Lucid has over 25k Air reservations and is buying a ~$2M 30 second spot on the Oscars?

[copper]

Lucid has more than enough demand right now.

And yes putting Airs in garages will generate more orders. Because they are fantastic cars. Friends/family of owners will see them and experience them. And want them.

In order to grow they need more production. The bottleneck to growth is not reservations.

I am all in favor of paid advertising. When you need more demand. When you see a demand pocket in 3-6 months.

I doubt people reserve Lucids willy nilly like Cybertrucks.

You have to be somewhat of an ev nerd or auto enthusiast to know about Lucid.

I think there is a high conversion rate vs mainstream BEVs with $100 fully refundable reservations.

I get your questions here. Some thoughts:

• The more cars ship, the more orders Lucid will get. This is true for any good product. Consider this organic demand and channels to drive it include word-of-mouth, YouTube reviews, organic social, content, etc.
• However, as production capacity scales it can begin to overtake overtake organic demand, especially in crowded markets. The bottleneck then becomes reservations. Tesla did not suffer this because it was creating the market as it went. They could rely on organic demand for the most part since the actual size of the EV market was very small and increasing slowly for a while. They just rode the wave that they made.
• Now the pie (market) is growing fast and only will accelerate - EVs will overtake ICE cars within a decade if not sooner. Any serious automotive player knows that if they don't grab as much of the pie as they can right now and ensure the best positioning possible they may not have any slice at all in the future.
• If Lucid intends to be a player they absolutely have to be aggressive in this space - they have no choice but to start now, because if they don't someone else will (Fisker, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes).
• By being front and center for people that are moving from ICE to EV Lucid can capture the market as it shifts. This requires creating demand for their products, which is where the advertising comes in.

Don't know how efficient it is to pay $2M/30s spot in generating $140k orders.

$2m/30s is "ok" depending on the reach and audience. The Oscars last year got just over 9mm US viewers, so while not super economical it also isn't really that expensive. Brands also get a lot of exposure beyond the awards as their spots both get organic press and then run elsewhere, so total reach is significantly larger. That said, I'm skeptical same as you of the Oscars vs. other channels where I can get the same scale at better cost, better targeting and with a faster optimization feedback loop.

 

[HC_79]

Mercedes seemed to drop a chunk of change for the Oscars.

 

[copper]

Mercedes seemed to drop a chunk of change for the Oscars.

They’ve been in them for a while, but didn’t see them on the list this year.

 

[DJ@SJ]

You have to be somewhat of an ev nerd or auto enthusiast to know about Lucid.

There, you just said it. Isn't this the point of the commercial, to raise awareness of the brand beyond "ev nerds or auto enthusiasts"?