Tesla Inc TSLA is betting on robotaxis as one of its next phases of growth, but a former employee turned rival doesn't see autonomous vehicles being released anytime soon.
What Happened: In a recent interview, Lucid Group LCID CEO Peter Rawlinson highlighted the difficulties of self-driving vehicles and the unpredictable timeline of reaching market.
Rawlinson gave a timeline of the next decade for autonomous vehicles, such as those from Tesla, to be released in the public sphere.
"It's like refining gold to 99.9999 percent — the first few nines are easy, but it's that last 0.01 percent. I can't see it happening till the 2030s," Rawlinson said in an interview with Semafor.
The comment came when Rawlinson was asked about automotive companies bringing self-driving vehicles to market. Rawlinson said Lucid has the best car in the world "from a mechanical standpoint," but has struggled with autonomous driving features.
"I'm personally taking charge of this, and we're really advancing this now at an accelerated pace."
Rawlinson said people are "significantly underestimating" how hard the final steps of getting full autonomous vehicles are going to be.
The comments from Rawlinson, who previously worked at Tesla, come after the company hosted its Robotaxi Day and showed off its robotaxi Cybercab.
Rawlinson has clashed with Tesla and the company’s CEO Elon Musk several times, and his latest talks on technology could amplify the battle. Musk has often downplayed Rawlinson’s previous role at Tesla as chief engineer, particularly in his work on the Tesla Model S.
Read Also: Musk, Take Notice: Lucid Unveils 3 Affordable EVs To Compete With Tesla’s Model Y, Model 3
Why It's Important: Rawlinson once again praised Lucid's technology advancements as being better than Tesla during the interview, while adding that Tesla and Musk have "become distracted," a potential dig at his political actions.
"Clearly, we have the best technology in the world. We've now taken the mantle from Tesla. We have the best tech," Rawlinson said.
In August, Rawlinson emphasized how far ahead the company was than rivals in battery efficiency and range capacity.
“Efficiency is of critical importance in making a better, lighter, more spacious, longer-range vehicle, and directly impacts cost to manufacture. Therefore, efficiency is arguably the single most valid litmus of a company’s core EV technological capability,” Rawlinson said in a LinkedIn post.
Rawlinson shared a chart that showed how far ahead Lucid was to the competition, which estimated it would take eight years, until 2032, for the Tesla Model S to reach the current efficiency of the Lucid Air Pure, based on both companies' current rates of progress.
A recent J.D. Power survey of consumers showed that people who have not ridden in a robotaxi had low confidence in autonomous vehicles. The lack of overall consumer trust in self-driving vehicles could make Rawlinson's prediction more of a reality that the timeline could be years away.
Another item that could impact the timeline of autonomous vehicles in the U.S. could be who is elected president in 2024 with Donald Trump recently saying he would ban autonomous vehicles from roads.
LCID Price Action: Lucid stock was down 5% to $2.49 on Wednesday versus a 52-week trading range of $2.29 to $5.26. Lucid stock is down 40% year-to-date in 2024.
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Photo: Courtesy Tesla Inc.
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