Yahoo Autos The Lucid Air's Spring Launch Has Been Delayed
Welcome to The Grid, R&T's quick roundup of the auto industry and motorsports news you should know this morning.
Lucid Air's Spring Launch Delayed
It's been a big week for Lucid Motors, with an announcement that it would go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, but the startup automaker had some bad news to share yesterday. In a letter, CEO Peter Rawlinson said that the planned spring launch of Lucid's first car, the Air sedan, has been delayed. "From testing activities to supplier availability to preparing for sales and service, COVID-19 has affected all workstreams," Rawlinson wrote. "As a company, we've worked diligently to minimize these impacts, and over the past year, Lucid has witnessed seismic progress and growth. Yet despite the excellent progress made in all areas, we now know that we won’t be able to start delivering Lucid Air this spring at the level of quality we insist on providing."
Rawlinson said that Lucid is now aiming to begin production at its Arizona factory sometime in the second half of 2021.
Kia May Yet Collaborate With Apple
Earlier this month, it seemed that Hyundai and Kia's deal to build a car for Apple was dead, but South Korean news site Chosun Biz says that the two may collaborate in some capacity. Reuters reports that Apple and Kia signed a memorandum of understanding, which among other things, includes pursuing a collaboration on electric cars. Notably, the statement issued by Hyundai last month said that the company "not having talks with Apple on developing autonomous vehicles," but that doesn't mean that it's not having talks with Apple regarding non-autonomous cars. Kia shares gained as much as 8.1 percent on this news, though it's still unclear what this collaboration will look like, or if it'll ever come to fruition.
Corvette Racing to Run WEC Season Opener at Portimao
Here's a fun little surprise. The FIA World Endurance Championship announced today that Corvette Racing would be making an appearance at its season-opening 8 Hours at Portimao. One C8.R will be sent over to Portgual to race, with Corvette factory drivers Oliver Gavin and Antonio Garcia set to race in the LM-GTE Pro category. The C8.R was supposed to make its WEC debut at Le Mans last year, but that was kiboshed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The series says Corvette is entering the race to get caught up on the race procedures unique to the WEC.
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