Inquisition Lucid boss Peter Rawlinson
Lucid’s Peter Rawlinson’s is the former Lotus and Jaguar engineer turned electric-car trailblazer
At the risk of going over old ground, it’s worth revisiting some of the numbers for the Air, the first production car from Silicon Valley battery-electric start-up Lucid. CAR visited Lucid in 2018, and rode in an early Air prototype. We were impressed – by the car (a kind of electric S-Class rival with the speed and handling to shame a Porsche) and by the firm’s approach, led by then chief technical ocer and now CTO and CEO Peter Rawlinson. Lucid recently unveiled the production-ready Air (CAR, November 2020) and announced some astonishing numbers: 1065bhp, a 9.24sec standing-quarter mile, an EPA-estimated range of over 500 miles, powerful and compact drive units and a car 17 per cent more ecient, Lucid reckons, than anything else out there.
Bold claims, but Rawlinson’s no Bahar. His CV (Jaguar, Lotus, Tesla) and track record are top drawer. But it’s the ruthless logic with which he engineers his arguments that makes him convincing. That and the fact that he’s just like you and me; a lifelong car enthusiast with a ’60s Lotus Elan in his garage and a McLaren F1 in his dreams. Except he’s a lifelong car enthusiast who now crafts world-leading EVs for a living – and, by doing so, hopes to build a better future for all mankind. Eh?
‘I know! Who’d have believed it?’ chuckles Rawlinson. ‘I got into designing and engineering cars because it was a fun thing to do; never mind that those cars burned fossil fuels and emitted bad stuff… But now, by creating cars like the Air, I’m able to contribute to the wellbeing of mankind. I’m proud of that.’
Rawlinson’s transition is, in no small part, down to the Tesla Model S. ‘The car had been signed off as a design study but it then headed off in some questionable directions, and the project faltered. I went over [to Tesla in California] for an interview and started two weeks later. The car was a success, of course, but what we’re doing here is on another level entirely.’
So it would appear. But how?
In part, Rawlinson puts Lucid’s advantage down to the fact that it does everything in-house rather than using a raft of third-party suppliers, thereby avoiding ‘Frankenstein’ solutions.
‘I’m not going to be disparaging of Porsche – they’re my heroes – but it buys its Taycan motors from Magneti Marelli. The two-speed rear gearbox is from Schaeer. Their inverters are from Hitachi.’ (CAR put this to Porsche, which was keen to point out the difference between an off-the-shelf part or component from a supplier and those commissioned to the
manufacturer’s exacting design and specification.)
Then there’s racing – Lucid makes the battery packs for Formula E (distributed via McLaren). ‘There’s the great myth, isn’t there, that racing improves the breed? Well, it may have done in the ’50s, with disc brakes on D-Types, but it hasn’t since. I’ve worked in advanced engineering my whole career – I should know. F1 is nothing but marketing. Besides, road-car budgets are bigger than F1 budgets. But doing Formula E genuinely has improved our battery, pushing us to a higher voltage [for reduced I squared R losses], for example – the Air’s battery is a mass-produced, Lego-brick version of our Formula E battery.’
Rawlinson also insists he’s happy to change tack if need be. ‘We’re an eciency and technology company. If we’ve backed the wrong horse, I’ll be the first to admit it – and jump horses [the Air’s evolved considerably in the design of its motors, inverters and electrical architecture].’ And he never sets targets. ‘I didn’t do it on the Model S and I don’t do it at Lucid. Instead I challenge our engineers to amaze me. Set goals and people stop there. That’s why, I think, our drive units are so much more compact – everyone else was just happy their units were smaller than a combustion engine and gearbox.’
But how can Rawlinson reasonably expect to change the world with a car out of reach of all but the global elite?
‘Yes, ours is a high-end car, I realise that. But our technologies have been designed for true mass production – they’re not esoteric, dicult-to-make, billet-machined masterpieces inherently ill-suited to volume production. That’s the real message here: that what we’ve learned about eciency and miniaturisation can make a difference. For their power, our drive units are 2.5 times smaller than anything else out there. Think about that in something the size of a Golf. You could have less incompressible space and bigger crumple zones within the car. That could save lives.’
Peter Rawlinson – the car enthusiast working tirelessly to make the world a better place, one electric car at a time.
BEN MILLER