After being mocked by Elon Musk for being in the pocket of Saudi Arabia, Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson is stepping down with immediate effect.
The director of the American car brand Lucid Motors, Peter Rawlinson, has chosen to leave his position immediately.
The now former director himself justifies his decision by saying that he can now retire after the launch of the Lucid Gravity SUV.
Rawlinson writes on LinkedIn that the timing is right because the launch of Lucid Gravity is complete.
He has spearheaded the development of the Lucid Air, a car that outperforms competing models in several ways. However, Lucid has experienced limited sales and the company has suffered significant financial losses.
Not everyone thinks Lucid's business model is all that great. For example, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has loudly criticized both Lucid in general and the now former CEO in particular for being in the pocket and running around with billions in oil from Saudi Arabia. Read more about it here .
Conversely, things aren't exactly going smoothly for Lucid. The brand is losing hundreds of thousands of kroner on every car sold.
In the last quarter, Lucid had a loss of 4.5 billion kroner. Management has also stated that it would prefer to build its own cars 20 percent of the time.
The rest will go towards making hardware and software for competitors.
With the introduction of Lucid Gravity, Lucid is attempting to increase production to 20,000 cars by 2025. In comparison, Tesla sells the same number of cars in two days.
However, on LinkedIn , Rawlinson writes that he is proud of Lucid's achievements over the past twelve years.
He highlights that Lucid has developed from a small company to a global technological actor in the electric vehicle industry.
Rawlinson further mentions that he is particularly proud of the design of the brand's upcoming cars, cars that will spearhead a completely new platform.
– I am incredibly proud of the results that the Lucid team has achieved together during my tenure over the past twelve years.
– We grew from a small company with a big ambition to a widely recognized technological world leader in sustainable mobility.
– It has been my honor to have led and developed this remarkable world-class team, as Lucid has always been first and foremost about a team effort.
Rawlinson was previously employed at Tesla, where he led the development of the Model S. He subsequently established Lucid with the ambition of creating an improved version of the Tesla Model S.
Rawlinson hopes that a new, cheaper car model can strengthen Lucid's position in the market. The Lucid Gravity is currently being tested here in the Nordics. It has been seen on Swedish roads, among other places.
Lucid was supposed to be in Denmark several years ago. In 2020, the brand opened up the possibility for interested Danes to pay a deposit of $1,000 on a Lucid Air. However, that opportunity quickly disappeared again.
