Lucid, the darling of the capital markets, how far is it from challenging Tesla?

The new energy vehicle track has become a hot spot in the capital market for many years. In 2020, driven by Tesla, China's Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal 3 new car-making forces have also taken off in an all-round way, becoming the brightest boy in the entire US stock market, and the entire industry has also jumped from concept to brand and market competition. In 2021, the baton of the market passed to the shares of lucid group and rivian Automotive, two newly listed companies.

Among them, Rivian is backed by amazon and Ford, two giants, mainly electric pickup trucks and trucks, after the listing of the stock rose sharply after a wave into silence; while Lucid directly benchmarked Tesla, delivered the first batch of products in October and received consumer recognition, the stock price is not stable in the case of a flat situation is a way up.

Although every electric car will actively or passively benchmark with Tesla when facing investors, only Lucid has a continuous historical relationship with Tesla. In a way, it can be said that "Lucid is the Tesla without Musk".

Lucid's "love-hate feud" with Tesla and Musk

Musk is not a founding shareholder of Tesla, but entered and became the chairman of the company when Tesla was in a financial crisis, and after Musk entered the game, a large number of tesla executives resigned, including Xie Jiapeng, who was in charge of battery system research and development, who was also one of Tesla's founding directors.

After leaving, Xie Jiapeng founded Atieva, initially focused on supplying batteries and powertrains to automakers. In 2013, Peter Rawlinson, a former chief engineer at Tesla's Model S, was "poached" to the company as CTO.

In 2016, Atieva changed its name to Lucid Motors and officially announced the development of a pure electric, high-performance luxury model, the Lucid Air. According to reports, about half of Lucid's engineers are from Tesla, and some media have jokingly called Lucid "Tesla's Avengers".

As an aside, Jia Yueting, who was bent on building a car, once held nearly 40% of Lucid's equity, but unfortunately, after LeEco fell apart, he changed hands to save it, and he can't imagine what kind of situation it would be today if he insisted on holding it at that time.

When Lucid strategically shifted from battery to vehicle manufacturing, Peter Rawlinson rose to CEO, under his leadership, in 2021, Lucid ushered in a substantial leap forward development: in July through SPAC successfully listed on the NASDAQ, and won the enthusiasm of capital; in October, the first model Lucid Air began delivery, and was well received by many electric vehicle enthusiasts.

Rawlinson has said several times in interviews as Lucid CEO that much of his electric vehicle expertise comes from his experience as principal engineer on Tesla's Model S project in the early 2010s.

However, Musk has repeatedly disputed this claim, writing on his own Twitter in May:

"Rawlinson was never the chief engineer. He arrived after the Model S prototype was completed and left before things got tough. He is only responsible for bodywork, not powertrains, batteries, software, production or design. ”

Rawlinson has also talked about why he left Tesla in 2012, including the sentence, "My boss didn't treat me very well." ”

The darling of the capital markets: Lucid

The capital market has always been optimistic about the new energy vehicle track, and compared with many competitors who proposed to build cars, Lucid is very early to fulfill its promise - on time and mass production delivery of the first product.

And according to the feedback of electric vehicle enthusiasts, this is still a very good product. One of the biggest buying points is that the EPA has a range of more than 160 kilometers higher than the Tesla Model S, reaching 837 kilometers, which is currently the most powerful electric vehicle with endurance.

In the recent MotorTrend Car of the Year awards, Lucid Air beat a number of competitors to win the "Car of the Year" award, excelling in six key criteria for efficiency, value, design advancement, engineering excellence, safety and performance of expected features. Of course, as a new car, it needs further testing in the market.

The Lucid Air is currently priced at $169,000, which is much more expensive than Tesla's top coupe model, the Model S Plaid. Lucid says Tesla is an innovative product, but has no luxury attributes, and Lucid sees itself as a luxury brand.

Despite the high pricing of the product, it did not affect sales, according to the company's 3 quarterly report, Air orders grew very rapidly, having received more than 17,000 orders, and the order amount is expected to exceed 1.3 billion US dollars. The company expects to achieve its goal of producing 20,000 vehicles in 2022.

Lucid has already begun its overseas expansion from the Canadian market and plans to expand into europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2022 and the Chinese market in 2023. According to the third quarter report, the company holds 4.8 billion cash flow on its books, and there is absolutely no shortage of money for future production expansion and market expansion.

The sufficient cash flow, order volume and mass production information revealed in the financial report inevitably make investors think about the future company's stock price. On December 20, Lucid Automotive was officially added to the NASDAQ 100 Stock Index, further enhancing the liquidity and attention of the stock.

Of course, compared with Tesla, the gap between the two is still not small. With Musk's extremely flamboyant personality and ability, tesla has elevated the electric vehicle industry to a new height under the difficult situation of being attacked by capital in many ways, and Musk himself has almost been crowned king with Tesla's all the way up.

However, as an industry with a large enough market capacity, after gradually maturing, it will definitely not be a winner-take-all state, and the leader's personality is too distinct for the development of the enterprise. It can be expected that more competitors will inevitably enter the game and form a relatively stable pattern.

In contrast, Lucid and Tesla are in the same line of technical genes, and the product force is likely to be not weaker than Tesla; but it will definitely take a more traditional and stable route in terms of ecological construction and brand influence. But that's not a bad thing for a business. After all, commercial success doesn't necessarily mean absolute disruption. On the contrary, the sign of the maturity of the industry is the entry of many enterprises and the entry of a stable profit growth stage