Lucid Air Luxury EV 2019

1,000-Horsepower Electric Luxury Sedan

Lucid Motors is one of those companies. Founded in 2007 under its former name, Atieva, the Menlo Park-based company began developing its first electric vehicle in 2014.

The car, called Lucid Air, debuted last year as a 1,000-horsepower electric luxury sedan that Lucid said would rival Tesla's highly successful Model S.

Lucid has 300 employees and is backed by Venrock - the same venture capital firm that led Apple's Series A round in 1978. Lucid also counts China's Beijing Automotive Industry Holding and Japan's Mitsui as investors. Interestingly, Jia Yueting, Faraday Future's only publicly known backer, is also an investor in Lucid.

Lucid invited Business Insider to check out a nearly finished representation of the car at its headquarters in Menlo Park.

Yes, this rolling test-bed is stripped of much of the weight that the finished sedan will carry (this temporary body is made of easy-to-produce and replace carbon fibre panels, not aluminum and steel), but it's also dialled down to half the 1000 horsepower (746kW) the production vehicle will sport from the battery pack integrated into the floor.

Moreover, with an electric motor and active air dampers at each wheel, and all that weight down in the battery lowering the centre of gravity, the car feels remarkably planted.

The Lucid Air may not be ready for production just yet, and given the vagaries of the electric vehicle (EV) startup business. (It costs upwards of US$1 billion for an established company such as General Motors to develop a new car.)

If everything goes to plan and the Air hits the road in 2019 as projected, Lucid claims the six-figure sedan (previous reports have pegged its price at up to US$160,000) will rocket like a supercar from zero to 100km/h in 2.5 seconds, range 640km on a single charge, and sport advanced driving assistance capabilities such as radar, lidar and cameras that will make it ready for autonomous operation - wherein the driver is all but irrelevant. It's the dream that the likes of Tesla and other startups, such as Faraday Future (whose billionaire investor Jia Yueting has also invested in Lucid), are all working towards.