Shared from the 2/9/2022 Houston Chronicle eEdition

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Battery-powered cars going mainstream

Luxury EV maker Lucid Motors looks set to take on Tesla

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Brittany Greeson / New York Times

Ford soon will offer the Lightning, an electric version of the F-150 pickup. The company has seen plenty of interest in the vehicle. Ford stopped taking reservations after amassing 200,000 orders.

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Bryan Derballa / New York Times

Lucid Motors, the electric vehicle company started by former Tesla executive Peter Rawlinson, has been rolling out showrooms across the country, including in Texas.

Luxury electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors appears to be planning its first showroom in Houston as part of a national effort to grow its retail footprint as it goes toe-to-toe with Tesla.

The electric vehicle company started by former Tesla executive Peter Rawlinson has been rolling out showrooms across the country after starting production of its first vehicles at its factory in Casa Grande, Ariz., last year. The company has been building a presence in Texas with locations in Dallas and Houston.

Lucid is planning a 2,907-square-foot showroom in the Galleria at 5085 Westheimer, according to state permit filings. Work on transforming an existing retail space is expected to start in June, finishing in September, according to the filings.

Representatives from mall owner Simon Property Group did not respond to emails requesting comment. Lucid Motors representatives declined to confirm the store or the timing.

Lucid last year opened a service center in Houston, where customers can service or pick up vehicles purchased through its website and delivered from out of state. (There is a waitlist, however.) The 23,762-square-foot service center is located at 14820 North Freeway, 17 miles north of downtown outside of Beltway 8.

In setting up a retail space in the mall, Lucid Motors would follow a similar real estate strategy to Tesla by opening up a smaller showroom in a highly trafficked retail location — instead of following the typical decades-old dealership model in which customers can browse, purchase and service their vehicles in the same location.

Similar to Tesla, Lucid is using a direct sales to consumer sales model in which a customer buys the vehicle directly from the manufacturer, circumventing dealerships. In Texas, state laws protecting car dealerships prevent customers from directly buying vehicles from car manufacturers. Even though Tesla showrooms and service centers exist in the state, the customers technically purchase the cars online.

Tesla has a showroom in the Galleria, where customers can test drive electric vehicles from the mall’s parking lot before ordering the vehicles online. The cars are then shipped from various parts of the country to separate Tesla service centers outside the 610 Loop, where customers pick them up.

Lucid Motors’ permit filing for its retail space includes exterior renovations, although it was unclear if the outside area would be used for test driving vehicles. If the Houston showroom is similar to showroom that Lucid recently opened in Newport Beach, Calif., it would include a 4K virtual reality experience that allows customers to visualize the interior and exterior options they might select.

Lucid Motors promises longer battery range than Tesla’s vehicles, but with a higher price tag. The company’s base model — the Lucid Air Pure — boasts a 406-mile range battery but costs $77,000. Tesla’s standard base model — the Tesla Model 3 — has a 272-mile range but costs $44,900. Both companies offer longer range batteries at higher prices, enabling more driving time between charges.

Lucid Motors has more than 20 showrooms in North America and is planning to open additional showrooms in Miami this summer and at the Legacy West mall in Dallas this spring, according to its website.

Lucid went public in July 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company merger with Churchill Capital Corp IV. Lucid stock closed Tuesday at $27.43 a share, up about 2 percent.

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