Lucid CEO agrees with Musk that America doesn’t need cheap cars

Tesla and Elon Musk have long promised to launch a $25,000 electric car. That promise ultimately fell by the wayside, as Musk recently called the idea pointless. Now Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson says his car company isn’t interested in that price point either. At the same time, he is hopeful about the low-price market.

“This market is notorious because you get into large-scale manufacturing — horrible, low-margin…putting a manufacturing base for millions of these vehicles,” Rawlinson said of affordable electric cars in a recent Bloomberg podcast. It’s meaningless.”

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But Rawlinson does see opportunities for other brands to produce $25,000 electric cars, and even do so while still benefiting Lucid. “That’s where our licensing opportunities come into play. As a technology company, technology can be licensed so that other operators can benefit from it, and they can deploy tools like this. They have a more complete manufacturing base.”

There is no doubt that other OEMs have larger production infrastructure compared to Lucid. The fledgling electric car company will sell fewer cars this year than supercar maker Lamborghini, a far cry from the numbers it needs to become a long-term sustainable brand. Offering its own technology through a licensing agreement could be a solution for Lucid.

It’s worth noting that some brands may be reluctant to license technology from Lucid because they already have their own electric vehicle plans. Ford is one of them, apparently with a skunkworks-style team working on an electric car that costs around $25,000.

Rivian’s cost targets may not be that low, but it seems ready to launch the R2 platform for around $45,000, and we still don’t know how much the R3X will cost. Either way, it looks like more affordable electric vehicles are coming, and we’ll just have to wait and see if anyone comes to market using Lucid’s technology.