Finally! Some great news from Lucid Motors and nobody wants to talk about! Well, my guest Tom Moloughney does, so we’ll discuss with this means for Lucid and the production of Lucid Air for the rest of the 2022 and going into 2023
Lucid just had the best news this year so far that may turn around what has been an absolutely dreadful year for the struggling startup and yet nobody seemed to have noticed the host of the state of charge youtube channel tom logny will be here to tell me if he has and we’re going to start right now welcome to e4 electric where i reveal the truth behind the electric
Car headlines so don’t forget to click on that subscribe button and the bell notification icon so you don’t miss anything moving forward if you’ve been watching this channel for a while you’ve probably noticed that when i report on certain electric car news you don’t see much of it covered this way by other youtubers and journalists most of the time it’s because
Reporting on what’s really going on in the industry from a critical point of view gets you banned from access to nice media events and prototypes just this week i got banned by yet another auto manufacturer from their media events because they didn’t like my honest opinion on their upcoming ev but this week this week the news is good for lucid and i’m a little
Dumbfounded why no one else including lucid is that excited about it as you probably know lucid has been going through a production hell which their ceo peter rollinson specifically said they wouldn’t how do i know well most likely because i was sitting right next to him you know before i was banned from lucid’s media events when he said it and and we’ve got peter
Holding uh to lead that he’s vp of global manufacturing uh he’s got an incredible record great leader inspirational guy and he’s putting together a process a lucid manufacturing process and we’re not going to have production hell right now what i didn’t realize at that time was that peter holdinger was previously in charge of a big part of manufacturing at tesla
Exactly at the time of the production hell thus becoming one of the founding fathers if you will of the term so why peter rollinson thought things would be different at lucid i don’t know but now we know that not only at the time of holdinger’s tenure at tesla the automaker was making one of the worst quality vehicles in the industry it has also built a toxic and
Disorganized culture which seems to be now at the root of the problem with lucid i have pointed to this very issue many times throughout this year as lucid has struggled to make cars delivering just a little over 1 000 of them in the first half of the year and lowering its target from 20 then to 10 and now to 6 000 units for the year and i don’t think they’ll even
Be able to make that many but none of this seemed to be a concern to too many journalists or youtubers as they were busy covering the exciting press releases from lucid’s pr desk um you’re not making too many cars right now are you in a production hell of some sort hmm oh look a brand new lucid air that can beat tesla off of a red light for just a quarter million
Dollars wow can you tell me more about that is that gonna have a maybe a cool spoiler of some sort but now lucid has finally caught up to reality and did something to address the production hell something that i have been suggesting all this time while as always being told that i was too negative like it’s my job to cheer people up it’s not the news is not always
Cheery so i will tell you what lucid did but before that a quick reminder that this video is brought to you by electrify america the largest public fast charging network in the us that provides the freedom for all ev drivers to go where they need to go including coast to coast with over 800 locations across the us with more than 3 500 individual dc fast chargers
Nationwide and growing download their app to find hundreds of locations and sign up for their pass plus membership for discounted charging sessions get started using the link in the description of this video so what did lucid do well they finally got rid of the team that was built around and including the guy in charge of manufacturing peter holdinger himself and
Hired someone else less tesla-ish this signals that lucid has admitted that they could not continue crawling in the same direction and needed a major change rivien has recently did the same thing getting rid of their tesla raised head of manufacturing and replacing him with someone who appeared more competent and now rivien delivery numbers should be crossing 10
000 unit milestone now i do have to say that the way lucid did this wasn’t exactly clean but they did it let me walk you through what actually happened first lucid has hired a new head of manufacturing with a fancy title of the senior vice president of operations stephen david more about him in a second and everyone including peter holdinger was to report to him
But from what i gather the changes he has started to implement were too much for peter holdinger and five other bosses and they have all quit but we don’t want to do our jobs well we want to do it the way elon told us now i cannot stress this enough this is a good thing i have been pretty clear all of this time where the problem was and now that the problem has
Been removed it is a reason to celebrate but not too much because i do have to say that steven david who has spent 30 years working for chrysler with pretty much no experience of building electric cars would not exactly be my first choice but you can bet your ass that he will bring a better culture process and quality assurance to lucid which it so desperately
Needs so as the jury is still out on the new boss i believe things will get worse before they get better but they will get better for more we turn to the host of the state of charge youtube channel whose biggest credential was not working for chrysler tom malogne all right tom so um would you agree with me and i don’t see too many people making a big deal out of it
But i think that this is the biggest news that lucid had so far this year and most likely probably kind of a make it or break it type it’s pretty big news for lucid alex i mean this is they’re doing a major overhaul of you know employees as well as policies in the factory the manufacturing plant this is this is big news for uh lucid now i’ve been advocating for
This change for a long time but now that it happened you know i realized that changing the manufacturing process in the middle of the very first model ramp up could be costly um do you think this is going to be a little bit more painful before it gets better absolutely you know i mean from we don’t really know exactly what’s going on in there but we’re getting
Little bits and pieces here and there some people say they’re employees and you see things posted in the online forums and so forth it sounds like they’re doing a big overhaul of manufacturing policies and yeah that’s extremely disruptive to putting out the vehicle so yeah i think this is gonna have an effect they haven’t been making a lot of cars to begin with
I think they’re gonna make even less for at least a short period of time now we know some of the problems that they’ve been having some of them are you know specific to lucid some of them are just you know industry-wide you know from you know shortages of parts to some of the not the best quality control and so forth uh which one do you think they should tackle
First that will help them the most right now god they can’t even prioritize it alex you can’t fix like one part of it you know if if everything isn’t working they can’t build the cars if they don’t have the parts if they don’t have their manufacturing practices and quality control down you can’t push the cars out i mean they they they’ve got to do it all at once
Luckily i mean they’re a big company they can walk and chew gum at the same time and uh hopefully they have the right people in the right places now and can right the ship okay now listen this is not our first conversation about this particular topic i think it’s the third one and dates back to the beginning of the year um i uh i do are you more on board with
What i was saying back in you know january and february where the problem lied with people running the manufacturing uh specifically because they came from the place that essentially created the term production help now that the change has been made are you a little bit more on board that this was the problem all along and this is something that they need to do
In order to turn the ship around well yes and no i will be if the ship gets turned around what if it gets worse what if the new people aren’t even as good as the previous group of people that were running things and left so i think time’s gonna tell but uh you know yeah i’m a little bit more on board with your thought process that you’ve been talking about for a
While now that there’s you know something rotten in denmark and something needs to be fixed and replaced for lucid to right the ship i’ve been a little more conservative a little less willing to be critical but that’s just maybe my nature uh but yeah we’re at the point now where they have to right the ship it’s it’s it’s getting late early all right now listen my
Question my next question is i’m not really sure if i should ask you or my therapist but what do i have to do to convince people like you and many of my viewers and maybe other journalists you know that i might be onto something when i talk about it i a year before everybody catches you know gets on board again uh with me i mean me and you just had a conversation
About battery swap and 99 of common is like no alex is completely wrong you know everyone’s on to telling me how i’m wrong i am right now and not really paying attention i was actually right about that thing that they thought i was wrong about a year ago what do i have to do to convince you guys that sometimes problems are pretty clear and you have to change them
Right away then you know wait and see and you know until things get much worse what do you have to do maybe that is a question for your therapist and not tom well you don’t charge me as much so i figured i’ll try you first you’re gonna be wrong you’re gonna get criticized on on youtube people are gonna believe you people are not you have to be doing something
Right alex you’ve got 160 000 followers now you know your your videos do better than my videos do so don’t make it out like no one listens to alex no one believes me that’s not the case you know uh uh you know when you say something like battery swap is you know going to be the answer to evs you’re gonna raise eyebrows i’m i’m i don’t believe that you know that
Was a conversation we had uh just recently um so you know what if that comes turns around and you end up being right i’ll have to admit it um i’m kind of admitting now that you were more right than i was with some of the issues that lucid was having uh so hey maybe you’ll be right on a bunch of other things but uh my advice to you would be don’t worry about if
People believe you or not just keep saying what you believe is true and what you believe is correct and you know keep prying behind the scenes and telling the the truth behind the headlines and i think you’ll be just fine oh yes yes i i let’s hope so now let’s finish with some guessing game and i think our audience can play along in the comment section uh you know
In between the comments when i’m really really wrong about it but you know let’s let’s see how many cars do you think lucid will end up delivering total this year once we’re talking about it on january 1st geez um they’ve lowered their their guidance uh a few times now and and what is the latest now like six or seven thousand i think that they’re saying they’re
Going to produce by the end of the year and through q2 it was less than 2 000 right i i’m not the exact number i think it’s going to be very hard for them to hit even their latest lowest lowered guidance considering it appears as though they’re going to be making major changes to the production line now that might be good changes you know and and maybe it’s going
To be positive and get them on the right track but it has to be extremely disruptive for the short term and you know if you look at it in that context it’s already september you know it’s going to be hard for me to see them putting out more than 4 500 cars this year i hope they do better than that but you know i’m going to say 4 000 to 4 500. all right now i’m
Going to go with around 3 000 because i think that things are going to get worse before they get better and at the rate of way less than 2 000 through you know first half a year i don’t think they’re gonna do that much better so i’d say around three thousand so let’s see uh uh i’m also i’m rooting for them but i i think things are going to be pretty bad by the
End of the year and then slowly they will start changing next year well we’ll check back in about four months right now you don’t have to wait for four months to get more of tom you can do that right now by subscribing to his youtube channel and i put the link to it in the description of this video alright looking forward to all of your comments other than that
See you guys next time and remember to stay charged
Transcribed from video
Lucid's Biggest News of 2022 Ignored by Most Media By E for Electric