Okay, well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining for the second day of the Evercore ISI's third annual Clean Energy Conference. Really happy to host Peter Rawlinson, CEO and CTO of the electric vehicle company Lucid Motors. I think many of you are familiar, but Lucid Motors, by background, is a California-based company focused on designing and manufacturing luxury or ultra-luxury electric vehicles. Their flagship model, the Lucid Air, boasts industry-leading range, powertrain efficiency, acceleration, and ultra-luxury features, with a large SUV known as the Lucid Gravity on the way. Peter Rawlinson is both CEO and CTO of Lucid, with a background as Tesla's former chief engineer for the Model S, and he brings with him a wealth of experience to the company. Under his guidance, the company aims to redefine the EV market for their products.
Peter, it's been a pleasure talking to you over the many years when Lucid was a private company into your foray into the public company. So thank you so much for joining us here again. And I know you have a couple of slides to go through.
Yeah.
We could do that, and we'll come back for a little chat.
Okay, thank you for that introduction, and it's great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. So perhaps I can just go through a little bit of Lucid's background, because I think it's important to put this in context. We were formed with a real clear vision, not just making next-generation electric cars, but really to advance, and forgive me, there's some forward-looking statements here, and we'll run through that in milliseconds. We were formed with a clear vision, not just making the best EVs in the world, but really advance the state of the art of the EV. I think it's vitally important that we accelerate this transition to sustainable mobility. The way to do it is to make better EVs so more people are drawn to them now who can afford them, but also address the key barriers to widespread adoption.
Those barriers are range anxiety. We've addressed that with a car with over 500 miles range, which is on the marketplace today. We have more than 100 miles range advantage over our nearest competitor. This doesn't address the fundamental remaining barrier, which is the cost of accessing an EV. That's what we're doing through our high technology. I'll explain that strategy during the course of this presentation. A little bit about our history. We created Lucid back in 2016. Really, to prove our technology was real, in 2018, we entered the World Championship of Electric Motorsport, Formula E, with a battery pack that really redefined the sport. Before our battery pack, the cars were only capable of doing half a race distance. The formula, which was created to demonstrate the prowess of electrification, failed in that.
It demonstrated the weaknesses. We addressed that. That really drew the attention of the PIF to Lucid, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. We secured significant funding in the spring of 2019. That allowed us to sort of break ground for our factory in Arizona late 2019. Just about nine months after that, in world record time, against the backdrop of COVID, we're actually making the first prototypes of Lucid Air in that factory late summer in 2020, after just laying the foundations December 2019. We did the Lucid Air reveal in 2020. In 2021, just two and a half years after securing funding, we launched Lucid Air in production. It won the MotorTrend Car of the Year award, the first time ever that a new company has won the MotorTrend Car of the Year award with its very first product, Lucid Air.
We also went public on NASDAQ. In 2022, we upped the ante again. We unveiled the Lucid Air Sapphire hypercar version of Lucid Air, hypercar performance, put that into production last year to great acclaim. It's been named best handling car in the world. We announced an Aston Martin supply deal. We started construction of our main factory in Saudi Arabia. We completed construction and started assembly of cars in a more modest kit form factory in Saudi Arabia. We did the Gravity reveal. Throughout this year, we've been preparing expansion of a factory in Arizona. We put in an additional 3 million sq ft, brought a lot of vertical integration to bear. We're getting ready now for the scheduled start of production of the Gravity SUV late this year. This is of great significance to us as a company. It's all about growing scale.
So we have a range of Lucid Air sedan products in production today. And we're growing. Our Q1 numbers were up. Our deliveries were up 40% year-on-year. Our 2023 numbers were up 37% year-on-year. We're outselling Porsche Taycan and Mercedes EQS now in the USA. But it's all about getting more scale. And we're going to do that with a series of steps. The Gravity SUV has a TAM 6 times that of our Lucid Air. And that's scheduled for start of production late this year. And then the real big one, 2 years from then, late 2026, scheduled for production in late 2026, is our midsize platform. That's the car that I hope to be making 1 million units of a year of in the early 2030s. Make no mistake, Lucid, today we're making high-end products. We want to be a major player.
And how can we be best equipped to do that? Well, let me tell you what really differentiates Lucid is two things. We've got the best technology in the world, and that's widely recognized. And we've got the backing and partnership with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, who are really committed. And we're equally incentivized for success here. So what's key to us is our technology. We're famous for our battery pack technology, all in-house. Famous for our motors and transmissions technology, vertically integrated in the most advanced manufacturing facility in the world. We do our own inverters. We do Wunderbox, two-way charging, V2G, V2X charging system, and all the software in-house. This is a significant strategic advantage. Now, doing something in-house, it sounds very cool. It sounds great being vertically integrated.
But there's no advantage in doing that in-house at all if it isn't differentiated and fundamentally superior to what you can buy off the shelf. This technology is world-leading. And I'll show you to what extent in the next slide. If you look at all the cars that are EVs that are available, the runners and riders in the marketplace here in the U.S. today, there's a great array. But the single most significant metric of the prowess of a company that's making an EV, I would contend, is efficiency. That's how far you can go per kilowatt-hour. How far can you go per unit of battery, of battery size, of battery energy? This is so significant. And I'll tell you why. Because the most expensive part of the build of an electric car is the battery. There is no gasoline equivalent.
Using Lucid's technology, you can see the green columns here are Lucid models. You can see that we're not just leaders in the field. There's a step change in that leadership, such as our advantage. Why does this matter? This means that we can enable a car, endow a car with range that costs just $28 per mile of range. If you wanted 100 miles range with our technology, the pack would cost you $2,700, get it? If you look at some of the competition, it actually costs as much as $58 per mile. There's $30 per mile difference. That's $3,000 per 100 miles range difference. Make no mistake, efficiency is the key to cost-effective production of electric cars. When others are doing gigacastings, which may save you $130 in the build of a car, I'm really looking at the big picture here.
The big number is the battery pack. Lucid's technology enables an electric car to go a set distance with significantly less batteries than anyone else on the planet. For the owner, this means you're using less electricity. There's less draw of the grid. There's less weight in the car. There's less mined minerals. There's less geopolitical dependence upon other states for minerals. There's more room for your feet in the car. It's a comfier car to ride in. It's more spacious. Everything gets better. We haven't factored in those multipliers. Also, these numbers relate to Bloomberg's datum of $128 per kilowatt-hour at pack level. My, I think, a more realistic number today is closer to $150. So this is very conservative, these savings. So if we look at how significant the battery cost is, this is based upon A2MAC1's very widely regarded technical database.
This is for a high-end car. A more affordable family car, the battery can constitute over 40% of the value, the bill of materials of building that car. It is that significant. That's what I'm targeting. If we're going to build cars more profitably, more affordably for the masses, which is absolutely critical, it's core to the mission that Lucid is on. We're described as a luxury player. My aspiration is not to be a luxury player. We're starting as a luxury player. I want to influence the mass market. We need to have a profound effect upon the planet and the environment. We need mass transition to electrification. The barrier today is the cost. While the battery represents this proportion of the cost, that's what I'm hitting. Because the scope for hitting that gray segment is limited. Let me show you two examples.
We have a Lucid Air on the left-hand side compared with two well-known competitors, very similar vehicles in the same sector available here in the U.S. And if those competitor vehicles were endowed with Lucid's technology, it would save on an apples-to-apples basis. Competitor one would save about $2,500. Competitor two, closer to $4,500. Those numbers are actually very conservative. Those numbers are closer to $3,500 and $6,000 per unit. Think of what a profound impact that can have upon the affordability and uptake of EVs. And think of Lucid's technology. It's not because we're just an engineering-led company. I'm an engineer, and I like nerding out on stuff like this. It's the businessman in me is saying this is a profound commercial advantage, a financial advantage from Lucid.
Our efficiency advantage means less battery cost, which will translate to a better gross margin or actual piece price per car, or a bit of both. This gives us a significant leadership in the world today. I'm often asked, is that advantage going to be eroded? No. We're actually growing. The gap is growing. Just as when Tesla came out with the seminal Tesla Model S over 10 years ago, there was a perception that Tesla's inherent advantage would be eroded very rapidly. The Germans would come and eat them up. That hasn't happened. Why? Well, it's all about tech leadership and how fast you can run in a tech race. How has Lucid got to this position, and where are we going? Well, I'll tell you where we're going.
Because yesterday, I had the pleasure of announcing to the world that we've hit the magic 5 miles per kilowatt-hour. No one else is even close, not remotely close. Some of the competition is under 3. That means we can make a car with a significantly smaller battery pack with competitive range. That gives us a unique and profound commercial advantage as a company. So I'm delighted. I think this is a landmark in the evolution of the automobile, let alone electric cars. It has profound consequences for mankind. Thank you.
Excellent. Peter, that's a great area to start. We'll talk about this specific idea of powertrain efficiency. Because one of the things that we always hear, sort of both from, I think, people on the street, but also sort of industry executives, is battery, battery technology, higher density. When really higher density just means you can put more batteries in the car, but you still need this ratio to reduce the overall cost of the battery. Let's talk about how this ratio can kind of grow, and as you mentioned, can keep this leading efficiency. How do you plan to scale your drivetrain advantage into Gravity, but also, as you talked about, mass, where a smaller car theoretically could even drive that number higher? How do we grow this advantage into the mass market?
Totally. Well, there are three or four steps to scale. First of all, we need to grow the word with more awareness of just what an awesome product Lucid Air is. So we get more and more people buying Lucid Airs. We saw a 40% increase in deliveries in Q1. We're seeing very encouraging signs through Q2. And I think that gradually the word is spreading. That's the first step. Sell more Lucid Airs. Step two, target and access 6x the TAM with the advent of the Gravity SUV scheduled for production late this year. Step number three, get to 30x the TAM with a more affordable midsize platform scheduled for production late 2026. That is our Tesla Model 3, Model Y competitor. Get to 30x the TAM there.
Step number four, create a multiplier on top of all of that to licensing our technology to other automakers who will need this. Maybe some of those don't recognize that they need it yet or believe that this is easier than they can do it in-house. It's not easy. This is the result of 6 or 7 years' blood, sweat, and tears. 6, 7 years ago, I had a vision that we could actually reinvent the electric motor and make something more efficient when no one believed that was possible, where everyone believed that electric motor efficiency was very high, which it is compared with the gasoline, and couldn't be bettered. And I brought together a world-class team of scientists and engineers, and we literally reinvented the electric motor.
The software and the control systems, the algorithms, and the inverter technology, we went to ultra-high voltage, 924 volts, highest voltage in the world, silicon carbide switching technology. We looked at everything at a holistic system level and just reinvented the whole suite of systems in the car. That's what it took. I don't think the traditional car companies realize just how extreme a view you've got to take of this to make this sort of advance.
Peter, maybe if we focus on the stage 2 to 4, where obviously you're saving your customers money by reducing the size of the battery. How does the actual production, manufacturing of your eDrive systems, your eMotor, how does that cost scale? Maybe you could talk about some of the unique components of the technology, physically the components in the eMotor, and how that scales with volumes as well.
Yeah. So we've actually designed for manufacture. DFM, DFM stands for design for manufacture, our systems to be truly scaled. If you look at our lack of scale at the moment, it's all to do with demand and market awareness. It's not that we can't make them. We can manufacture. The restriction in our volume and scale is entirely in the marketplace, in sales. So if you look at our battery technology, we have a unique modular design where we have a single-shot injection molding with all the busbars and all the electrics all integrally molded. No one has that. It's truly state of the art. It's a one-shot deal. Comes out like a Lego brick. Another interesting example is in our motor system, compared with one of the Big Three motors, which is considered pretty competitive, they have 240 laser welds in their motor. We have 24.
So we actually literally have, happenstance, it is literally 1/10. It is precisely 1/10 of the laser welding of a very affordable family car made by one of the big three. So these are just examples. But that is in a unit which is hypercar performance. But the overall value proposition, and this is so little understood with an actual drive unit and a motor is, it's actually worthwhile spending a little bit more on your motor inverter to get more efficiency, which will hit the big cost and weight of batteries. And even if the drive unit costs a tiny bit more, you will actually cut much more cost out by hitting the battery. And this is the problem. I think many of the traditional car companies are very siloed in their organization. So you get a group that's responsible for battery.
You've got a group that's responsible for drive units. They're not really incentivized for a cost saving in another group. I had the luxury of being responsible for the whole car, and I could take a complete holistic 20,000-foot view at a system, a complete system level.
Yeah. We have not seen that. For exactly that point, we have not seen a lot of success with the external suppliers who are doing sort of piecemeal, typically driving costs down on the eDrive train.
It's so counterintuitive. Sometimes you have to spend a few dollars more here and there to save tens of dollars elsewhere.
Maybe before we go into the new product, Gravity and mass market, can we talk just a little bit about lessons learned? You mentioned that brand awareness. Just some of the things that you're doing to get the results like you saw of the 30%-40% improvement and how you're going to do those specific things, the lessons learned into Gravity, which is launching over a few months from now.
Yeah. I mean, I think we've been outstanding at engineering cars. I think where we've fallen short of the mark is in brand awareness. And just, still many people in America still haven't heard of us. And that's where we need to improve. We've brought in new marketing expertise, really strengthened that team, doing more targeted, more data-driven marketing at the appropriate demographics. We're opening more studios. We're holding more events, hosting more events. And we're getting a groundswell of grassroots enthusiasm, which is that the best advocates for the brand are owners. People are enjoying driving their Lucid Airs. And just in the last couple of weeks, we had an event at the Tail of the Dragon in Tennessee last weekend where some enthusiastic drivers exploited the performance of their cars on that tortuous route.
The week before we had in the D.C. area no less than 60 Lucid owners out on a rally. So the word is spreading. It is happening virally now. But that is a key lesson. But let me tell you, the response that Gravity is eliciting, and I appreciate this is anecdotal, but it's very genuine. Whereas a lot of people really liked Lucid Air when I showed them, they were very impressed with it. And it's, "Ooh, isn't this a wonderful thing?" The natural response I'm getting from so many people when I show Gravity is, "I want to buy one of those. When can I buy one?" And it's very different. It's like, so I really think we've sort of hit a sweet spot in the American psyche. This is the product that America wants.
It's very different from, I mean, Lucid Air. I love it. It's a great driver's machine. It's awesome. But Gravity is what the market wants.
Yeah. From also a design perspective, particularly for the U.S. market. So if we could just do a quick review. We talked about start of production. Maybe you could just remind both the investors but the consumers in the room, what are we talking about in terms of price ranges, some of the other unique features, obviously, other than the SUV styling? And there's a little bit about capacity plans for Gravity specifically.
Yeah. Yeah. So it will be priced; there will be a version of Gravity from just under $80,000. The Gravity is a 7-seater full-size SUV on the inside. It's got 3 rows seating, 7 seats. And it's actually got more people room longitudinally than even an Escalade. But on the outside, it's only 2 inches longer than a Lucid Air. And a Lucid Air is shorter than a Tesla Model S. So get that. You've got Escalade seating. So we've literally had someone 6 foot 7 in the front row, 6 foot 6 in the second row, and 6 foot 4 in the third row. Really. And I can't get in the back of a third row of the competition. It's impossible for me. And yet we've had people genuinely 6 foot 4 uncomfortable in the third row. This is unprecedented.
So it's got the performance and drivability of a Lamborghini Urus. It really is. I kid you not. It's an incredible sports car drive experience. It's got the spaciousness and practicality of a full-size SUV like an Escalade. I think it has the presence and nobility of a Range Rover. And it's got a really interesting, fun, unique feature that you can actually experience frunking in the frunk. We pop the hood. And as an optional extra, there's a seat where you can see the sun going down. It's surprisingly comfortable, actually. You sit in the frunk and see the sun go down.
I love that combination of the different features. That's excellent. Maybe finally, I know Doug has some financial questions, but we can talk about what you're able to describe around the Gen 3, a product where it's going to be truly more mass market.
Okay. Yeah. Sure. So that schedule for production, late 2026, that is the big one for us. That is our overtly Tesla Model 3, Model Y competitor. That's a platform. It will have more than one body on that platform. It's a world car. The vision is that we'll build 1 million a year by the early 2030s. I do believe that's realistic. Model Y sold more than 1 million cars last year, more than 1 million units. And this is so superior to a Tesla Model Y. It is next generation. You cannot compare. And the engineering team and maybe it's still a bit too early in the morning in California, but I can't say they're literally working on it at this moment, but they're about to come into work and work on it. A design studio, an engineering team, are full on on midsize.
And I give it as much TLC as I can with my other commitments. So it's a fascinating time, actually, for the company because we're actually working on three programs engineering at the moment. We're doing running enhancements, over-the-air enhancements to make Lucid Air ever better with things like this, which the world really needs. Just make it better and better and better. We're preparing for the imminent launch of Gravity, the best SUV on the planet. And I forgot to say, full 40-mile range, 100-mile range rather than virtually anyone else. And in the longer term, we're designing and engineering the future of the company, the 1 million-unit-a-year world platform.
Without any numbers associated, we may even be able to improve that ratio given there's a smaller vehicle for mass.
Well, I'd like to because remember, this is the new gas mileage. Hear it from me. It's going to be miles per kilowatt-hour, not miles per gallon. Think of it that way. And it's very interesting. It's almost a 10-to-1 ratio. 5 mi/kWh, it's a bit like saying, "I'll go 50 miles per gallon." If you've got 2 mi/kWh, it's a bit like saying, "I get 20 miles per gallon." And this is for a relatively large luxury car. So it's a bit like saying, "I just got 50 miles per gallon, but by the way, it's with a Mercedes S-Class." Think what we can do. I think 6 mi/kWh is the Holy Grail. That's what we need to save the planet.
Excellent. Yeah. So Peter, I'll be the bad cop here and ask the financing question. We know you have a great partner in PIF. You're still trying to be conscientious about the burn rate.
Totally.
You've stated liquidity through the second half of next year. What's the strategy going forward on financing? What does the bridge look like? How do you work through that before you get toward profitability later in the decade?
Totally. Well, we're in a virtuous space because we've got the ideal partners in PIF. They've been rock solid since we first met in 2018, and the funding came through in early 2019. They've gone round per round with us. I think that what's great about this relationship is that it truly does transcend a mere financial arrangement. We're mutually incentivized for mutual success. They want midsize in the kingdom as much as I want to produce it for them. This is central to realizing their Vision 2030 to transition their economy from a dependence upon fossil fuels to a sustainable model. We're delighted to be a cornerstone of that, of implementing that vision. We are in an undeniably capital-intensive business. Our strategy is a long-term play. Make no mistake. Our finances are dominated by our long-term investments for the future.
I've seen comparisons with where was Tesla 10 years ago at the stage you were at? Well, they had a fully depreciated factory, which was in dilapidated condition in Fremont. We've invested in a state-of-the-art factory. And the downside from that is that we have a factory that's going to be nearly, well, it'll be 90,000 units per annum capacity at the end of this year. We've guided manufacturing 9,000 cars this year. So you have almost a, it's rather artificial construct because at one point in time, there won't be a run rate of that. But you're approaching nearly a factor of 10 per car of amortized depreciation of those factory assets on your COGS. And then when you look at, we're going through assiduously right now, cost of labor. We're looking at inbound logistics. We've made great strides in that.
Then the other thing is impairments on inventory. The whole team, Gagan and my CFO, is working assiduously leading a big push on that. But clearly, and I've stated publicly, and I'm very transparent about this, we will have to raise further capital. I'm quite open about that. Everyone knows that. We will do entrepreneurially when the time is right. But I am very optimistic about the future. I've never sold a single share in this company other than for tax purposes. Like so many of the team, I'm all in. I just know that there's kind of an artificial construct at the moment because we've put so much money into vertical integration into a long-term future that it shows adversely on the books right now. But what is to come is this profound advantage of multi-thousand dollars per car on the bottom.
Watch this play out. This is a tech race, and it has not played out yet.
Peter, maybe the last one from us, and happy to open it up for Q&A from the audience. But one of the bridges that you've talked about, it's small now, but the number obviously grows as you scale it, is licensing. So can you talk about how you're viewing licensing on essentially each platform?
Yeah. So we announced last year a deal with Aston Martin, which was, it wasn't actually that deal, it's a supply deal, not licensing, but it's a similar principle. And that was worth at the time at least $450 million, hopefully a lot more because that's the minimum. And I think there's a timescale associated with all this. We're supplying a top-flight hypercar Sapphire technology to Aston Martin. You'd expect nothing less for a brand as storied as Aston. And I think that's wholly appropriate. So we're providing them Sapphire tech for their range of hypercars for the next decade. And if you look at the technology we build today, it's still high performance. It's not family car tech. It suits something like a Jaguar, a Maserati, or a Lexus, or something like that, or maybe a Lincoln. It's sort of high-end performance cars, executive cars.
But where it gets really exciting is the tech that we're developing for our Midsize Platform. We're embodying all our expertise, all our learning. You talk about learning, real focus on cost down. The plan there is not to probably further miniaturize the drive units. They're small enough, but to miniaturize the cost. And that's coming in two years' time. Now, that tech suits a family car. That would suit something like a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Accord or something like that. And there are car companies who are, I wouldn't say left behind, but they're not at the forefront of this wave of EV technology. And there's a timescale associated with this. So I think at the moment in time last year, Aston was great. Let's look to the future. We are in discussions with several companies as we speak. But nothing to disclose at the moment.
Yeah. But that's fantastic. From our view, that's when you start to get vehicles that could have 40 kWh batteries, fully electric, and 250 miles of range.
Well, what do you think what this really means? You look at the BMW i5 that's just come out. That's got about 230 miles range, okay? And it's got an 88 kWh pack. 88. So it could because with this ratio, you'd be able to make the car with 46 kWh, not 88. Can you imagine just the mass difference? There's about 400-500 pounds in weight saving. How much better the car would handle. So it's not just the cost. It's the value proposition of the whole product is transformed as well. So the numbers I give you, the mere few thousands for battery cost, that's almost just part of the advantage.
Well, enough from us. Open it up to Q&A. Anyone who has a question? We go in the front.
Peter, thank you for your time. Mike Canada, Chief Operating Officer with KORE Power. We're your neighbor in Arizona. So we're building a battery factory. So I'm on the battery side. Really appreciate your transparency and the discussions. Probably should say first, I love the Lucid Air. It's beautiful.
Thank you.
I'm excited about the Gravity i2. I'm one of the ones that say, "When can I buy one?" But as you've talked about your technology and the way that your team has optimized and engineered a more feasible solution, can you speak to the different technologies, maybe specifically battery, what you can share, of course, battery technology? There's been a shift, of course, in the marketplace for EVs, looking at LFP-based technologies, which is probably not suited for your platform. There's been the high-nickel content battery technology. And then there's next-generation battery technologies that's on the radar. So if you could share where you are and what you believe.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's very thanks, Mike, and nice to have you as a neighbor. I think that LFP has got a real place. LFP is the iron phosphate. It's a lower performance version of battery chemistry. It's heavier. It's got less energy. But it costs a lot less. And it is able to fast charge. And this fast charging is a profound advantage. You use it for a power tool for something like a power drill where you want a lot of power and you don't mind if you have to recharge quickly. So you can adopt a whole different sort of mindset with LFP with a more mature charging infrastructure where you can say, "Well, I've got less range. But if there's a reliable charger in regular intervals, I can stop, charge fast. I don't need the range then." So it's a different mindset.
I think LFP is not right for Air. I don't think LFP is right for Gravity. I think it has a significant potential place in our Midsize Platform. And I think also we would enjoy a multiplier effect because remember, Mike, the whatever battery technology takes place, and I welcome it all, our efficiency cross-multiplies with that. It's still our efficiency. It's not into either/or. It's a multiplier effect to the two. Now, I know that there's a gentleman I met, a gentleman from QuantumScape on the way in this morning, and I know QuantumScape are present. I mean, certainly solid-state lithium-ion holds a great promise. There's this Holy Grail that we might be able to get at the 500 Wh/kg. Currently, cell chemistry with lithium-ion is about 265 Wh/kg, somewhere pushing on the door of 270 Wh/kg. That would have a profound impact.
I am very skeptical. I still want to. Let's see how, if it ever happens. It has failed to deliver for the last 15 years. It's perfectly possible to make laboratory quantities or a single car of solid state, non-liquid electrolytes. It's this mass production which has perplexed so many companies for so long. But let me tell you, if solid state does become a reality, then our efficiency will act equally as a multiplier effect on that. And whatever the cost of that, we will be able to reduce the cost in turn equally. Yeah.
Thanks, Peter. You guys are American design, American engineer, American-made car. I think I saw this morning that the European Union was proposing levying up to 38% tax on Chinese imports. Is China a risk at all in your future? How do you see that playing out over the next? I mean, it seems like there's going to be a lot of debate around tariffs.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Despite my accent, we are all American outfits. Forgive my accent. No, we're proudly manufacturing in Arizona and designed and engineered in California. Look, I think that I've seen the Chinese make great strides in the last few years, undeniably. I mean, their ability to engineer cars has changed profoundly in the last three years in terms of fit and finish, quality of materials, just things like wind noise and door slam. And even handling dynamics are a lot better. They're not there yet, but man, they're on the way. I think that in terms of LFP batteries, they're probably the world leader right now. In terms of particularly if you look at the blade, LFP blade, prismatic blade technologies, I think they're right up there, undeniably. They've taken an ascendance for that.
If you look at their drive technology, motors, transmission, inverters, they're still several years behind Tesla. We're about 4 years ahead of Tesla. They're a long way behind. I think there's a perception, a false perception that they're more advanced than they really are. But don't let that fool you. If they can transform their ability to do the rest of the car in the last 3, 4 years, they're going to get there. This is an irresistible force. Now, I believe firmly upon our advantage of technology and brand differentiation in a free market economy. That's my belief. I also recognize that in this free market economy, it's not a level playing field because you get companies like BYD, they're based upon a very low labor rate, and they on top of that enjoy disproportionate government incentives from the Chinese central government.
And that means that it isn't a free market economy. It's a skewed, non-level playing field. And I think it is appropriate to take means, appropriate means to level that playing field.
Excellent. Maybe this is the last one.
I might have missed it. What's the charging rate right now? The fastest charging rate of the Lucid Air, what will it be in the Gravity? Where do you see the future of extreme fast charging? What are the limitations? You mentioned it before, range anxiety and also charging speeds. The faster you charge, the closer these EVs get to the experience of a gasoline-driven car. What's holding us back from charging these cars faster?
Okay. Well, I don't know where to start. So let's go to how we measure the speed of charging. It's often cited as 10%-80%, the rate of percentage of a battery. But if your range of your car isn't very good, it doesn't matter that you charge very quickly. You're going to have to stop again really soon. So what really matters is first how we measure what the speed of charging is. Another way of measuring that is the power, the electric power in kilowatts that goes into the car. But if the car is very inefficient and requires a massive amount of electricity to go a set distance, that's not a very good measure either because you can pump a lot of power into that car. Take a Humvee. You get about 1.6 mi/kWh.
Yes, it might be able to charge it over 300 kW. But actually, the rate of charge that matters is actually very weak because it's inefficient. So my view is the only valid way of measuring the speed of charge of an EV is how many miles you can accrue of range per minute wait time, miles per minute. It's the same as miles per hour. But when I say that a Lucid Air will charge at faster than the speed of sound, no one believes me, but it's actually true. It's over supersonic. So what really matters is how many miles can I accrue in a minute? Lucid Air is the fastest charging car in the world. You can charge 300 miles in 21 minutes. You can get 200 miles in just 10 minutes. No one else can compete. In terms of power, that's 350 kW.
The max that a Tesla will take on a V3 charging station and the very few V4s out there is 250 kW. But what you have to do is in order to get that rate of charge in terms of miles per minute, you have to do a simple sum. You have to multiply the electric power going in in kW, and you need to multiply it by the efficiency in miles per kilowatt hour. And if you multiply the kW, 250 kW, 300 kW, 350 kW, please pay attention, multiply it by the efficiency, that will give you the number of miles that you accrue per minute of your coffee break. That is the key thing. Now, when we look at how we can improve that, it's a function of a number of factors.
If we look at the actual amount of power that a battery pack can take, it's directly proportional to two factors. It's cell chemistry multiplied by the capacity of the pack. If you've got twice the pack size, you can put twice the power in. It's like two cars. So big packs can take a lot of power. And that's why if you look at something like a Humvee, sounds very impressive because a Silverado is the same. Huge pack takes a lot of power, doesn't get you very far because it needs all that power to go anywhere. So it's a very artificial metric. What really matters is how much power multiplied by the efficiency. Now, that power is a function largely of cell chemistry. So you can have power cells within the lithium-ion range, but usually it's a trade between power and energy density.
What Lucid goes for is high energy density at the expense of power every time. We're not chasing power. We've got enough power. We've got surplus power. We've got 1,000 horsepower as a function of range. But there's another myth in here, and that's about voltage. We've got the highest voltage car in the world at 900 volts. There's a myth that a higher voltage car, that the cells will charge faster. They don't. The rate of charge of a cell in a pack is independent of voltage. The reason is that each cell requires about open circuit voltage, about 4.2 volts to charge. The cell doesn't know what the voltage of the car is. It doesn't need to know. That cell just requires that 4.2 volts. It's just how they're strung together. The advantage of high voltage is something else.
It's at system heating level. If you want to really supercharge a Tesla Model S, you'll take about 600 amps. That actually, you will have five times without 924-volt architecture compared with the 400-volt architecture, we'll have literally 20%, one-fifth of the I2R heating losses in the system, which means that all the cabling, the connectors to the car, the plug-in, everything, that entire system requires less water cooling, and it's much more compatible with ultra-high power charging. That's why we go ultra-high voltage. It's all the connections through the system, including in the car, but the actual cells are immune to whether it's 900 volts or 400 volts. It's super confusing. It's counterintuitive. But there's a lot of belief out there that a 900-volt pack or an 800-volt pack, the cells will charge faster. That is a complete myth.
I love it. The math lesson to absolutely end this off, Peter. That's, thank you so much. Obviously, your technical expertise always shines through. And really, it's going to be an exciting next two years for Lucid.
Isn't it exciting what we're doing? I mean, we're trying to really progress things to benefit all mankind.
Love it. Everyone, please, a round of applause.