The Lucid Air Sapphire will “outrun a Formula One car” says boss

The car is the Lucid Air Sapphire, expected to launch later this summer. The speaker is Lucid Motors bossman, Peter Rawlinson.

“I'm testing a prototype on the road at the moment,” Rawlinson told TG.com in an interview, “If you put that car on the Formula One grid, it’ll out run the rest of the grid up to about 80 miles an hour. Above 80, [the F1 cars] get downforce and have better power-to-weight ratios. But it's quite a machine.”

That makes us quite interested. Previously chief engineer of the Tesla Model S, Rawlinson has plenty of reasons to be happy. He's just closed a chunky $450 million deal with Aston Martin. It’s ultimately given a gold star to the innovative design of Lucid’s electric motor set-up. And the Sapphire?

Rawlinson smiles mischievously, as he confirms that it swallows 0-60mph in a face-melting 1.89 seconds. He wants to share more about Lucid's future plans now the deal is done.

Lucid’s more impressively known for being in the top three of longest range EVs in the world, with the Air’s 519 miles trumped only by the 621-mile 2023 Tesla Roadster (not launching until 2024, apparently), and the 150kWh Nio ET7 with its 578-mile range. But deliveries haven't yet started for that either.

With its credentials bolstered by Aston Martin, despite years developing race tech with the Formula E series, Lucid could become a household name. We already knew it was developing an electric SUV to rival the Tesla Model X, called Gravity. That’s set to launch in 2024 and will be a three-row seven-seater.

Then there’ll be a Tesla Model 3 competitor after that – around the same time Aston plans on launching its first model ‘powered by Lucid Motors’.

Rawlinson is emphatic about both the need for the transition to electric quickly, and the need for genuine alternatives to Tesla. He said: “This was the hottest June on record in the UK. I don’t know if you've seen the sea temperature map this year. It is alarmingly warm – about two degrees Celsius above where it should be, particularly on the east coast of Upper Britain.

“We need to sort of make the transition to sustainable mobility much, much faster. Right now there's only one true runner in this race and it's Tesla.”

But, despite the urgency, the Lucid boss says it’s imperative for the brand to start at the luxury end of the market, even in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

“This is not well understood. If we tried to create a mass market car to start with, we wouldn't be having this conversation now. I would've needed to raise $14 billion, not the initial $1.4 billion, and no one would've given me $14 billion as a startup.”

Like Tesla – where low volume, high-priced Roadsters and Model S cars were made ahead of the more affordable 3 and Y options – Lucid is starting big (and clearly very fast) and working its way down.