Lucid Motors is only a few months away from lastly launching its electrical SUV, and the corporate now says the upcoming automobile — dubbed Gravity — can have Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) constructed proper in, making an adapter pointless.
Lucid introduced the information forward of a deliberate “Technology and Manufacturing Day” occasion at its Arizona manufacturing unit, the place the corporate will go into better element about the way it has designed and can construct the Gravity. The firm beforehand introduced that it might begin providing adapters for its present EV, the Air, in 2025 and that it deliberate to combine NACS charging in future automobiles.
Making the Gravity as enticing a product as attainable is essential for Lucid, which has struggled to develop gross sales of its Air sedan at a time when SUVs are dominant in North America. The firm has repeatedly tapped Saudi Arabia, which is its majority proprietor, for recent funding to get the Gravity into manufacturing. Most not too long ago Lucid introduced in August that it was taking as much as one other $1.5 billion from the Kingdom.
Building NACS into the Gravity is one more signal of how broadly the automotive business is adopting Tesla’s charging customary.
Tesla first introduced plans to open up the know-how — which grants entry to its widespread Supercharger community — again in 2022. Since then, basically each main automaker and EV startup has introduced plans to both supply adapters to their prospects that permit their automobiles plug into the community, or to construct the tech proper into future automobiles.
One of Lucid’s closest friends within the EV startup world, Rivian, introduced earlier this 12 months that its upcoming mass-market R2 SUV will include the NACS port. But that automobile gained’t be prepared till 2026. In the meantime, homeowners of Rivian’s R1T pickup and R1S SUV have to make use of adapters, very like the opposite legacy automakers. That course of has been sluggish, as a New York Times article not too long ago identified, following Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s resolution to dismiss practically the entire firm’s Supercharger workforce earlier this 12 months amid a a lot wider restructuring.
