Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The original title: "American Xiaopeng will go on sale in China!" Musk just complained that he would close down, and the price of the top car was 1.07 million. "

And Tesla look down on each other.

Another new American power is coming to China!

Lucid, a high-end pure electric car company founded in the United States, is rubbing its hands on China, the largest auto market.

Just two days ago, Lucid quietly updated dozens of job postings on its official website, showing that the job location was in Shanghai, including 14 positions in digital information, hardware engineering, law, logistics management, supply chain, retail and other fields.

Lucid did not specify the number of recruits for each position, but many positions require proficiency in both Chinese and English, or two or more years of working experience in a Chinese company.

From the perspective of recruitment positions, Lucid pays more attention to local services in China, such as software algorithms and supply chain management.

Source: Lucid has always been known as the "Tesla killer" Lucid, regardless of the model or positioning, almost always chasing Tesla to fight. Now, with hindsight, Lucid has finally begun to make a contribution to the Chinese market.

But just two days ago, Tesla CEO Musk joked on Twitter, "Lucid is not far from bankruptcy."

01. Who is Lucid? In November last year, Lucid said in its first financial report after listing that it planned to enter the Chinese market in 2023.

Peter Rawlinson, CEO of the company at the time, said in an interview that he had identified the next decade's plan for the development of the company, and planned to set up factories in China and the Middle East around 2025.

Source: Lucid actually started recruiting Lucid in China in May this year, when the positions were only for procurement and supply chain and human resources areas, such as supplier quality manager, supplier quality engineer, etc.

This extensive recruitment may serve as the beginning of Lucid's layout in the Chinese market.

In fact, many people think that Lucid will enter the Chinese market sooner or later.

In 2007, Bernard Tse (Xie Jiapeng), a former vice president and director of Tesla, quit from Tesla, and another senior executive who left Oracle, Sam Weng (Wen Shiming), founded Atieva in California, the predecessor of Lucid.

Source: in its early years, this company was positioned not as a whole car company, but to develop advanced technologies (battery technology and electric assemblies) for electric vehicles and to provide products to OEM as a supplier, such as battery technology to Formula E racing champions.

In January 2014, BAIC participated in Lucid's round C financing with $100 million, with a 25% stake, making it the largest shareholder in Lucid. In July of that year, Jia Yueting invested US $200m in Lucid followers, making him the second largest shareholder. It was only then that Lucid decided to transform itself from a core component supplier to a new energy carmaker.

Source: in Lucid2016, Atieva changed its name to Lucid Motors, began to enter the new energy vehicle industry, and officially announced its plans to develop all-electric high-performance luxury cars. In December of the same year, Lucid's first model, the Lucid Air, was officially launched, when the limited edition sold for more than $250000 (about 1.74 million yuan) and was produced at its own Arizona factory.

In 2016, BAIC transferred its stake to Jia Yueting, who held nearly 40% of the shares, making it the largest shareholder. Until 2018, when Faraday was in financial crisis in the future, Jia Yueting sold Lucid shares.

That is, the game of capital, so that founder Xie Jiapeng was knocked out.

In July 2021, Lucid was successfully listed in the United States as SPAC. It peaked at 90 billion market capitalization and is now 3/4 owned by PIF, the world's richest sovereign wealth fund.

Source: screenshot but since the beginning of this year, as the new energy car market has not lived up to expectations, Lucid's share price has begun to decline, and now it has fallen to about $8, wiping out half of its market capitalization to $13.4 billion.

02, and Tesla despise each other. Musk has hinted many times on the social platform that Lucid is the "old, weak, sick and disabled" separated from Tesla.

Why is Musk so dismissive of Lucid?

This is because there is Tesla's blood in Lucid's bones.

First of all, Bernard Tse (Xie Jiapeng), the founder of Lucid, is Tesla's original founding shareholder and board member.

Back in 2003, when Tesla was just founded, when Musk was still studying how to launch rockets, Tesla's founder and first CEO Martin Eberhard invited Xie Jiapeng to join Tesla as Tesla Executive Vice President and General Manager of Battery Energy, overseeing the design, development and manufacture of battery packs by Tesla Roadster and other automakers.

Later, Xie Jiapeng left and founded Lucid, while Martin Eberhard turned away from Tesla to become a technical consultant to Lucid because he had a little trouble with Boss Ma.

It is precisely because of this background that it is not difficult for Lucid to poach people from Tesla.

So from founder to CEO to engineer, almost 1/3 of Lucid's employees come from Tesla, and six of the 12 core executives have Tesla background, in charge of research and development, manufacturing, supply chain, sales and finance and other important departments.

The most famous executive is Lucid's current CEO&CTO Peter Rawlinson (Peter Rawlinson), who once served as chief engineer of Models S and joined Atieva in 2013 as CTO,2019 's CEO since April of Lucid.

When Peter Rawlinson, a former chief engineer of Model S, a core employee of Tesla, who was publicly ridiculed by Musk, joined Atieva in 2013, the "Tesla killer" was beginning to take shape.

At this time, Atieva is also famous in the United States for its excellent battery technology and power assembly.

Then Lucid gathered a large number of former Tesla core employees, including Peter Hochholdinge, former vice president of production, Eric Bach, former vice president of hardware engineering, Peter Hasenkamp, vice president of supply chain management, Doreen Allen, sales director, and so on.

Source: the production and manufacture of web screenshots is Tesla's advantage, but Lucid stabbed Tesla heavily in these key positions.

At that time, these core figures of Tesla, the automobile veterans of R & D, production and supply chain, their greatest capital was to successfully build the epoch-making Model S, perhaps this is the strength of Lucid to build luxury cars.

Source: Lucid this is why Boss Ma dislikes Lucid as a new car builder. He has expressed his dislike of Lucid more than once. In June this year, he publicly stated that unless Rivian and Lucid had major changes, they would both go bankrupt and they were going bankrupt.

And Lucid treats Tesla the same way. Lucid said that Tesla is not their competitor, they are going to occupy the luxury electric car market, in other words, they think Tesla is more innovative, but not luxurious enough.

Is there still a chance to enter China? Judging from the people who used to change jobs for Tesla, Lucid has no shortage of skills.

After all, they were born in Sandian, and the first model, the Lucid Air, had the lowest stroke resistance coefficient of mass-produced electric cars at that time, with only the 0.21cd.

Source: the compact motor in the LucidLucid Air is one of the lightest and most powerful motors available. It is rated at 670 horsepower but weighs only 67 pounds.

Although the technology is innovative enough, for Lucid, entering the Chinese market is not a simple game war with Tesla.

Now China is the largest passenger car market in the world by sales. In the first 11 months of this year, the retail volume of new energy passenger vehicles in China was 5.03 million, an increase of 100.1% over the same period last year. The retail penetration of new energy passenger cars rose to 36.3% in November, up 15% from the same period last year.

Correspondingly, new forces such as Wei Xiaoli, Eian and polar krypton. And in the past few years, the main problem of Lucid is lack of money and slow mass production.

The first thing that needs to be solved in building a car is the problem of capital. Lucid has been unable to deliver the first model because of financial problems. Entering the Chinese market needs the support of a large amount of money.

And the entry-level version of the Lucid starts at nearly $90,000, or 600000 yuan, while the top model sells for $154000 (about 1.07 million yuan). This price is not the main sales force of China's family car market, and it is obviously difficult to form a scale effect. Unable to open sales, the next step will be difficult.

Tesla, for example, sold 103181 vehicles in 2017, while the Model 3 sold only 1764 vehicles, with a loss of $2.241 billion that year. After that, the inexpensive Model 3 was localized in China, which became the key to Tesla's turnaround.

Source: Lucid does not launch lower-priced pure electric cars, and it is difficult for Lucid to gain a foothold in the Chinese market. But the good news is that according to Lucid's strategic plan for China, there is already an idea to launch a standard Model 3 model.

However, brand recognition is also an important factor. At present, the domestic new energy market has become saturated, and there are old car companies in front and local new power car brands in the past, showing a situation of encirclement and attack.

And until now, Lucid does not have an official Chinese name, will you place an order?

This article is from the official account of Wechat: Chaodian Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab), author: Wang Lei

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