Lucid jumps on the ‘privately owned’ autonomous vehicle bandwagon

Lucid says it will eventually sell “privately owned” autonomous vehicles with the help of Nvidia’s artificial intelligence technology. The company is the latest to declare its intention to sell Level 4 autonomous vehicles to its customers, despite a range of theoretical and logistical challenges standing in the way.

Lucid’s autonomous vehicles — which do not exist at the moment — will be powered by Nvidia’s Drive AV platform, which the chipmaker has described as a “modular, flexible approach” that “empowers” automakers to take as much as they need. Nvidia’s system collects and consolidates data from multiple sensors, and improves continuously through over-the-air software updates.

Lucid is taking a page from Tesla in positioning its current driver assist system, DreamDrive Pro, as a gateway to Level 4 autonomous driving. The automaker currently makes two models, the Air sedan and the Gravity SUV, with a third, midsized SUV is coming in 2026. The unnamed midsized EV will come with a range of sensors, including cameras, lidar, and radar, that will power a “the first true eyes-off, hands-off, and mind-off (L4) consumer owned autonomous vehicle.” The brain of the vehicle will be comprised of two Nvidia Drive AGX Thor computers, running on the chipmaker’s DriveOS software.

Personally owned autonomous vehicles are increasingly a captivating challenge for many companies. Early on, many experts dismissed the idea, arguing that the technology to power fully autonomous driving was too expensive for private sales. Instead, fleet-owned robotaxis were the safer bet, helping amortize the costs of all the sensors and high-powered computing power needed to enable self-driving cars. But now the costs for many of that equipment, including lidar, is coming down, resurfacing the idea that autonomous vehicles can be cheap enough to sell to regular people.

Whether it actually works out that way remains to be seen. Waymo, the clear leader in the robotaxi space, only operates in a handful of markets and is expected to be unprofitable for quite a while. Personally owned autonomous vehicles could become a reality, but perhaps at a huge loss to the company selling them.

The announcement is the latest attempt by an automaker to re-position its product lineup in the aftermath of the expiration of the $7,500 EV tax credit. Without the tax credit, EV sales are expected to drop dramatically. And automakers are trying to convince investors that they are diversified enough to withstand the slowdown. General Motors rolled out a raft of announcements last week around partially autonomous vehicles and home energy. And now Lucid, which makes luxury and performance EVs, is doing the same.