After Atieva’s first vehicle was outed last week by public filings with the state of California obtained by Recode, the company announced today that it is changing its name to ‘Lucid Motors’. For the occasion, the company also released new teaser images of its upcoming all-electric sedan.
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While electric car startup Atieva is only officially showing its crazy Edna electric van as a test mule, the company made it clear that the powertrain being tested will first be commercialized in a luxury sedan which it as yet to officially unveil.
But now Recode gives us our first look, albeit grainy but we will take it, at the upcoming vehicle through an image obtained in public documents filed with the state of California.
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After first unveiling its all-electric van Edna, a test mule for its electric powertrain, and benchmarking it against a Tesla Model S earlier this year, Atieva made some upgrades and tested it against a BMW i8 and a Viper.
The electric car startup is back to the dragstrip with a new (3rd) version of its prototype, which is equipped with a new high-power inverter, and the vehicle can now perform a 0-60 mph run in 2.74 seconds.
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If Atieva wasn’t able to convince you that it has an impressive all-electric powertrain by achieving a 0 to 60 mph acceleration in just over 3 seconds… in a van, the startup might be able to change your mind now that it managed to bring it down under 3 seconds – 2.94 seconds to be exact.
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Atieva, a well-funded electric car startup led on the engineering side by Peter Rawlinson, former Tesla VP and Model S Chief Engineer, introduced today its first prototype, Edna, an all-electric van with supercar-like performance.
The vehicle is used to showcase the company’s all-electric platform, which will be first commercialized in a luxury sedan and not a van, but in the meantime, Atieva benchmarked the van against a Ferrari and a Tesla Model S.
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Last year, we reported on Atieva, an electric vehicle startup founded by Bernard Tse, a former Tesla Vice President and board member. Tse was on Tesla’s board from 2003 to 2007 and he headed Tesla’s short-lived energy division during his last year at the company – long before it relaunched a new and improved ‘Tesla Energy’ division in 2015.
Tse resigned from the board to head the ‘Tesla Energy Group’, but left not long after Martin Eberhard, then Tesla’s CEO and longtime friend of Tse, was ousted by Elon Musk. Tesla reorganized to adjust their worrying cash burn at the time and focused on the Tesla Roadster instead of energy storage solutions.
After leaving, he found Atieva with the ambition to make it something similar to what he and Eberhard hoped the ‘Tesla Energy Group’ could become; a company developing cell agnostic battery packs both for third-party electric vehicles and other energy storage applications.
But as we reported last year, the company eventually hired Peter Rawlinson, Tesla VP and Model S Chief Engineer, along with several other EV experts from Tesla and other companies, and then changed its focus to bring to market a new electric vehicle from the ground up and not just the drivetrain.
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The Chinese auto giant Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co, through its Beijing Electric Vehicle Co subsidiary, opened a research and development center in Silicon Valley. The center will be dedicated to electric vehicle research.
In its current “launch phase”, the R&D center has just over 20 employees and the company expects them to develop “4 to 6 models per year”.
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Leshi Internet Information & Technology, also known as LeTV, is a large Chinese company most popular for its Netflix-like service on LeTV.com. Earlier this year, CEO Jia Yueting sold $1.61 billion worth LeTV’s shares, $1.2 billion of which he loaned right back to the company to finance the numerous projects they are working on, which include a smartphone, smart TV and electric cars…
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Out of the 5 founding members of Tesla motors, only two remain with the company; of course the now famous Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, Chairman and Product Architect, and JB Straubel, Tesla’s Chief Technology Officer. But the three expatriates; Marc Tarpenning, Martin Eberhard and Ian Wright, were instrumental to the founding of Tesla and although they left the car company, some in better terms than others, it is interesting to learn about what they are doing now. Unsurprisingly, most of them are still in the EV business.
Bernard Tse, a former Tesla Motors Vice President and board member, founded Atieva in 2007 after leaving Tesla. The company was first setup to make software to manage battery packs and package their tech for a cell agnostic battery pack technology, but they evolved while operating in “stealth mode” for the past few years, now we learn they have been working on not only the batteries, but a complete electric vehicle.
The company describes the vehicle as a “breakthrough electric car”. They don’t want to elaborate and It’s hardly a confirmation, but looking at the animation on their website, their vehicle might be a 2-door sport car.
