Rawlinson

One of those records would be Lucid Air’s expected ability to drive up to 517 miles on a single charge, which would top any other electric production vehicle. Lucid has also promised that the Lucid Air will be the world’s most aerodynamic production car, which reduces drag and helps with energy efficiency.

Lucid touts the company’s “next generation technology” as the future industry standard for electric vehicles. The person behind the design for the Lucid Air and the other vehicles the company plans to release over the next few years, including the Gravity SUV, is Lucid’s vice president of design, Derek Jenkins. Jenkins, 51, leads the team responsible for making Lucid’s cars as aerodynamic as possible, while developing a distinct luxury aesthetic for the Lucid brand, among other things. Jenkins joined the start-up in 2015 (when it was called Atieva) after spending over two decades designing cars for traditional brands like Audi, Volkswagen and Mazda. He’d previously served as the director of design for Mazda North America, where he designed the Mazda MX-5 Miata that won World Car of the Year in 2016.

Lucid, founded in 2007, was originally focused on developing electric car battery technology to supply to other manufacturers — including powering cars in the Formula E electric racing series — before changing course to manufacture its own vehicles. The company recruited a team of veteran engineers and designers including Jenkins, as well as CEO Peter Rawlinson, who joined in 2013 after previously serving as the chief engineer at Tesla, where he was the lead engineer behind the Model S. In February, Lucid announced a merger with Churchill Capital IV that will take the California-based electric automaker public, valuing Lucid at $24 billion while bringing in over $4 billion that the start-up can use to fuel expansion, including completing its new factory in Arizona. The deal has so far been a drag on Churchill Capital’s stock price, with some on Wall Street concerned that it’s a harbinger of a SPAC bubble, especially with Lucid still yet to deliver even a single car. But a Lucid spokesperson told CNBC Make It that the deal is “the best option” to help the company reach its goal of bringing its electric cars to the market and that it “cannot control what the stock market or Lucid stock is going to do over the short term,” so the company focused on executing its vision.

The capital paves the way for Lucid to take its next steps toward competing with rivals like Tesla in the increasingly crowded market for electric cars. Jenkins recently spoke to CNBC Make It about Lucid’s place in the competitive electric car space, why he left traditional automakers to join an electric start-up, and how he fell in love with cars in the first place. CNBC Make It: With a growing list of rival electric car start-ups like Tesla (as well as Rivian, Fisker, Nio, to name a few), along with traditional automakers transitioning into electric vehicles, how does Lucid stand apart? Derek Jenkins: The whole point is to come into that space and create electric luxury. But ultimately, I think it is a technology-driven play.

Rawlinson

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