Lucid Motors shows off robotaxi concept called ‘Lunar’

Lucid Motors has debuted a robotaxi concept vehicle that it’s calling the “Lucid Lunar,” which it showed off at an investor day on Thursday in New York City.

It’s a two-seater vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, designed to be built on the same underlying platform that Lucid Motors is developing for its upcoming “mid-size” series of electric vehicles, the company said.

Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said Lucid was already “working on” Lunar and that it would debut after the company launches its mid-size vehicles, but the company later clarified to TechCrunch that there is no active development happening on the dedicated robotaxi — yet.

Lucid Motors also said Thursday that it is near an agreement with Uber to collaborate on a robotaxi based on one of the mid-size vehicles Lucid has in the pipeline. Lucid Motors is currently working with autonomous vehicle company Nuro to make an autonomous version of the Gravity SUV that will launch on Uber’s network by the end of this year in the San Francisco area. Nuro and Lucid would not confirm whether this new vehicle will use Nuro’s technology.

The announcements came near the end of Lucid’s investor day, but show that the company is increasingly focused on trying to build up a business around autonomy that can supplement its electric vehicle sales. At one point during the presentation, Lucid Motors displayed a bar chart that showed how it expects robotaxi partnership revenue to greatly eclipse the money it makes from licensing its electric vehicle tech, though there was no label on the Y-axis.

Lucid is also looking to make some money on its partial autonomy play. The company revealed that it plans to offer monthly subscriptions for its DreamDrive Pro that scale up with increased capability starting in the first half of 2027. Owners can pay $69 per month for the lowest driver assistance level, or as much as $199 per month for self-driving capability that won’t require the driver to take over at any point. (Lucid Motors has still not developed that more advanced capability yet, nor has any other automaker, it should be noted.)

The company shared a slide Thursday that said autonomy subscriptions “are the single biggest software monetization opportunity.” It’s something that Tesla has been doing for a while with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software, and it’s a similar approach to what Rivian announced at its own “Autonomy & AI Day” in late December.

Also like Rivian, Lucid Motors is working on its own in-cabin AI assistant. The company is aiming to make the assistant capable of doing simple tasks like turning the air conditioning up or down, or handling complex queries like finding “something to do that’s a little unique, maybe off the beaten path, and maybe has kind of a maritime or nautical vibe.” It’s not clear how well that works right now; Lucid Motors’ attempt to demo the assistant live during the event failed, and the company instead showed a pre-recorded video.

The rest of Lucid’s event focused heavily on the company’s attempts to drive down the cost of manufacturing its vehicles, as well as its efforts to push the boundaries of the efficiency of its electric drivetrain. Those will be crucial components of making the mid-sized vehicles affordable (they’re supposed to start around $50,000) when the first one hits the market by the end of this year. The company revealed that one will be known as the Lucid Cosmos, with the second vehicle will be called the Lucid Earth. The third name was not announced on Thursday.

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Sr. Reporter, Transportation

Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.

You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.

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