Recode/California Public Records
An image of Lucid Motors' electric sedan acquired by Recode via a public records request in October.
Lucid Motors, a startup formerly known as Atieva that's based in Fremont, California, will show off its electric sedan in mid-December.
The startup emailed invitations on Friday to members of the press for the reveal, which will take place at Lucid Motors' prototype shop on December 14. Lucid Motors will also offer rides in the "executive sedan" at the reveal.
Lucid Motors wrote on its website that the car will come with automated driving systems.
Lucid Motors
Peter Rawlinson, the former vice president and chief engineer for Tesla's Model S, is the chief technology officer of Lucid Motors. Bernard Tse, a former Tesla vice president and board member, helped co-found Atieva before he was ousted as CEO following friction with its largest shareholder, Beijing Automotive Industry Holding, in April, The Guardian reported at the time.
Sam Weng, who currently serves as Lucid Motors' COO, also helped found the company. Lucid Motors has yet to name a new CEO following Rawlinson's departure.
Atieva has released a series of videos featuring its tech in a van dubbed Edna. The most recent video, from October, indicated that the vehicle was able to accelerate to 60 mph in 2.74 seconds.
Atieva executives told Reuters in June that the company was planning to get the electric premium sedan on the road in 2018, with luxury crossovers slated to arrive in 2020 or 2021.
Recode's Mark Harris retrieved an image of Lucid Motors' electric sedan via a public records request in October, showing its general style. Harris also acquired a shot of Lucid Motors' manufacturing facility is Dayang Motorcycle, which is located in the city of Luoyang, China:
Recode/California Public Records
Dayang Motorcycle is an electric motorbike and scooter company.
Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, the founder of Chinese internet company LeEco, has invested in Atieva. Yueting is also an investor in electric car start-up Faraday Future.
Faraday Future is preparing to unveil an electric car at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, but the automaker has faced setbacks, such as halted construction on its $1 billion factory in Nevada.
LeEco raised $1.08 billion to develop its electric car, the LeSee, in September. The news came about a month after LeEco invested $1.8 billion to build an electric-car plant in eastern China with eventual annual production capacity of 400,000 cars.
Yueting wrote in a letter to staff in November that LeEco is facing a shortage of cash from over expansion.
LeEco showed off its electric concept car, the LeSEE, in a video in April. The company was supposed to show the car to the public during its US launch event in San Francisco in late October, but said the car got into an accident before the event.
Lucid Motors has released some teaser images of the car, which you can see below: