Cadillac introduced the Lyric first, then Vistiq, then the Escalade EV. Get people into the brand, then convince them to trade up for the latest and greatest. That was the entire rationale behind GM in the first place. The S Class exists to intro all the latest and greatest tech that trickles down, but MB would love for you to buy a C class, then upgrade to an E, then finally into an S - making a lifetime customer with multiple purchases.
Lucid doesn’t have that option and the way they have rolled out so far has limited their market right from the start. How many people do you know who bought the top line trim of anything and then downgraded later? If the reason they aren’t ready to sell more is because they can’t support it with service…..oof.
You are assuming any company gets a set of customers once. And then just keeps selling to the same people?
It’s way easier to establish yourself as a high-end brand, then make more price sensitive customers happy they can afford to get “such a nice car” when you introduce a cheaper model than it is to introduce a Yugo, then try to convince rich people to buy your expensive version.
There’s a reason GM has to brand Chevy and Cadillac as two different companies. Why Honda, Toyota, Nissan had to create completely different brands to scale up to more profitable customers.
Remember the VW Phaeton? Didn’t sell very well. Why? Because no one wants an expensive VW. Same reason the new EV bus has tanked.
Low end customers are the hardest to convince to take a chance on a new company. And they have way more options. And the worst part is if you do manage to convince enough people to buy your cheap car, you’ve got a whole new problem, because you’ve essentially guaranteed pissing off the majority of those customers when you can’t keep up with their service needs.
Starting low end as a new EV company is suicide in today’s market.
You are acting as if Lucid didn’t
intend to limit their market at first. They absolutely did. Just as they will slowly ramp up their market with each subsequent model. This has been the road map from day one.
Can you imagine how much worse off Lucid would be if they had actually sold 25,000 Air in their first year? With all the issues of software 1.0? They never would have recovered.
As I like to say, the majority of Lucid’s customer base hasn’t yet heard of Lucid. And that’s a good thing. Let them iron out the kinks with us crazy early adopters.
If they end up about the size of, say, Porsche in terms of long term customer base, that’ll be just fine. Ain’t nothing wrong with Porsche.
Likely they’d rather be the size of an Audi. But either way, there are plenty of examples of successful car companies that don’t sell millions of units. Especially when your starting price is nice and high.
Most companies can't sell smaller sedans as they can't compete in daily activities with the practicality of a Crossover. There definitely is demand for cheaper cars that have fully luxury cabin comforts...
