san francisco lucid motors chief executive officer peter rawlinson told reuters on tuesday that the luxury electric car maker plans to launch a rival to tesla incs model 3 in 2024 or 2025 the company led by the former tesla engineer is following the same strategy as tesla starting with a luxury car to create a halo around the brand and then expand into the mass market this week it announced plans to go public by merging with a blank check company a move that indicated a market capitalization of 56 billion before regular production of lucid motors first model has begun scaling up production of a mass automobile is a major financial challenge rawlinson said i cant wait to do that he told reuters referring to the rival to teslas model 3 its least expensive sedan but first rawlinson said he would for now focus on the luxury bigger car which paradoxically takes fewer resources to make a smaller car requires more capital because you need a bigger factory and more automation he said experts say it may be too late for lucid to launch the affordable model as legacy makers like volkswagen hyundai motor and ford are already introducing affordable models to challenge tesla there is a question mark over whether there will be a market left for lucid after four to five years mel yu an automotive industry analyst said lucid motors first electric car the luxury air wont go in production now until late 2021 later than the spring 2021 launch initially planned rawlinson said that the carmaker expects production of a less expensive sub70000 version of the luxury sedan in 2022 followed by a sport utility vehicle codenamed project gravity in 2023 he said he is interested in developing pickup trucks and commercial vehicles but they are several years away and might be built with partners the world needs 25000 cars urgently lucid cant do it for another eight years realistically he said adding that even tesla has not launched such a model yet he also said six wellknown automakers have reached out to him over the last month and expressed interest in lucid motors technology cooperating with another company could lead to making a 25000 car in the next three to four years he added he also said it is too early for the company to make its own battery cells for now adding that it has contracts with suppliers lg chem and samsung sdi