- Lucid CEO confirms the company is looking for additional established automakers to partner with.
- It's already in talks with two unnamed automakers after signing a deal to provide Aston Martin with its EV tech.
- Lucid wants to sell 1 million vehicles annually and it will need an OEM's help to help it ramp up production.
Although Lucid Motors is a startup with much less car-making experience than traditional OEMs, it has quickly become an electric vehicle technology leader. It’s willing to share its EV tech with others and it’s already helping Aston Martin create its own bespoke EV platform. However, it also wants to find more automakers to partner with.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said the company was currently in talks with “a couple” of automakers, but he didn’t name names—one of them is probably Genesis. He said, “It would be lovely if we could supply technology to a traditional car company to help them on their way to sustainability, and perhaps we can leverage economies of scale with their parts bin and other aspects of the business.”
In other words, Lucid would be interested in supplying its EV tech and expect to gain know-how from its potential partners. This doesn’t apply to its deal with Aston Martin, which is one-sided for now, but Lucid expects to earn more than just money from its future partnerships. Aston Martin will launch its first EV, which will have Lucid tech and know-how, in 2026, and it says it has several EVs in the pipeline.
Lucid isn’t the only EV startup looking for established OEM partners. Rivian set up a multi-billion dollar joint venture deal with Volkswagen to develop electric vehicles. VW has pledged to invest close to $6 billion, and the partnership’s first vehicles are expected to debut in 2027. Apparently, a Volkswagen EV prototype is already running on a Rivian platform with Rivian tech.
Volkswagen also owns the Scout EV brand, so it’s not entirely unreasonable to suggest that the upcoming Scout Terra and Traveler may have some components in common. That will make the fact that Scout and Rivian are not the same company even less apparent.
Lucid’s in-house-developed electric motors and 900-volt platform allow it to make some of the most efficient electric vehicles in the world. The startup lacks knowledge about scaling up production into the hundreds of thousands, which is where the experience provided by an established automaker would be very useful.
Now in the process of ramping up production of its second model, the Gravity full size SUV, Lucid will then move on to preparing the start of production for its third model. This will be a smaller and more affordable midsize electric SUV, whose starting price will be around $48,000, so it should sell in higher volumes than any of its current models—the cheapest Lucid right now is the Air Pure, which starts at $71,400, but you can pay over $250,000 for a top-spec Air Sapphire.
Peter Rawlinson previously said that Lucid is aiming to sell 1 million vehicles annually, and it’s banking on not one but two midsize electric crossovers to get there. This year, it produced around 10,000 vehicles, so it's got a long way to go to achieve the stated goal.
