Lucid Motors confirmed that it now has over 10,000 reservations for the Air, its first car and a luxury electric sedan.
It might not sound as impressive as numbers of reservations in some other programs, but it’s actually not bad.
Lucid has faced some delays in bringing its first electric vehicle to production, but it’s getting pretty close, according to new comments from Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson.
On CNBC yesterday, Rawlinson stated that Lucid is now producing quality validation prototypes at its factory in Arizona and is on track to start deliveries to customers by the end of the year:
We achieved a landmark last Friday when we started building our quality validation production run of cars. We completed our pre-production run very successfully. The quality validation builds are the cars that we eventually will sell directly to customers once we got the quality right. This is a big step in our mission to industrialize.
He didn’t specify when that will happen, but he is sticking to the goal of having the first deliveries of the Dream edition of the Air during the second half of the year.
That slipped from Q2 2021, which was first announced last year when Lucid unveiled the updated version of the Air:
| Models | Price (USD before incentives) | Range (EPA Est.) | Horsepower | Performance specs (0-60s acceleration, 1/4 mile time, top speed) | Charging (up to) | Availability |
| Air | $69,900 | 406 miles | 480 hp | TBA | 300 miles in 20 mins – 1,200 mph | 2022 |
| Air Touring | $95,000 | 406 miles | 620 hp | 3.2s, 11.4s, 155 mph | 300 miles in 20 mins – 1,200 mph | Q4 2021 |
| Air Grand Touring | $139,000 | 517 miles | 800 hp | 3.0s, 10.8s, 168 mph | 300 miles in 20 mins – 1,200 mph | Q2 2021 |
| Air Dream Edition | $169,000 | 503 miles | 1,080 hp | 2.5s, 9.9s, 168 mph | 300 miles in 20 mins – 1,200 mph | Q2 2021 |
The Dream is already sold out, but Lucid is only planning to build about 500 units of that version.
We are more interested about the demand for the all the versions combined, which is now over 10,000 pre-orders, according to the CEO.
Reservation holders have to put down a deposit of $300 to $1,000, depending on the version.
Electrek’s Take
It might not sound like much compared to numbers we have heard from Tesla and others, like Ford and its now more than 100,000 pre-orders for the F-150 Lightning, but it is still impressive.
You need to consider that Lucid hasn’t delivered anything yet, and it’s harder for them to build the credibility in order to inspire people to place orders.
In the summer of 2012, before Tesla delivered the Model S, it had about 12,000 reservations for the electric sedan.
That was after Tesla had already delivered the Roadster and built some credibility.
However, Lucid is in a better situation since Tesla has already help build credibility for electric vehicles in general, which it didn’t have back then.
At this point, I’m very confident that Lucid will at least deliver the Air. Where it will go from there is still up in the air, but Lucid is one of my favorite EV startups.
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