What We Know About Lucid Air
Last week Lucid Motors, made their debut featuring this luxury EV and concepts of showroom and service. The company plans to sell their cars with a direct to consumer business model in place of a traditional showroom display, in what they call a “studio”, to be placed in malls and some at their service centers. Lucid Motors plans to offer software updates and fixes via the cloud, customers can chat with team members via their mobile app.
Check out the specs and pricing from Lucid Motor’s website below:
We can see based on their chart, within 20 minutes of super fast charging the batteries can be replenished with another 300 miles of range consistent for all models. Unfortunately there aren’t any stats yet for the base model which they plan to produce in 2022. With their experience in delivering battery technology in the F1 race-car industry they aim to build a high performance car. The Lucid Air can complete a 1/4 mile race in 9.9 seconds at 144mph, this is insane and I’m sure we’ll see people testing the limits.
The cars have a smooth luxury aesthetic sporting an all glass roof, roomy seating, a large front trunk, a touch screen that blends with the digital cluster, and even an artificial assistant that learns your comfort and music preferences. Modern safety features such as forward-collision warning, auto emergency braking, blind spot monitoring, and adaptive cruise control are included. Although these are in place, no crash tests have been performed by the NHTSA.
If you want to see more details, check out their informative website Lucid Motors.
Nikola Admits to “Inoperable” Truck in Commercial
In the last issue of EV Shakeout, I briefly mentioned the deceptive activity going on with Nikola, since then, there’s more. When Nikola was challenged on the topic of the 2017 truck video, they claimed that the vehicle was “in motion” but not powered by its own drivetrain. The article by Hindenburg Research discusses an employee’s texts proving that the company used a hill in Utah with a 3% grade and a distance of 2.1 miles where the truck could reach 56 mph of speed. Filming with a camera at a lower angle the footage would show the rig as if it were running on level ground or going up a hill.
There have been several lawsuits filed against Trevor Milton’s previous companies for issues of over promising and making deceptive statements regarding contracts and valuations. On September 15th Rosen Law Firm filed a class action lawsuit against Nikola for some of the following: Overstating designing and testing products “in-house”, lying about their abilities in producing hydrogen, founder Milton’s tweets on executing testing of the Nikola Two truck, lying about the 5 Tre trucks, and more can be read in the class action case here. Nikola is currently under investigation by the US Department of Justice and the SEC. It will be interesting to see what happens to Nikola after all this and how GM will respond when it’s over.
Link to video clip: Nikola Truck Video
Link to Rosen Law Firm lawsuit
This is a summary version of my interpretation of the article. Check out the complete written article by Hindenburg Research here, also see their Twitter for more.
Battery Day Rumors
The internet is buzzing with hype regarding Tesla’s long awaited Battery Day. Right now there is a lot of talk on the Roadrunner project. Tesla’s purpose for this project is to reduce battery cost/build time to be able to increase car production. Last Wednesday Electrek caught a glimpse of the new battery cell from an anonymous but confirmed source. What we know so far is that the upgraded version of the cell is twice as big as the cells used in the Model Y and Model 3. The theory behind it, is that by increasing the diameter of the battery it can multiply the volume by four times.
In an interview with Musk and Third Row Tesla earlier this year, one of the members mentions an electrode type of battery and Musk responds with something along the lines of it being of a high level of importance. This is referring to the Tesla tabless electrode design in the new batteries which we hope to hear more about on Tuesday. Another rumor is a project called Palladium which includes updates to battery and drivetrain, as well as potential Tesla body mods. According to articles on the web it looks like Tesla is prepping for production of the Palladium project at the Fremont factory. Only a day to go and we can find out what else Tesla is about to announce.
Fred Lambert has a lot of great up to date info on these topics, see more on his Twitter here: Fred Lambert's Twitter Feed
New Charging Program Launching in California
EV Ready is a law that requires a certain number of spaces in commercial or residential areas to accommodate the use of electric vehicles. In California they plan to install a total of 3,500 charging stations in San Mateo county within the next four years. This project is funded by $24 million in incentives and $4 million allocated to supporting development of infrastructure in the county. California Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Project (funded by the state) is a a program also assisting in supporting EV adoption for the rest of the state and includes $36 million of incentives which will be spread across four agencies in Santa Clara County. San Mateo County expects approximately 45,000 EV’s by the year 2025.
To help solve these problems in the suburbs or areas where it’s a challenge to install chargers, EVgo and GM is planning to add more than 2700 charging stations within the next five years. The goal is to boost EV adoption giving charging access to all people.
This is a summary of Emily Holbrook’s article on Environmental Leader, check out their website for more like this.
Well that’s a wrap for this week. Hopefully you have enjoyed this issue, be sure to email at josh@localwebmaker.com me with comments or feedback, and do share with everyone!