Tesla's production head goes to EV startup Lucid Motors
Tesla's production head in charge of its Fremont factory, Peter Hochholdinger, will have a similar position with Lucid Motors, an electric car start that will soon move on to production.
Last week, Electrek revealed that Hochholdinger was leaving Tesla after three years as the production head for the electric car manufacturer.
At that time, we reported based on internal sources that Hochholdinger left, but neither Tesla nor the executive wanted to comment.
Now we have learned that it was because he was going to a competitor: Lucid Motors.
Lucid Motors has kindly spun out of Tesla. It was started by a former Tesla board member and leader and led by Peter Rawlinson, former chief engineer of Tesla Model S.
Several other Tesla engineers and executives have also joined the startup, and they now also add Hochholdings to the team.
Today, the startup announced that Tesla and the Audi veteran are a director of Manufacturing, and he will lead "Lucid's global manufacturing business, beginning with Lucid's plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, and manufacturing engineer."
Rawlinson commented the rent :
"We are pleased to welcome Peter to the Lucid team. Peter's extensive experience and proven leadership in premium vehicle production will be invaluable as we continue our progress towards the launch of Lucid Air and future models. By joining Lucid, Peter is empowered to create an industry-leading manufacturing process that will deliver the quality products our demanding customers demand and deserve. "[201[ads1]7] Lucid Motors announced an aggressive $ 60,000 base price for its luxurious all-electric Lucid Air sedan, with a range of 240 miles and some other interesting specifications.
At that time, Lucid also revealed his plan for a $ 700 million factory in Arizona to produce Air in 2018.
But they had difficulties increasing the capital needed to start construction on the plant until they secured over $ 1 billion dollar in investments from Saudi Arabia last year.
Now they are planning to start production by 2020.
Electrek's Take
While I was sad to see Peter leaving Tesla last week, I'm glad he at least puts his talent to accelerate the production of electric vehicles.
He will probably be a great help for Lucid's production work since bringing a car to production within next year will be extremely difficult for the relatively small start up, even with $ 1 billion in pockets.
But I'm more concerned with the vehicle itself.
We were very impressed with Lucid Air's specifications, design and price, but it was in 2017 and the car would come out in 2018.
Electric vehicles are evolving so fast that this two-year delay is a big deal, And the specifications are now not as impressive as we look at what comes in 2020.
Hopefully, Lucid plans to upgrade the Air specifications before being brought to production.
We will keep you updated as they make progress on bringing the electric car to the market.
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