Tesla-competitor Lucid makes first deliveries of its Air luxury sedan

After a long period of hype and attention, EV-startup Lucid appears to finally be on the cusp of taking the electric fight right to Tesla. The past weekend saw the first-ever Lucid Air Dream Edition sedans - 520 of them to be exact - rolling out of the factory and into the homes of their proud new owners. 

The milestone, arguably one that has been in the making for years, was commemorated through an elaborate launch ceremony organised by the Silicon Valley-based carmaker. Unlike your run-of-the-mill handover procedure, customers were not simply given the keys to their luxury sedans during the 'Dream Delivery event', but brought on a two-hour rally around the Bay Area by Lucid executives to experience the car's engineering prowess.

It's worth noting here that Lucid is making the decision to prioritise production of the Dream Edition, the highest-end variant of its Air sedan, which made up all 520 cars delivered (and were further configured to customer specifications). Customers who have pre-ordered the other trim levels - Grand Touring, Touring and Pure editions - will receive their cars in 2022. 

Within the flagship Dream Edition itself, however, comes even more differentiation based on the individual driver's inclinations. The Air Dream Edition Range made headlines when it was announced that it had clocked in 837km on range tests from the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), surpassing its closest competitor by 160km. On the other hand, the Air Dream Edition Performance has been tuned to boast a neck-breaking 1065bhp of power. But even the entry-level Air Pure Edition should do 653km on a full charge and come with 480bhp. Range anxiety and lackluster performance who?

Moving forward, all eyes will continue to be trained on Lucid to see if it can scale up production in a consistent enough manner to seriously threaten current EV market-leader, Tesla. Lucid's CEO and CTO (that means Chief Technology Officer), Peter Rawlinson, is widely known for his previous contributions to Elon Musk's company, where he served as Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, and Vehicle Engineer of the groundbreaking Model S. He left in 2012; Lucid was started in 2013.

Earlier last week, Rawlinson also noted that Lucid and Tesla remain the only two companies in the world to his knowledge that handle the entire process of EV-making in-house, including the vital production of their own battery packs. General Motors, for instance, has been bogged down for a large part of 2021 by battery-fire issues in the Chevrolet Bolt EV that were arguably not of its own doing; it sources the battery packs from South Korean giant, LG.