This week, electric vehicle (EV) builder Lucid teased a new project: its first model priced under $50,000. Trademark filings suggest it’s called the “Lucid Earth.”
An image posted to X (formerly known as Twitter) showed the Earth in heavy shadows. We can make out a sinuous, muscular form with a hatchback, arguably a midsize SUV.
About Lucid
Lucid Motors is one of several startup automakers following in Tesla’s footsteps, building EVs and selling them without a dealership network.
Similar efforts have collapsed, most recently Fisker, which filed bankruptcy in June. However, Lucid has the backing of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which could give it runway Fisker never had to help it get off the ground.
So far, Lucid has built all its cars in America, though it has announced plans for a Saudi factory.
It has just one product on the road today, but it’s impressive. The Lucid Air is an ultra-luxury sedan, and the EV with the longest EPA-certified range, good for up to 520 miles between charges.
The Air is a high-end product. Even the base model starts over $70,000, and it earns a lot of bragging rights. In addition to a class-leading range, its high-performance Air Sapphire model is arguably the most powerful sedan ever built, capable of leaping from zero-to-60 mph in under two seconds on an ordinary roadway on street-legal tires. Tesla’s Model S Plaid can do it on a track with a specially prepared surface.
A second model, the Lucid Gravity SUV, will start production later this year. Our editors like its innovative storage solutions, but no one in the press has driven it yet.
About the Earth
Lucid has provided no details about the project beyond promising a starting price under $50,000 and a production start in 2026.
Startup electric automakers tend to follow the Tesla strategy – start with the most expensive models and build more mainstream cars as sales of the pricey ones pay for your research and development. But newer entries face competition Tesla didn’t in the early days, as everyone from General Motors to Kia markets EVs today.
Industry rumors say the Earth is a midsize SUV. The images suggest a very low-slung vehicle, much like the Gravity, which could almost be a minivan if it had sliding doors.
We expect single- and dual-motor varieties, and Lucid’s mastery of range means it could try to out-compete models like the Kia EV6 and Ford Mustang Mach-E with a longer distance between charging sessions. Now that Lucid has begun to tease the model, we expect to know more soon.
