[AUTO] Assault on Tesla's throne

[YaKuZa--BoSs]

Lucid Air, Rivian, Fisker or the electric vehicle manufacturers themselves launch numerous models of 100% electric vehicles.

 

 

California-based startup Lucid Motors took the media spotlight last Tuesday by announcing that the first electric car in its range will travel 517 miles (832 kilometers) per charge, more than any Tesla model. Rivian made headlines the previous week after the company chaired by Elon Musk was sued for 'signing' a handful of Tesla employees with alleged irregular schemes. And Fisker, who went under in his first attempt to sell a luxury electric model, is back with an ambitious plan to eat the ground of the company led by the also owner of Space X.

For competitors, be they new names or old acquaintances from the auto industry, the Palo Alto, California-based company seems to have become their new obsession. The objective is clear: to unseat him from the throne as the undisputed leader in the electric vehicle market. With a market capitalization of over $ 300 billion, no one seems to be overshadowing it at the moment.

It is backed by four consecutive quarters of profits - something unprecedented in the history of the company - and a sales rhythm that not even the pandemic has managed to derail. Among its plans, to open a plant in Austin, Texas, for the Cybertruck in 2021, another in Berlin, and accelerate production in Shanghai and California to exceed half a million cars delivered in a year. But the more the giant expands, the greater the echoes of competition around it.

NEW COMPETITORS

 

 

There are, on the one hand, national start-ups, part of a business ecosystem that has emerged as a result of Tesla's unquestionable success. They are projects, for the most part, in an embryonic phase and still unknown to the general public. Lucid is one of the most promising. The goal of the company controlled by the petrodollars of the Saudi Arabian royal family is to outperform its competitor in design and battery performance.

Its CEO, Peter Rawlinson, who previously worked for Musk, threw a small dart at his former company in the video they posted on Twitter to announce their new achievement. The odometer they use to boast of reaching 517 miles of autonomy loses strength when it reaches 402 miles - which the Model S is capable of traveling - and then accelerates and leaves the mark behind.

This is unprecedented. It is a big step forward, ”boasted Rawlinson, who announced that its first model, the Air, will be presented in society on September 9 and will begin to be manufactured in an Arizona plant from 2021. It is a luxury sedan more small in size than the Tesla S but more spacious than a Mercedes S-Class. Symptomatic turns out that the CEO did not want to share data on the weight of the vehicle or on the order bookings it has

 

 

Rivian has also entered the market strongly. It has the backing of the millions of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and Ford, another brand desperate to jump on the electric train, among other investors. The problem now is to shake off the doubts about the lawsuit filed by Tesla. They accuse him of having hired dozens of former employees of that automaker as a vehicle to access confidential information of the competition.

Then there's Fisker, owned by the brilliant designer Henrik Fisker, who failed on his first attempt at the Karma, a luxury electric sports car that sold for $ 100,000, and now hopes to take a similar path to that of Nikola, another Tesla competitor. , in this case with trucks. His intention is to go public in record time and thus sustain his future production of a sedan that goes on sale for less than $ 40,000.

TRADITIONAL BRANDS
But the biggest threat to Tesla, according to many analysts, will come from traditional brands like the Volkswagen Group, Daimler Volvo or BMW. The list of electric models that are about to hit the market is extensive. The aforementioned Ford will launch the Mustang Mach-E, the EQ family of Mercedes-Benz, the e-tron of Audi or the iX3 and i4 of BMW together with the Mini electric, or the Volvo XC40 Recharge P8, are just a small sample of what that sounds in the future market. Nissan just introduced the Ariya to compete with the Model Y and Volkswagen ID.4. And Lexus has announced that it will market the UX 300e in China before entering other markets in 2021.

In the United States, General Motors has tried to penetrate that market without much success with the Chevy Bolt, although it is already preparing a second round with 20 different options between now and 2023, with the Cadillac Lyriq and the resurrection of a 100% electric Hummer. Everyone wants a piece of that segment that Tesla is beginning to dominate with cheek.