Lucid (LCID) orders are surging as former Tesla drivers flock to other EV brands
With Tesla owners looking for another option, one EV brand is taking advantage. Lucid Motors (LCID) CEO said the company is seeing a “dramatic uptick” in orders from Tesla drivers. Over the past two months, 50% of orders were from former Tesla owners.
Lucid orders rise from former Tesla owners
It’s no secret by now that Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has caused an uproar. Not just among owners but in the general EV community. Bullets have been shot into Tesla stores, people are vandalizing and burning Tesla vehicles, and these are just a few examples.
Musk’s antics are now driving Tesla owners to look for other EV brands. At least one rival is seeing significantly more owners looking to trade in.
After showing off the brand’s first electric SUV, Lucid Motors’ interim CEO Marc Winteroff told Fox Business that the company has seen a “dramatic uptick over the past two months” in orders from former Tesla drivers.
Tesla owners have “always been a source” for Lucid as another EV brand. However, more and more Tesla drivers have been looking to make the switch over the past few months.
Right now, “50% of all of the orders we have are from former Tesla owners,” according to Lucid’s CEO. When asked why owners are ditching their Teslas, Winteroff simply said, “It’s what you mentioned,” referring to the “negative feeling about Elon” and the lack of new vehicles (outside of the Cybertruck). Many are “looking for an option to not continue having a Tesla,” Winteroff added.
The comments come as Lucid ramps up deliveries of its first electric SUV, the Graivty. Winteroff said during the “celestial arrival” of the Gravity last week in NYC that deliveries will resume by the end of April.
Lucid’s Gravity SUV is available in the Grand Touring trim, starting at $94,900. Later this year, Lucid will launch the Gravity Touring starting at $79,900.
Winteroff also spoke about the impact of Trump’s recent tariff hikes, explaining that Lucid’s vehicles are fully assembled in Arizona. Lucid builds everything from the battery modules and packs to the e-motors in the US.
Electrek’s Take
Elon Musk is hurting the Tesla brand, and it’s becoming evident. Lucid is just one example of a rival company that is seeing more Tesla drivers looking to ditch the brand.
According to a recent YouGov and Yahoo News poll, 67% of Americans would no longer consider buying or leasing a Tesla vehicle.
Most blamed Elon Musk as the reason. Of those who would not consider a Tesla, 37% said it was fully or partly the reason, while another 20% said it was the whole reason. The survey revealed that Americans’ view on Musk is turning negative, with 55% saying they had an unfavorable opinion of Tesla’s CEO.
With Tesla’s first quarter deliveries due out this week, we will likely see more of the damaging impacts as analysts expect what could be its worst performance in two years.
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Elon wants the US military to start buying Tesla Cybertrucks – and now they are! The Air Force has ordered two Cybertruck testers for target practice to determine how easy they are to blow up, while Jo makes up a whole new conspiracy theory on today’s explosive episode of Quick Charge!
Today’s episode is brought to you by retrospec—makers of sleek, powerful e-bikes and outdoor gear built for everyday adventure. Electrek listeners can get 10% off their next ride until August 14 with the exclusive code ELECTREK10 only at retrospec.com.
An it doesn’t stop there. We’ve also got exciting new home battery backup and V2X options for Tesla owners, and one Texas EV driver that decided to conquer the Texas floodwaters by harnessing the awesome combined powers of electrons and stupidity (it’s pretty awesome).
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Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project is reportedly over. Bloomberg reports that CEO Elon Musk is killing the project after a mass exodus of talent from the Dojo team to a competing startup.
Dojo was the name of Tesla’s in-house AI chip development to create supercomputers to train its AI models for self-driving.
Tesla hired a bunch of top chip architects and tried to develop better AI accelerator chips to rely less on companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and others.
It has been running into delays for years.
We previously reported on significant setbacks. In 2018, Jim Keller, the famed chip architect who was first hired to lead Tesla’s chip-making effort, left the company.
Ganesh Venkataramanan succeeded him, but he left Tesla in 2023.
For the last few years, Peter Bannon, who worked with Keller for years, has been leading Tesla’s chip-making programs, but he is now reportedly also leaving the automaker.
Bloomberg reports that Musk has “ordered the effort to be shut down.”:
Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said.
DensityAI is a new startup currently in stealth mode, founded by several former Tesla employees, including Venkataramanan.
It reportedly plans to build chips for AI data centers and robots, much like the Dojo program.
The company recently hired 20 former Tesla employees who worked on Dojo.
While the program appeared to be lagging behind for years as Tesla increasingly bought more compute power from NVIDIA, Musk has been claiming progress.
The CEO said in June:
Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great.
During Tesla’s quarterly conference call in late July, the CEO claimed that Dojo 2 will be “operating at scale sometime next year.”
Electrek’s Take
It’s unclear whether the report is accurate or if it’s an extrapolation from the talent exodus to Elon killing Dojo, or if Elon was lying just a few weeks ago.
Alternatively, this development may be so recent that Elon went from being confident in Dojo a few weeks ago to disbanding the team working on it now.
Either way, I think it’s clear that the project has been lagging, and Tesla has been extremely dependent on chip suppliers rather than making its own.
I think Dojo being likely dead is not a big loss for Tesla.
When it comes to chip making, developing its own inference compute for onboard “AI computers” was always the more important project.
TSMC is set to produce Tesla’s new AI5 chip, which is coming soon, and we have recently learned that Samsung will be manufacturing its AI6 chip.
I think the bigger concern from this report is that it’s the latest example of an ongoing exodus of talent at Tesla.
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Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. and Square Inc., listens during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, on Friday, June 4, 2021.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Block shares jumped in extended trading on Thursday after the fintech company increased its forecast for the year.
Here is how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG.
- Earnings per share: 62 cents adjusted vs. 69 cents expected
Block doesn’t report a revenue figure, but said gross profit rose 14% from a year earlier to $2.54 billion, beating analysts’ estimates of $2.46 billion for the quarter. Gross payment volume increased 10% to $64.25 billion.
Block raised its guidance for full-year gross profit to $10.17 billion, representing 14% growth from a year earlier. In its prior earnings report, Block said gross profit for the year would come in at $9.96 billion.
The company expects full-year adjusted operating income of $2.03 billion, or a 20% margin. For the third quarter, the company expects gross profit to grow 16% from a year ago to $2.6 billion, with an operating margin of 18%.
Square payment volume in the quarter grew 10% from a year earlier.
Block faces growing competition from rivals such as Toast and Fiserv‘s Clover, though its Square business still gained share during the quarter in areas such as retail and food and beverage.
Block shares were down 10% this year as of Thursday’s close, while the Nasdaq is up 10%. Last month, Block was added to the S&P 500.
— CNBC’s Robert Hum contributed to this report.
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