Lucid CEO, Peter Rawlinson, chats with Liz Hoffman and Semafor about the EV market, Elon Musk and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
In recent news, Lucid reported yet another disappointing quarter in which it expects to report an operations loss in the $765m to $790m range for the quarter ended September 30, outpacing analysts’ estimates of $751.7m.
Coincidentally, Lucid said a public offering of more than 262 million shares would likely fetch it $1.67bn in proceeds. This is separate from the private placement of 375 million shares with Ayar Third Investment, an affiliate of Saudi Arabia‘s Public Investment Fund and the company’s biggest shareholder. This would maintain Ayar’s 59% ownership of Lucid’s outstanding shares. Ayar also committed $1.5bn in August.
Interestingly, in his interview with Semafor, Rawlinson said that he was not seeking Saudi money in particular. Rather, it was a 2018 Grand Prix event where he took Public Investment Fund Governor Yasir Al Rumayyan for a drive.
“I didn’t go out and try to seek Saudi money specifically. But I needed billions of dollars. And to get that, we needed a proof point, because there was a whole phalanx of EV startups just trying to ride the coattails of Tesla’s market cap. So we partnered with McLaren and we developed the most advanced electric motorsport battery pack. And guess what happened? Saudi Arabia said we’d like to host a Grand Prix event for electric motorsport. That Saudi race was the first race where our battery pack featured and that was the proof point for the Saudis. So these talks were happening with His Excellency, Yasir [Al-Rumayyan], in the summer of 2018. He’s quite an accomplished racing driver, and I decided that none of my test drivers were driving our cars fast enough to impress. So I took him out. I think I scared the devil out of him, flat out around the block. And they were in.”
In this informative discussion with Ms. Hoffman, Rawlinson touches on the electric vehicle market – “People don’t realize how good an electric vehicle can be. It’s unimaginably better than a gasoline driving experience.”, Elon Musk – “He’s become distracted with politics. His mind is not where it was, and you see the result now. We’re the new leader, and many of my team from Tesla have come and joined me.”, Saudi investment – “There’s this perception that there’s this pot of gold and it’s easy money if you can tap into it. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are not stupid. They are very savvy investors, and they are looking for multipliers that can help their transition.”, and more.
