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Courtesy Lucid Motors
Electric vehicle makers all want to be autonomous vehicle makers, too.
Tuesday, EV maker
Lucid
(ticker: LCID) jumped into the AV-fray, announcing details of its “DreamDrive,” which the company calls the most technically sophisticated driver assistance system out there.
DreamDrive, according to the company, has 32 onboard sensors, a driver monitoring system and onboard ethernet network, among other hardware which enables driver-assistance features such as collision avoidance, traffic jam assist, and highway assist.
It’s a lot of technical detail to digest. All that, however, are the sort of technologies and features enabled by advanced driver assistance features available on many new vehicles today.
Tesla
(TSLA) has its systems dubbed AutoPilot and Full Self Driving.
General Motors
(GM) unveiled what it calls Ultra Cruise this past week.
All assistance systems on roads today, including DreamDrive, don’t enable cars to completely drive themselves. Drivers need to stay engaged at all times. The systems add convenience and are intended to make driving safer. Truly self-driving cars for consumers are still years down the road.
Lucid stock was down 0.2% in midday trading. The
S&P 500
and
Dow Jones Industrial Average
were both down about 0.2% as well. New features are good news for Lucid investors, but driver assistance features are now table-stakes for playing in the EV game.
Lucid stock is still down about 13% over the past three months as new EV start-up shares have had a wild ride of late.
Fisker
(FSR) stock, for instance, has dropped 17% over the same span, while stock in established EV leader Tesla has gained about 18%.
“DreamDrive Pro has been designed to grow in capability, thanks to our ability to deliver software over-the-air and key equipment already in place in the vehicle,” said Dr. Eugene Lee, Lucid’s senior director or ADAS and Autonomous Driving, in the company’s news release.
DreamDrive Pro is the higher functioning systems and comes standard on the higher price Lucid Air Dream Edition and the Lucid Air Grand Touring model. It will be available as an option on other Lucid Air models.
The Lucid Air is the company’s first model and begins shipping late in 2021.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com