> In this final response, the employee stated that Lucid had “decided to waive the charges that are in question,” and that it “[hopes] that this goodwill will encourage [them] to continue to be a customer.”
This is the worst bit imo, they filed egregious charges even considering their vague criteria for inspection, and then considered it goodwill when they chose to waive said charges.
I hope lucid hasn't entered the startup phase where they have to turn a profit and start to rent seek in an effort to turn profitable. Surely the saudis will want a return on investment at some point
Lucid is still losing 6 figures on every car it sells. They are about as far from "turn a profit phase" as any company on Earth has ever been. Lucid is like the anti-Boeing or anti-GE. People bag on those companies for putting bean counters in charge and marginalizing engineers in leadership. Lucid is the opposite. They put engineers in charge and the bean counters are MIA. So you get ridiculously complex and hard to manufacture designs that lose money like crazy.
I did a tour of their manufacturing facility.... The cars are really well designed and honestly do not seem overly complex. If they are losing money, they should probably consider moving their headquarters out of CA to someplace more affordable.
For EV design, automotive experience, with the capability of building from the ground up, it's not competitive.
CA has nothing to do with it. Looking at their PLM engineer openings, they get paid less than the big 3.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
>Their starting engineer salary is almost double the national average.
Proof? They don't really hire new engineers.
For assembly line workers, you do realize they have to? There's a thing called UAW that would be a death sentence to them.
Tell me how you have 0 clue about the industry without saying it.
> Proof? They don't really hire new engineers.
>
> For assembly line workers, you do realize they have to? There's a thing called UAW that would be a death sentence to them.
>
> Tell me how you have 0 clue about the industry without saying it.
Wow, you are getting really butt hurt on this.
Straight from Lucid employees is how I know about the starting salaries and the reason why I am not directly saying what they are on a public forum.
AZ is a right to work state.
>Straight from Lucid employees is how I know about the starting salaries and the reason why I am not directly saying what they are on a public forum.
Hmm. You would then know they don't hire fresh grads for their technical/functional areas? Especially engineers.
Which lucid employee? I can ask them personally and see if you're full of it. I know pretty much everyone there worth a damn and can make those decisions. Unless I take it you got that info from a sales person that has 0 clue about the org.
>AZ is a right to work state.
Uh, k? So? What, do you think you can't unionize in one? Lmao.
Yeah...because you have no clue the shit show it is to get it to that phase lol.
Also, wtf does CA have to do with it. They go where talent is. You think ex Tesla folks want to live in Phoenix ? Lmao
>You think ex Tesla folks want to live in Phoenix ? Lmao
Well, my point was that they are not being financially smart, so... maybe not. Apparently, that talent costs them 6 figures per car... even with billions in Saudi funding...
Just to educate you:
1. 6 figures per car is because of the low volume and their infrastructure. Like any startup, growth + market share >> near term profitability when you have funding. Name any major scaler, they all took heavy losses in the start- this is especially the case with automotives.
2. They are building infrastructure to scale fast. Just like the Tesla model -the premium cars were/are the pilot. They learned and improved efficiencies, and then they will roll out their high volume model in 2-4 years from now, and then the price per car drops significantly.
3. You're comparing traditional OEMs vs startups. That's apples to oranges. Nowadays, highly skilled talent does not want to live in bumble fuck. That may be the case for boomers, but when you're in high demand you can take your pick.
4. Those high demand folks that join startups work much harder/longer than 10 hour days. You join because of the vision. Compare that to a mature company, expect 1.5x more work for the same headcount.
5. As I mentioned, the talent that you're whining about is not even a percent of the total overall costs. That is why manufacturing is elsewhere. All the main facilities (AZ, Middle East) are there and arbitraged the biggest spend already.
I hope you research before you make a wild statement some day.
Seriously, given the commercial rates for electricity in CA, just shifting their headquarters to AZ (even with the high summer temps), would save them ~ $20k/month on their electric bill.
>You're comparing traditional OEMs vs startups. That's apples to oranges. Nowadays, highly skilled talent does not want to live in bumble fuck. That may be the case for boomers, but when you're in high demand you can take your pick.
>Those high demand folks that join startups work much harder/longer than 10 hour days. You join because of the vision. Compare that to a mature company, expect 1.5x more work for the same headcount.
If they are looking for slave labor engineers, they are probably utilizing H-1B visas. I think you are seriously over evaluating highly talented engineers wants/needs and where they are willing to live (Almost as if there is some kind of denial). While I would never recommend anyone move to AZ (It's just a desert with no water where everyone rides horses and there are absolutely zero recreational options) I feel that those who work in the car industry are already passionate about what they do. Its one of those fields where you get to see the results of your work being used almost everyday.
>If they are looking for slave labor engineers, they are probably utilizing H-1B visas
They don't.
>I think you are seriously over evaluating highly talented engineers wants/needs and where they are willing to live (Almost as if there is some kind of denial
Not really. Examples : tech and pharma. They station where the talent pipeline and pool is at.
> I feel that those who work in the car industry are already passionate about what they do
Lmao. Typical subjective speculation. Always the argument when you have no facts.
>Its one of those fields where you get to see the results of your work being used almost everyday.
Are you moving to a crappy town/area for essentially a higher risk startup company & mediocre wages? Yeah... Don't think so.
You keep talking as you know anything. I have deeper understanding on all these companies you've talked about than you ever will.
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You do realize the barrier to entry in the automotive world is extremely large, right?
Also, what would moving their headquarters do, or lowering the engineering pay by moving elsewhere?
You're kind of moving away from your original point (which is wrong, and maybe why you're swaying)
I had to double check that six figure math since most people tie the entire company's deficit into production costs, but their cost of goods sold is actually twice their revenue. Based on cars sold, their COGS is $90k more on average than the revenue generated per car. Yikes that's bad.
They really need to increase their volume, drive down costs and lower prices. Otherwise other manufacturers that are significantly cheaper AND profitable will continue to eat up the market.
And yet, you have to disassemble the dash to change the cabin air filter. Putting the engineers in charge isn’t always a bad thing, but it helps if they’re not sadists.
There are engineering disciplines which specialize in design for manufacturing and design for maintenance. Does Lucid have any of these engineers on staff? Idk, but there are plenty of engineers in the world with good minds for making something easy to service. It is usually fighting with the industrial design guys that makes for complicated designs. As one who spent a decade engineering business class aircraft furniture, I had plenty of arguments/discussions with our IDs.
Really good nugget here.
I work in an industrial background and when we design something we spend a lot of time with the end users to understand where the part sits, how to interact with it and especially where things should go for easy maintenance.
Stuff like shutoff valves, isolations or filters should all be accessible either directly by hand or behind a very simple panel that lifts off.
lol, yeah. It is almost always some sort of agreement that is eventually arrived at. I didn’t say I didn’t enjoy my back and forths with our IDs - they usually had pretty good reasoning for design lines and ergonomics, but with aircraft seats and also in vehicle packaging, there is always some feature/function getting prioritized at the expense of another.
They seem to be hyper focused on packaging but they've also made some odd decisions. Maybe more end user and technician feedback will help them adapt and improve newer models. Let's see what happens with the Gravity. Apparently they've made strides in UI and software.
Isn’t it just a question of their capital expenditure relative to their sales volume? They cannot be selling nearly enough vehicles to pay for their factory.
Has Lucid actually told anyone how much is costs them to make a car? Where is the “rediculously complex and hard to manufacture designs” statement coming from?
The real driver is Saudi money, there should be an ETF that shorts every venture with significant Saudi funding. I think they only ones that don't tank at least right away are the sports ventures and they are still relatively new. Entertainment is a different animal where throwing money around like crazy is the norm and creative accounting saves the day.
>Entertainment is a different animal where throwing money around like crazy is the norm and creative accounting saves the day.
Well still doesn't save everything, evidently: https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1me1vef/amusement_ride_catastrophically_fails_in_saudi/
[So Lucid has a Homer Simpson problem?](https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/The-Simpsons-Homer-car.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=1.5)
> They put engineers in charge and the bean counters are MIA
Peter Rawlinson stepped down w/ Marc Winterhoff as interim, who has a history in management consulting. Every startup has an engineering-first phase until their investors want their returns.
It's not an engineering-first phase. It's a deliberate go-to-market strategy to undercut existing competition with an attractive price, while they are running purely on investment cash.
Once their reputation and products have matured, that's when they optimize towards profits. By increasing margins, streamlining operations (production, R&D, labor), and generally making the company more "efficient."
A healthy company needs a good balance between the Bean Counters and Engineers. That's how you end up with monsters like Apple and Google. Tim Cook is a great example of this, unlike Jobs, Tim is an expert in organizational efficiency and maximizing value out of customers.
> undercut existing competition with an attractive price
As a fan of Lucid's tech/products and their core target demographic, I wouldn't call their prices attractive.
Yeah and the issue is people, for whatever reason, naively believe time and time again that these companies wont take advantage of the position that they built. They will, thats the entire point.
Recent example of this is the whole ai editor thing, all of them on a vc-subsidized race to the bottom, people are going to be disappointed when they start to realize how much the real cost is, its already started to happen.
For sure. We’re kind of in the golden age of AI right now, similar to the golden age of YouTube and social media before companies started switching to prioritize profit. Companies are throwing AI at any opportunity they can and people just get it for free, whether they want it or not. That’s not gonna stick around forever.
Ah man, I am so not looking forward to turning mine in and seeing what kind of bill I get then. I do mostly highway driving and every vehicle I’ve ever owned is absolutely covered in rock chips within 3 years, let alone chips/cracks in the windshield.
I am looking forward to turning in the car itself though, and I definitely will not be a repeat customer.
Simply put - if it had Tesla’s software, or literally any other manufacturer’s software for that matter, it would be the best car I’ve ever had by a mile. But instead it has the worst software imaginable, and is so ungodly frustrating on a daily basis that you forget how good of a car it could be after a few months.
It’s simple things too, like wishing it just had a normal key fob that works like any other smart key in the last 2 decades, or if the mobile key worked like plenty other modern cars. I could go on about just getting the doors/trunk/frunk to open for hours.
Every update they send out fixes one thing, and fucks up at least 1-2 other things that had no issue before. Right now about 30% of the time you get in there will be zero sound - music, turn signals, alerts, nothing. So you have to sit there and wait to reset every time. And that’s not just me, it’s all over all the forums, and updates aren’t very common.
It rides great, handles great, crazy fast, amazing range and charging speed, incredible amount of interior space and storage space. But the whole time you just wish it could function like a normal car instead of acting like a 20 year old computer. There’s 100 other things I could say, overall I’m just glad I leased and can’t wait for the next 2.5 years to pass by.
It probably seems like I’m always shitting on Lucid but a lot of people in the groups tend to reeeally downplay the problems that almost everyone has, so I like to share what I wish I knew beforehand.
Fellow lucid owner. Key sucks, and the motorized charge port door is dumb as hell. Mine no longer works so I have to move it manually. Not worth the service center turnaround.
I also have run into the dead sound system issue - probably once every other month. I daily mine.
Parking software gives bad readouts on your footprint, especially during tight turns.
Overall, I'm satisfied at the ultra discounted price I got. It is the best driving car I have ever used, hands down. But yeah, I won't be doing another Lucid unless the dumb shit is totally gone by the time my term is up. I refuse to deal with another chintzy motorized charge port door.
Oof the charge port door is something I haven’t had an issue with. Agreed on it being a great car to drive though, whenever I have a solid few times where everything just works I absolutely love it. Then I’ll get back in and multiple screens won’t work, or cameras, or it won’t drive more than 5mph because the frunk says it’s not closed when I’ve closed it 10+ times, ugh.
My wife is not a very patient person and just refuses to drive it now lol, thinks it’s a total POS.
I think the worst is when it’s pouring rain coming out from a store or something, and I’m standing there just trying to get the door to unlock looking like an idiot while it’s not recognizing the fob or my phone.
Stuff that just makes no sense when every other car I’ve owned is like 1/3rd the price, and keys just…work.
>I think the worst is when it’s pouring rain coming out from a store or something, and I’m standing there just trying to get the door to unlock looking like an idiot while it’s not recognizing the fob or my phone.
my tesla does this exact same thing and it also drives me crazy.
Thanks. That's really unfortunate, I was attracted to it by all the physical properties you mentioned but software usability issues like that are intolerable in a daily driver....
Granted I'm only a month into mine, but so far I'm loving Lucid. I've not had any software issues so far, and keeping the key fob on me (like I've done with every other car I've ever owned) with my cellphone has kept me from having any issues with unlocking and entry.
That said, I do have one annoyance with it- the doors are obnoxious as fuck. They open a full 90 degrees, which is nice, but that means the stops for them are at like 45 degrees out from the body of the car, so they always fall back onto whoever's trying to get out because you can't open them wide enough when street parked or parked next to somebody else in a parking lot.
Same here. I return mine in November. One big chip that my insurance got repaired (not replaced). You can still see it though it's deemed safe and good.
I've loved it to be honest. But the charging platform, shitty keyfob, and some other details definitely mean I won't be buying.
Not because of the article, just the frustrations of daily living with it. Would be a fantastic car, but constant software issues leave you just hoping the car works each time you get in it which really takes away from the whole experience.
Would be one thing if I just got a lemon, but it seems like more owners have problems than the people who say it’s nothing but great.
Makes me sad that these are the things I’m hearing before becoming a customer. My wife wants a gravity and I don’t want to deal with nit picking at lease return.
Because I do lease luxury cars and they don’t nickel and dime me for little things that do not surpass the threshold for damage. Sure you can do that, but now you have one less person willing to lease a car from you because you needed to charge me $1500 for a normal wear and tear thing. If you read the article, lucid is charging customers at the end of their lease for wear and tear items that they say is acceptable in their guidelines. If that’s ok to you, then I would love for you to always be my customer so I can charge you for things I shouldn’t and you continue paying me money on your next car. Rinse and repeat.
Yea, I leased a jaguar ten years ago, and had a full 10" vertical crease where someone had doored the car hard in a parking lot just a month prior to end of lease.
I made a point of pointing it out to the inspector when I handed it over, and he said, "totally fine, my boys will get rid of that, you have a great day sir."
"Lucid Financial Services" is actually Bank of America, for what it's worth. Still, these charges should be applied predictably and consistently across all customers.
BoA and Lucid use Mannheim for lease inspections, so every little thing is to be documented. Lease inspections generally charge as much as possible, but BoA is presumably taking it to another level with Lucid’s due to the severe depreciation they get hit with. Gotta recover as much cost as possible. Generally this means inflating damage costs and passing it onto the leaser
Sounds like my last Turo who wanted $2500 to replace the windshield for a rock chip that was barely visible (and likely there prior to my rental) on a BMW X5. He must be on the corporate Lucid leasing team.
https://lucidowners.com/threads/lease-return-excess-wear-tear.12604/
The response and handling was the more egregious bit, but I've had tiny chips on leases and returned them without any issue, they'll usually cover a bit of normal wear and tear.
This looks like it would be a 100$ quick fix at most shops, doesn't warrant a whole new windshield I don't think. .1” at most lol
Yea but I'm sure you weren't leasing something like a lucid... And if it's only a few hundred bucks get it fixed. OEM standards are gonna be higher than because they have to sell this car to a new person.. I think lucid is perfect fine here, you leased it and that's part of the lease. It's completely goodwill by Lucid I can stand behind that.
Was leasing Mercedes/Porsche and a Model S. But if anything, it should be worse service with a cheaper car, not better!
Its one thing if its a ding, BMW charges like $250 for a ding and then also only if its over 2". But for rock chips, piece of a fender liner, genuinely imperceptible changes to a visor? There is some wear and tear that near every single manufacturer will excuse.
Did you see the picture of the visor I attached? I genuinely have no idea what the issue is there, and lucid owners in the thread agree on that and that the charges were egregious.
Sure the other charges I don't agree I'm on your side... I don't see anything wrong. But that windshield will have to be repaired.
And that's leasing for you - you don't own the cars and they can charge you for it. I don't see what's wrong here, whether other dealers will let it go or not is up to them, there is no universal rule.
It's like buying a house in a HOA and then complaining about it - like you're an adult now pal own up to it.
You have no idea what to fix because lucid says pre-inspections "are “a helpful tool” but have no bearing on the findings of a final inspection," and he has no way to contact lucid financial to get it rectified
> "He noted that the online option didn’t work, because his account was terminated after he returned the car, and the phone number listed went to a collections agency. Almost two months later, he says he still hasn’t received the call back from Lucid Financial Services that he was promised."
These chips are a normal result of a car driving on roads though.
If they want payment for normal wear, then that should surely be baked into the initial agreement rather an assessed afterwards.
They're not even talking about chips. They said it was the size of the tip of a ball point pen. I have one of these on my windshield and Safelite said it's cosmetic, not deep enough to cause a problem or repair. This is clearly normal wear and tear.
Safelight prices depend on the vehicle. They can install factory glass or aftermarket, just depends on the customer.
I watched 2 employees drape our vehicle in taped microfiber protection mats then use a ceiling mounted (gantry crane) suction cup device to bring the windshield into place. Complete professionals. This was after they'd picked up the glass from the dealer.
I don't see a problem with this, any high end car with advanced ADAS is going to need dealer calibrations after windshield replacement.
And depending on location, windshield damage can negatively impact driver assistance, auto braking, ACC, HUD, and/or airbag deployment.
Gotta pay to play.
Oof, this is every person's nightmare at the end of a lease. This is a tough lesson in how critical a pre-inspection is.
For anyone leasing a car, especially a high-end one: about a month before it's due, get it professionally detailed and then have a third party (or even the dealer themselves) do a "preview" inspection. It'll give you a punch list of what they'll charge you for. It's almost always cheaper to get small things like glass chips or wheel scuffs fixed on your own dime than to let the manufacturer bill you for it after the fact.
Are they also using AI machine to check their cars like Hertz doing ? Same website has repotted that now many rental fleet going to follow, Sixty is another one.
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