Lack of Media Coverage

[JerseyStrong]

I regularly scroll through automotive newsfeeds and seldom find articles about Lucid. It is disappointing that among automotive journalists, Lucid seems to be nonexistent. I am puzzled as to why this is. Any insights?

 

[nevadagame]

Lucid isn’t Covered much by media because it doesn’t build cars for 95% of the market. People who can’t afford to buy the car are tired of seeing Lucid Tesla, Porsche comparisons. They want to read about cars that they can aspire to buy cars that cost 50 and $60,000 are aspirational to most, you don’t pay the bills by writing to 5% of the population.

 

[California'sBest]

Hidden gem.

I'm hoping Lucid makes it out of the rough patch but I kinda like it that it isn't a "mainstream" vehicle. Even the Rivian in comparison is much more mainstream.

 

[Tâm]

I regularly scroll through automotive newsfeeds and seldom find articles about Lucid. It is disappointing that among automotive journalists, Lucid seems to be nonexistent. I am puzzled as to why this is. Any insights?

It's hard to get news coverage from the mainstream. When I bought an EV with 265-mile range in 2012, that company didn't make any profits for years and didn't make many EVs but it has a group of very devoted lovers and another group of devoted haters.

News is a business so it makes sense to cover what people are passionate about from both lovers and haters.

Lovers created a users club and had national annual meetings.

Haters created blogs to document the failures and the counter to the demise date of the company.

Although the mainstream tried to stay away but finally, it could not any more so the New York Times shocked the company by printing in 2013 that the EV was out of battery pre-maturely for the 51-mile trip and it had to be towed in the cold winter during a test drive from one of its contributors.

Immediately, many owners re-created the New York Times trip with no problem.

Getting people to know a company's name is also very difficult. Thus, it might be a good thing when the press covers the name even with bad press.

No one heard of VinFast before until reviewers seemed to be very passionate about making sure readers know that it's a very bad company, very bad investment, very bad EVs. Yes, bad news but at least now people know its name!

VinFast now has enough haters but it doesn't have enough lovers.

Back to the topic: It is a challenge to motivate the media to cover when there's nothing shockingly good or bad, or when there are not enough lovers and haters to care about Lucid.

 

[Keith58]

I don’t know… every website I open has an ad for the Lucid lease special placed in the middle of the page lol

 

[Drendino]

Someone at ABC must have read your post and taken note: here’s a great interview with Peter Rawlinson from ABC today. I think he’s right on all counts. Just subsidize home level 2 charging for everyone, and make a more efficient thus cheaper EV.

Lucid CEO has a plan to end Americans' range anxiety

Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson gives his take on reducing range anxiety and boosting sales of electric vehicles.

abcnews.go.com

The reason why Lucid doesn’t get more press is right in this article.

First question:
Interviewer: How can you convince more Americans to give up their ICE cars?
Peter: Efficiency!!

Peter used to say that Lucid is a tech company, not a car company. Obviously they should be pounding the pavement talking about the life changing drive performance and refined luxury. At the same time they should be broadcasting to the world their Dream Drive Pro roadmap, so the public understands the features that are “coming soon”. Like it or not, Tesla owners love tech and FSD is a big reason a lot of people buy them. I know we give Elon a lot of crap about “FSD” coming by the end of the year and now it’s pretty much here, although not level 3. I’m not saying that Lucid needs to lie about the timeline, but they should be pumping up DDP and all of the cool features it will have. At this point I don’t think any of us even know if they are going to fix HA, let alone start using the LiDAR and start implementing what they promised before they sold their first car.

Efficiency is cool and is one of the many features I considered when I purchased my car. If they want broad coverage, they need to stop being a secret car company and hire a communications department.

 

[enzro]

News is a business, and Americans don't care about efficiency. We will only watch conflict; why would the media cover a company selling efficiency? Once Lucid hires a CEO who can lie to the wall street crowd more effectively, coverage will be sparse and primarily disparaging. I was invited to see the first Tesla Roadster, but my first EV was a Lucid GT. The media gives us what we want.

 

[Volund]

The CEO's with the biggest mouths are the ones who get the most attention. Elon is on Twitter 24/7 spewing crap and it gives him attention.
He promises the sky and undersells every time.. But those promises get headlines to begin with. It's unfortunate that is what media cares about, and it's hard for a CEO with integrity to do. But Elon has beat the system because he knows what BS to feed the journalists.

 

[enzro]

Correct, and so I continue to buy Tesla stock but not the product.