EV executive admits electric trucks don't make money

The CEO of an electric vehicle (EV) company doesn't believe electric trucks are currently a viable product, he told Axios in an interview.

Peter Rawlinson, CEO of luxury electric vehicle producer Lucid Motors, he said Axios believes that internal combustion engines, not batteries, are the only realistic option for pickup trucks. Other major automakers, including Ford, Chevrolet and Tesla, sell electric trucks, but Rawlinson says they're currently too inefficient to make sense for most consumers.

“I think the only viable solution for an affordable, usable pickup truck today is internal combustion,” Rawlinson told Axios. “This is the wrong product, and so we're seeing companies not making viable profits trying to make an electric pickup truck.”

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Specifically, Rawlinson is skeptical of EV trucks, at least for now, because the mileage per kilowatt hour of batteries isn't high enough for any vehicle that has a large payload, according to Axios. This means battery costs for electric pickup trucks are higher than for other types of electric vehicles, making them more expensive and less attractive to consumers.

lucid — which has received billions of dollars in investment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund since 2018 — is not in the electric truck market, according to Axios. The startup is still running at a loss as it tries to ramp up its operations.

The Biden administration has spent billions of dollars and promulgated various rigorous regulations to advance the manufacture and adoption of electric vehicles over the next decade. However, the US electric vehicle market has struggled to take off, with consumer demand not growing as soon as expected and the main manufacturers losing billions of dollars in its electrical product lines.

However, Rawlinson doesn't think demand for cooler electric vehicles will pose a major long-term problem for his company.

“If you look at us, I might say, 'What a slowdown?'” Rawlinson told Axios, referring to the fact that Lucid's shipments have increased in each of the last four quarters. “You do the math and my vision, my dream : that we could get to a million cars a year in the early 2030s, that's totally realistic.”

Lucid did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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