Lucid Motors eyes US, China with ambitious electric car roll out

US-based electric vehicle start-up Lucid Motors, which is partially backed by Chinese money, on Wednesday unveiled its US$100,000 luxury concept car with plans to put the vehicle on the road by 2018 to compete with Tesla Motors.

Lucid, which counts China’s LeEco, venture capital firm Tsing Capital and state-owned Beijing Auto among its investors, is the latest company attempting to build electric cars from scratch to crack the US and Chinese car markets.

It joins the ranks of carmakers such as LeEco-backed Faraday Future and Karma Automotive, a subsidiary of Chinese automotive components company Wanxiang Group Corporation, in a race to compete with and even unseat Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors.

The company showed off its Lucid Air vehicle at a launch event on Wednesday. The Air, which is still a concept vehicle, comes with two electric motors that deliver a combined 1,000 horsepower, offers a driving range of over 640 kilometres, and will purportedly be able to accelerate from zero to 100 km/per hour in just 2.5 seconds.

Lucid has ambitious plans in that it hopes to start producing cars by 2018, leaving less than two years for the company to build its factory, finalise the production design for the Lucid Air and manufacture the vehicles.

The company has already begun taking US$2,500 deposits from consumers eager to get their hands on the car in 2018, despite the fact that the company’s planned factory in Arizona has yet to begin construction. It hopes to first crack the US market before moving on to China and Europe.

“There are many such auto start-ups in the industry now, but whether they are able to succeed is still too early to say,” said Zhang Yu, managing director of Shanghai-based research firm Automotive Insight. “Out of the lot, if even one manages to succeed, that would be good news.”