication is horrendous repeating no delivery date even though I'm supposed to have it within a few weeks. I have an expiring Mercedes lease and want the $7500 tax credit. Lack of coordination as I get various emails and phone calls from different people about my issues. I understand it's complicated to build an auto company from scratch especially without a local dealer network and assume it will get better. I live in the Boston area which has a brick & mortar studio and don't understand why they don't get the locals involved.
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Wait. You’re leasing it? Since when do leased vehicles qualify for the tax credit?
What issues are you running into
They don’t to my knowledge, the bank gets the tax credit and they will not pay it forward to the customer like some dealers would…
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That’s what I thought..so I figured OPs point was moot if they lease the vehicle. Although, the communication could be better, that I agree with.
lnirenberg
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I'm leasing it as it's a company car and given the start up issues it's not a car I'd buy outright now. I get the tax benefit because lucid financial credits the $7500 against the purchase price when formulating the lease payments. They basically add it to my down payment when doing the math. One of the emails I got from them shows this. I'll try to dig it up and post.
I believe Lucid is one of the few companies that was planning to pass the $7500 credit to the person Leasing the car... Not sure where all that stands now with the $7500 tax credit going away with BofA? My understanding before all that happened, is that the $7500 gets applied as a cap reduction "earned" on an month by month basis depending on the length of the lease.. If the lessee "buys" the car before the end of the lease I am not sure how much of that $7500 will stay intact (earned) against the purchase price that the Leassee can buy the car for from Bank of America, but if you wait until the end of the lease (3 yrs as an example) the I think thew full $7500 stays in tact.
As of right now, Lucid is absolutely still taking $7500 off the price of the car if you lease. They get the credit, so they are passing it to you.
No idea what they will do after January 1. My guess is they will discontinue that practice.
As far as firm delivery dates go, I’m not sure anyone is getting that from Lucid until they actually have the car at the service center or wherever. Until PDI is done and they have your car scheduled with a driver to take it from the factory. It’s a bit chaotic over there at the moment, and the last thing they want to do is schedule a bunch of deliveries and then miss half of them.
Zak Edison can’t give you a firmer date than your DA, in other words.
Of course, you don’t need to sign until they give you that date. And even if you do sign, the lease won’t start (and your first payment won’t be due) until just before you drive the car off the lot, so to speak.
At this point, if they invited you to apply for financing, that means they are pretty confident they can get the car to you in at least 45 days. That’s how long the approval lasts. Not a guarantee, but unlike the old days with the GTs, a VIN number assignment is way later in the process, so it should only be a matter of a few weeks once you have that.
(He says, as he hits day 9 after getting his VIN.)
Zak Edison can’t give you a firmer date than your DA, in other words.
Of course, you don’t need to sign until they give you that date. And even if you do sign, the lease won’t start (and your first payment won’t be due) until just before you drive the car off the lot, so to speak.
At this point, if they invited you to apply for financing, that means they are pretty confident they can get the car to you in at least 45 days. That’s how long the approval lasts. Not a guarantee, but unlike the old days with the GTs, a VIN number assignment is way later in the process, so it should only be a matter of a few weeks once you have that.
(He says, as he hits day 9 after getting his VIN.)
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Too often lessees just focus on the monthly lease payment. When you lease a car you should always demand that the leasing entity show you the figures they are using to calculate the lease payment. These should include the purchase price they're paying, the interest rate they're applying, the residual value they're assuming, and any other relevant factors. If any of those figures concern you, you should challenge them. Some lessors will negotiate those factors; some won't.
One of those relevant factors would be how the lessor handles its right to a tax credit. Remember that a tax credit is not a direct payment to the lessor but rather a credit on a future tax bill, and that may make the calculations of the effect, if any, on the lease payment rather murky. That said, the $7500 credit is somewhere in the lessor's calculations about what to charge for the lease, and you should understand where and how much it is.
I guess this falls under "general discussion." I realize there's little patience on the forum for naysayers. I believe that the Lucid Air (no matter which model) is an incredible car. Otherwise, I would not still be waiting to receive one after 16 months. However, I am concerned about the survival of Lucid as a company. All of its cars depend on software updates and revisions. Should Lucid fail, you're left with the "final" update, which may or may not have corrected issues with the vehicle.
Meanwhile, I keep thinking about Tucker, which as the Wikipedia article notes, was partially destroyed by bad press planted by the major auto companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_48. I suggest you read that article as there are some definite similarities to Lucid.
Finally, on a different topic, my local dealer had a Cadillac Lyriq on the floor! I'm not fond of SUVs, but I must say the Lyriq is a fully finished car with nearly every feature of the Air Touring for $67K. GM went to Google for its infotainment software package and navigation. The main drawback of the Lyriq when compared with any Lucid model is range. The Caddy with AWD promises only about 290 miles per charge and charging, with its 400 volt architecture, takes twice as long (that is about 150 miles in 20 minutes).
One thing about a local dealer, you have a place a few miles away to take the car for service. Apparently, you'll also be able to stop and charge at any GM dealer, although GM has a deal with EvGo. I am not saying the Lyriq is a better car than the Air, it certainly won't handle or drive as wonderfully from what I've read in this forum, but it is an attractive alternative if you're willing to accelerate from 0-60 in 5.5 seconds vs. 3 seconds. The dealer admitted there is a 6-9 month wait for the 2024 Lyriq (the 2023 is sold out), but if nothing else, GM knows how to build cars (for better or for worse). Cadillac retains one of the highest resale values of cars currently on the road. (I am *not* a GM or Cadillac fanboy, let me make that clear, never owned a GM car.) Returning to my original topic, GM already had its existential crisis in 2008 when our tax dollars bailed it out. It got its act together and it will be around for a long time to come. I wish I could say that about Lucid. Don't misunderstand, I want Lucid to succeed.
Meanwhile, I keep thinking about Tucker, which as the Wikipedia article notes, was partially destroyed by bad press planted by the major auto companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_48. I suggest you read that article as there are some definite similarities to Lucid.
Finally, on a different topic, my local dealer had a Cadillac Lyriq on the floor! I'm not fond of SUVs, but I must say the Lyriq is a fully finished car with nearly every feature of the Air Touring for $67K. GM went to Google for its infotainment software package and navigation. The main drawback of the Lyriq when compared with any Lucid model is range. The Caddy with AWD promises only about 290 miles per charge and charging, with its 400 volt architecture, takes twice as long (that is about 150 miles in 20 minutes).
One thing about a local dealer, you have a place a few miles away to take the car for service. Apparently, you'll also be able to stop and charge at any GM dealer, although GM has a deal with EvGo. I am not saying the Lyriq is a better car than the Air, it certainly won't handle or drive as wonderfully from what I've read in this forum, but it is an attractive alternative if you're willing to accelerate from 0-60 in 5.5 seconds vs. 3 seconds. The dealer admitted there is a 6-9 month wait for the 2024 Lyriq (the 2023 is sold out), but if nothing else, GM knows how to build cars (for better or for worse). Cadillac retains one of the highest resale values of cars currently on the road. (I am *not* a GM or Cadillac fanboy, let me make that clear, never owned a GM car.) Returning to my original topic, GM already had its existential crisis in 2008 when our tax dollars bailed it out. It got its act together and it will be around for a long time to come. I wish I could say that about Lucid. Don't misunderstand, I want Lucid to succeed.
lnirenberg
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1st, 2nd & 3rd questions I asked before I applied for lease--what is the residual value and what is the money factor. Oh, we can't tell you that until you fill out the application ie they had no idea what I was talking about. Once I applied to BofA/Lucid financial I literally had to pry this state secret out of them like the person was doing me a huge favor by revealing the recipe for their secret sauce.
As to delivery, my car finished production almost 2 weeks ago, a nugget that was reluctantly given, & was going to their testing facility. Radio silence since then and given at some point this month there will be actual winter weather between the car and my locale outside Boston it will be challenging for them to deliver this month.
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I'm sorry to hear that and would have hoped for Lucid's picking a more transparent partner. I'm not a fan of BofA, having moved my personal accounts from them to Chase a few years ago after running into too much bureaucratic nonsense from them in managing accounts for my real estate LLCs. One of the things they did was cite IRS transaction restrictions that I knew did not exist and that Chase found to be no impediment at all.
Options don't come easily to everyone, but I would acquire the car through another route.
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From my experience so far, Lucid runs like an IT help desk, send in a request and it gets assigned. The folks in the Boston store are nice and informed. Perhaps call them up and see if that touch point gets more work in motion for you. Or go visit them in their lovely Waterfront location (1 percenter enclave). Even if they get nothing done for you, there are some nice places to eat by the water (I am originally from Boston).
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I had a decent experience sending a polite email to SA or DA and got a quick response. They are all overwhelmed trying to deliver. Calls are very time consuming for them at this stage of the company.
I personally never ever leased any car even when monthly payment was important. Taking a longer time loan and selling after 3 years was always cheaper than a 3 year lease. $2k per month lease 15% down payment on 150k is 22.5k plus 72k = 94.5k plus tax and registration adding up to say 96k on the road? 150k implies about 170k on the road. If you assume 40% depreciation in 3yrs as is common for most luxury cars, 90k is what you could get. Assume 85k. Still the difference is 85k plus interest on the loan. It is about the same. I usually keep my cars much longer but keep it for 4 or 5 years and you come out way ahead vs leasing. Feel free to correct any math errors but you get what I am saying?
I personally never ever leased any car even when monthly payment was important. Taking a longer time loan and selling after 3 years was always cheaper than a 3 year lease. $2k per month lease 15% down payment on 150k is 22.5k plus 72k = 94.5k plus tax and registration adding up to say 96k on the road? 150k implies about 170k on the road. If you assume 40% depreciation in 3yrs as is common for most luxury cars, 90k is what you could get. Assume 85k. Still the difference is 85k plus interest on the loan. It is about the same. I usually keep my cars much longer but keep it for 4 or 5 years and you come out way ahead vs leasing. Feel free to correct any math errors but you get what I am saying?
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When you call the Riviera Beach Service Center number these days (the number on the Lucid website for them), you instead get connected to central Customer Care in California. Even when someone from Riviera Beach calls me about my car and I try to use redial to call them back, I wind up back at the California number.
In the first few months after we took delivery in late 2021, calling the Riviera Beach number actually got Riviera Beach on the line. It seems Lucid is already starting down the path to less responsiveness that Tesla went down in 2018.
Honestly, if you do lease the car, you'll likely loose more money from leasing it due to the residual value. I imagine they're giving you a $60,000 residual or less after a 3 year lease where your payments will be greater than a loan. In that case, you're going to loose money and are betting on the fact that you may not be able to resell the car if anything happens to the company for under $60,000. Lucid has at least 2-3 years of runway in funding atm and it wouldn't be unreasonable to say (in all unlikelihood) that if they went under, it would be 4 years out (minimum) with services being able to stay online for at least 2 more years. You're already over your lease time at that point and you'll get more money resale wise after holding onto your car for 6 years total and then trying to sell it.
Personally, I only lease cars when I know they'll go up in value over time. Otherwise, it's just a way to burn money and you sort of loose no matter what. I made $15k in profit selling my Taycan because of a tactical leasing move. But I probably would have made more if I just out right owned/sold it.
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What’s funny is I moved from chase to bofa for similar reasons, and have now been happy with them for a decade. I guess YMMV
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