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Another car company has joined the "price war", this time Lucid, a new force in American car-building.

On Aug. 5, Lucid, an American electric carmaker, announced a price cut for its three luxury electric sedan Air models. Among them, the price of the entry-level model Air Pure is reduced by $10650 (about 76000 yuan) to start at $82400, while the mid-range model Touring and the high-end model Grand Touring are reduced by $12550 (about 90, 000 yuan) to start at $95000 and $125600, respectively.

In addition, Lucid offers varying degrees of rental discounts, reducing the monthly rental price of the above models from $9.95 to $1499 per month to $749 to $1399 per month. In addition, Lucid will launch a lower-priced Pure rear-drive model, which is expected to sell for $77400, and the new car will go on sale in September.

The Air Pure, Lucid's first production model, went on sale in September 2010. it starts at $87400 and competes with luxury cars including Tesla Model S, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The price adjustment means that two Lucid models will sell for less than $100000. For comparison, Lucid Air's direct competitor Tesla Model S and the performance version of Model S Plaid are priced at $88490 and $108490, respectively, down from $104990 and $135990 at the start of the year.

Industry insiders believe that the reason why Lucid announced the price reduction, on the one hand, is that it hopes to exchange price for quantity, on the other hand, it is affected by Tesla's global price reduction. During the year, Tesla significantly reduced the price of its models in China, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Europe and other countries and regions. Among them, earlier this year, Tesla reduced the price of Model X and Model S by 8000 US dollars in the United States.

It should be noted that although Lucid and Tesla's early development path is the same, its product positioning is also high-end luxury electric vehicles, but the performance of the two brands in the car market is completely different. Different from the new domestic car-building forces, the American electric car market is dominated by Tesla, while Lucid sales are in the doldrums. According to Lucid's financial data, production and delivery in the first quarter of this year were 2314 and 1406, respectively, and in the second quarter, 2173 and 1404, respectively. In other words, in the first two quarters of this year, Lucid delivered only 2810 new cars, while the cumulative production was 4487, there is a supply glut, which means that Lucid currently has more inventory. For comparison, Tesla delivered 466100 new cars worldwide in the second quarter alone, compared with a wide gap between the two.

According to data, Lucid was founded in 2007 by Xie Jiapeng (Bernard Tse), a former vice president and director of Tesla, and Wen Shiming (Sam Weng), a former Oracle executive, formerly known as Atieva, an American electric car company headquartered in California. Lucid early positioning is not a whole vehicle company, but focuses on the research and development of battery, electric control and electric drive technology, and locates the core system provider of new energy vehicles, namely "Intel in the field of new energy vehicles".

In October 2016, Atieva announced its entry into the auto market and renamed the company Lucid Motors to position luxury electric cars. In the same year, Lucid Motors launched its first model, the Lucid Air, but failed to achieve mass production due to financial constraints. In September 2018, the company received a strategic investment of US $1 billion from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), followed by the construction of an Arizona plant and a resumption of the Lucid Air mass production program, which was completed and used to produce Lucid Air models in December of the following year.

Earlier media reported that the new US power Lucid will settle in Shanghai and has begun to make preparations for entering the Chinese market. According to the Lucid product plan, the brand will launch seven models on three platforms, including a medium-sized sedan with a positioning similar to Tesla Model 3, which is expected to sell for about 200000 yuan after it is made in China.

However, from the current domestic market analysis, it is not easy for Lucid to enter the Chinese market. As a reference, in the past 2022, the top three domestic new energy vehicle sales companies were BYD, SAIC GM Wuling and Tesla China, with sales of 1.7999 million, 442100 and 439800 respectively, of which BYD's market share reached 31.7%. In addition, the domestic car-building new force "Wei Xiaoli" delivery volume also reached 100000 vehicles. In contrast, Lucid brand, its current products on sale only Lucid Air model and in the global voice is not high, obviously, it is difficult to enter the highly competitive Chinese market.

Earlier this year, Lucid set its production target for 2023 at 10-14000 vehicles, or an average of 2500-3500 vehicles per quarter, but in May, Lucid announced that it had lowered its annual sales target to 10, 000 vehicles. So far, Lucid has produced 4487 vehicles and sold only 2810 in the first two quarters of this year, and Lucid still has a long way to go to achieve sales growth.

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