The vice president of design at Lucid Motors, Derek Jenkins, has identified three key things that the forthcoming Gravity SUV must have to prove successful.
During a recent interview with Auto News, Jenkins was asked what consumers want from a luxury electric SUV. He said that range for a vehicle like the Gravity is the most important thing. It must also offer lots of space and be fun to drive.
“Oftentimes with SUVs, it’s the primary family vehicle. Even on the luxury-consumer side, that means this vehicle has a lot of daily tasks as well as weekend adventure or weekend getaway tasks. So range,” Jenkins said. “That range topic, I always put that at the very, very top of the list. To me that means 400-miles plus. You know, it has to have that at a minimum because people are going to use this thing. It’s going to be a family workhorse in a lot of cases.”
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“Three things have to add up: awesome range, tons of space and super fun to drive. These are some real fundamental things that most people will be pretty excited about, and it will get them out of internal combustion vehicles, because they can’t often match on those topics.”
Speaking about the design of electric vehicles more broadly, Jenkins said that the battery packs used by EVs and their compact drivetrain components allow for car manufacturers to maximize interior space.
“You have this EV architecture. Incredibly compact drivetrain components that can be really pushed away from the driver compartment. We’ve done this very specifically with the Air, because it’s midsized on the outside and a full-sized luxury sedan on the inside. This is enabled by electrification, and specifically in our case, our components. That’s unique to us right now. If I look 10 years into the future, that will be the common formula.”
Lucid first teased the Gravity SUV in September last year, confirming that it will be based on the same platform as the Air sedan. It will feature a similar exterior design to the Air as well, including a pair of thin LED headlights at the front, hidden door handles, and a thin LED light bar at the rear.
