Electrify America is enraging EV owners

[Haggy]

If all one cares about is reliable high speed charging when road tripping and nothing more, buy a Tesla. If you are concerned about the other 5,283 things (did I miss one?) that go into a great luxury EV choice, buy a Lucid.

I agree with pidcorp's concerns and characterization. We can all agree Lucid makes a great mechanical car but the rest, SW, EA, features (e.g., DDpro, Lidar, etc.) left a lot to be desired. Lucid's pricing (e.g., between an AGT and an Air) says we are paying 10's of thousands of dollars for these features/goodies. Many of these features are (so far) not realized. And there is no communicated plan/schedule to realize these goals in the realistic lifetime of the car. Disappointment = Expectations Not Met. I've complained about EA to Lucid many times. Lucid takes a position "It is EA's problem". I don't think that's a responsible trust-building position on Lucid's part.

I think the Lucid enthusiasts are underestimating the impact of setting/charging high expectations and not delivering (or communicating plans to deliver) to these expectations.

This is getting a bit off the topic of EA, but yes, I expect to get what I pay for. I had concerns with DreamDrive, which is why even though I was an early reservation holder from the first day, I didn't get the car until recently. There's a minimum amount of functionality that I wanted up front, and didn't want to find out that Lucid will be another Tesla. The parts that are there for Dream Drive work well after the most recent updates. As for the rest, I expect more, but Lucid never gave an explicit date nor did they promise certain features explicitly, even though I have an idea of some of what to expect. And since they didn't, I can't say that they missed any deadline. They did tell me that they weren't shooting for anything beyond L3 though. It's far better than Tesla's "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" back in 2017 for something that's still not there. But I would like to see more. I can't say that Lucid was dishonest about it though.

There were software issues, and I'd still like to see the ones on the "wishlist" addressed, but they got what's there cleaned up quite a bit by the time I got the car. It's not perfect but I've had bigger problems on cars in the past with no chance of updates.

Perhaps in a few years I will change my mind and find that they didn't deliver, but for now, I think that I can reasonably expect things to come.

 

[xponents]

Lucid missed all of its delivery goals, revenue goals, etc..

Called goals for a reason

Rawlinson made $379M last year, second highest compensation of all CEOs!

Including stock, set in stone in 2021..

LCID dropped 94% from its peak!

So? That has nothing to do with the running of the company.

Current delivery run rate will never sustain the company.

Seeing our free cash flow, I doubt that.

It is selling a hope that everyone in Arabia will buy a Lucid and save the day.

Considering 50k Lucids have been ordered and sedans are more popular there than the US, I'd agree.

Perhaps the focus should be more in customer satisfaction and deliver what it promised.

Did Lucid promise that EAs chargers would work?

 

[momo3605]

I do understand how EA can be Lucid’s problem. For example look at hydrogen cars. When Toyota/honda started releasing them, a lot of people went and bought them because of the innovation factor, incentives AND free fuel card. But what ended up happening?

The hydrogen stations were and still are a total shit show just like EA. Stations offline, queues, etc…the $60k Mirai ended up selling for like $20k after being discounted and now the whole industry is dead. Hydrogen stations still suck and the fuel costs is 2 or 3x that of gas.

I think a lot of people buying EVs for the first time because of the hype that may live in apartments or road trip a lot may be completely turned off EVs based on EA performance (there’s really no other practical option without doing meticulous trip planning before a trip).

I will say personally, I don’t mind doing the research and planning like I’m sure many forum goers are not, but omg, when I’m at the EA station, half the people are just sitting there calling EA trying to figure out how to use their fast charging. I was behind someone in a i4 that was on the phone with EA claiming the chargers weren’t working, and eventually they left. I pulled up, plugged in and P&C connected immediately. It’s not easy for people that are not so technically inclined. I know my dad would have a heart attack if I told him to go charge at an EA station. As a Tesla owner, he doesn’t have to think about it all. Its fast and it just works.

 

[Lucken]

If customer satisfaction is at the top of your metrics, I'd say Lucid is doing quite an admirable job. Perfect? Of course not, but quite an admirable job.

 

[Haggy]

Comparison with Tesla is a morbid exercise as Tesla was/is not exactly a leader in customer service and quality. FSD (and now the recall) is not something Lucid wants to repeat. Tesla survived the early years because it was the pioneer. They had the benefit of time and no competition to work through their issues. Now, it is different!

Early on, Tesla had the best service of any car company I had dealt with. They did have an issue with timely appointments at the start, but that was for non-critical issues. For potentially critical issues, I was able to get quick appointments. So far, I've had one service visit with Lucid. It took a while to get an appointment, but they weren't for critical items. Getting up to the standard of service that Tesla had in 2015 is reasonable. Getting to where Tesla is now would mean quicker appointments but a much worse overall experience.

FSD was/is a disaster from my perspective. I paid for it but never got anything truly useful. DreamDrive is coming along more like Autopilot, which took longer than I would have liked, but did give me what I expected. The difference is that Tesla released parts of it at a much less complete stage and then refined it over time. Lucid was a lot closer for the parts that they have delivered. If the delay is so that they don't release things that "sort of" work and refine them over a few years but instead release things that work well from the start, I won't mind so much. If I find that years from now there's nothing new in place, then I'll be one of the people telling others to stay away from the feature.

 

[borski]

Lucid missed all of its delivery goals, revenue goals, etc..

Yeah, there was sort of a pandemic thing going around, the economy tanked, interest rates skyrocketed… but you’re probably right, it’s probably entirely Lucid’s fault.

Rawlinson made $379M last year, second highest compensation of all CEOs!

From the stock he had no choice but to sell. How do I know executives sell on a fixed timeline? I ran a company and understand how stock plans and grants work, and it is common practice as well, specifically *because* they don’t want to affect stock price and have it look like trading with insider info.

LCID dropped 94% from its peak!

And GE lost more than half its value in 2020.

Oh, are we not just relaying prices about random stocks in the past? My bad.

Current delivery run rate will never sustain the company.

Okay. And?

It is selling a hope that everyone in Arabia will buy a Lucid and save the day.

If that’s what you’re hearing, you haven’t been listening.

Perhaps the focus should be more in customer satisfaction and deliver what it promised.

Yes, the focus should *definitely* be to acquire EA and build out their own charging network because it would make *you* happy, and that would definitely be the right “dream” to sell.

Comparison with Tesla is a morbid exercise as Tesla was/is not exactly a leader in customer service and quality. FSD (and now the recall) is not something Lucid wants to repeat. Tesla survived the early years because it was the pioneer. They had the benefit of time and no competition to work through their issues. Now, it is different!

Is it? How many awards has Lucid won this past year? Oh, right, more than literally any other new luxury vehicle.

Oh, it also happens to be officially designated as America’s most range efficient EV, but who’s counting awards when we’ve got a CEO/CTO to bash for a company he doesn’t run!

If Lucid were to succeed, how about doing the basics right....deliver what is promised, even if it late, communicate a timeline. Set realistic expectations. Focus on the basics and listen to customers.

I’m certain you could do better.

Unfortunately, this will be the last post like this, because this *entire post* is against the guidelines (see the bit about not armchair CEO-ing), and it is also, more importantly, entirely off topic for this thread.

This is your last warning. Keep it on topic.

If you would like to discuss EA and its flaws, go for it. If you’d like to discuss Lucid’s culpability, if any, for EA’s flaws and successes, go for it.

But this “amateur financial analyst” nonsense is irrelevant and has no place on this thread. There are other places you can engage in this type of discussion, and I encourage you to seek them out.

 

[momo3605]

Lucid was a lot closer for the parts that they have delivered. If the delay is so that they don't release things that "sort of" work and refine them over a few years but instead release things that work well from the start, I won't mind so much. If I find that years from now there's nothing new in place, then I'll be one of the people telling others to stay away from the feature.

I don’t like that they decided to copy this methodology from Tesla. A lot of prospective lucid buyers are ex-Tesla owners. When someone has already gotten burned on undelivered features, seems strange to entice them with…the same empty promises Also to be fair, has Lucid ever even claimed WHAT you will get from DDP in the future? In Teslas case, they sold the promise of FSD which obviously has been delayed and delayed and is nowhere near finished. But in a couple years, out of curiosity, what do you think DDP will do? Lucid isn’t promising anything other than Highway Pilot? Which is just hands free lane keep?

 

[borski]

I don’t like that they decided to copy this methodology from Tesla. A lot of prospective lucid buyers are ex-Tesla owners. When someone has already gotten burned on undelivered features, seems strange to entice them with…the same empty promises Also to be fair, has Lucid ever even claimed WHAT you will get from DDP in the future? In Teslas case, they sold the promise of FSD which obviously has been delayed and delayed and is nowhere near finished. But in a couple years, out of curiosity, what do you think DDP will do? Lucid isn’t promising anything other than Highway Pilot? Which is just hands free lane keep?

Various videos have mentioned it being hands free, doing lane changes, and eventually having nav-enabled on/off ramp taking.

However, there has been no mention of hands free driving in a city, for obvious reasons.

 

[Haggy]

It is selling a hope that everyone in Arabia will buy a Lucid and save the day.

Not really. Lucid has made it clear that they have a source of funding, but the long term strategy is to have higher selling vehicles as well as lower cost ones. It's not feasible for a new company to start off with an inexpensive car and expect it to sell in high volume when most people never heard of the company, and it would require a massive investment to handle the quantity. Lucid started off with an award winning sedan that has earned glowing reviews, but it came out at a time when the economy was slowing, interest rates were going way up, and the stock market was declining. High end sedans have a more limited market, but the Gravity has already been announced.

So far, everything I've read about the Gravity has been positive and I expect it to sell well in the US. It should sell far better than the Air due to what Americans are buying.

Lucid hasn't announced details on lower end cars but they are clearly in the works. A company can't take the profits from a car that might sell in the tens of thousands and expect to make enough money to build a factory for cars that will sell in the hundreds of thousands and earn a profit doing it. Lucid is in it for the long haul and it's not as if they expected to be profitable all along but failed to do it. They are in a stage where they need to rely on investment money to get there. Even if they had met all projections for sales and production, I wouldn't expect them to be profitable. Any extra revenue at this point should be spent on development in order for the company to survive. If they were handing out dividends and letting development of future products lag, then I'd be worried.

 

[joec]

Shutting this thread down. You all are talking in circles, and no one wants to listen.

We’re way past anything of value being added to this discussion.