Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson on its SPAC deal and making Lucid Air

Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson on Tuesday touted what he named the electric car or truck company’s “entire world course tech,” but acknowledged problems around vehicle production.

Rawlinson, a previous Tesla engineering executive, appeared on CNBC the morning after Lucid introduced a reverse merger with exclusive objective acquisition firm Churchill Money Corp IV to go community. It is really the major SPAC transaction involving an EV enterprise. SPACs are an alternative to first community choices for companies that want to turn out to be publicly traded stocks.

CCIV shares sank approximately 48% to $30 for every share in early Tuesday trading, ahead of recovering some of those losses, providing the merged company a market place worth of much more than $50 billion, according to Reuters, bigger than Ford Motor. By comparison, direct competitor Tesla has a industry cap of additional than $637 billion.

In advance of Monday night’s announcement and subsequent stock decrease, new offer speculation had pushed CCIV up 470% this 12 months by yourself. Upon completion of the offer, noticed in the second quarter, Lucid is anticipated to be stated on the New York Inventory Exchange under the ticker LCID.

“I assume that the valuation is a reflection of our engineering,” Rawlinson stated, although introducing that much more operate needs to be completed for Lucid to crank out investor return. “What we need to do now is humbly and diligently execute and get this into output. That is what will genuinely travel the value,” he stressed, in recognition that production an electric car or truck on a mass scale is a tough endeavor.

Deliveries of Lucid’s first automobile, the all-electric Air, are now set for the 2nd fifty percent of this year, a hold off from its before forecast. Production will happen at a plant the company created southeast of Phoenix in Casa Grande, Arizona. The Air begins at $77,400, without which include the federal EV tax credit history.

Lucid assignments it will earn $2.9 billion in EBITDA, or earnings right before curiosity, taxes, depreciation and amortization, in 2026, in accordance to an investor presentation. It expects to produce 251,000 cars that 12 months. In addition to the luxurious Air, Lucid ideas to commence creating an SUV in 2023 and inevitably “a lot more inexpensive” autos down the highway. Batteries designed by Lucid’s technology division, Atieva, are at the moment utilized on the electric powered racing circuit Components E.

“I believe we’ve obtained an formidable but nevertheless realizable strategy. We have proven that we can govt,” Rawlinson said. “If you appear at the manufacturing unit we’ve crafted nowadays, we did that in record time.”

Rawlinson also talked about the expertise of the executives and professionals all over him, which include these with previous occupation stops at corporations these kinds of Tesla and Apple. The investor presentation said previous officials from conventional automakers these Mazda, Ford and Audi are also on board.

“We have obtained the experience. We’ve bought the track document at supply,” reported Rawlinson, who labored on the Design S whilst at Tesla. “What’s truly critical now, though, particularly the following handful of months, is to get our initial merchandise into manufacturing. Which is the great litmus.”