Lucid moves its electric car ambitions into a spacious new HQ

Lucid, one of the companies that looks like it could have the best chance to potentially field a true all-electric competitor to Tesla’s Model S, is moving its headquarters to a new facility in Newark, California — one with twice the space of its current base of operations in Menlo Park.

The new headquarters is intended to give Lucid room to grow as it prepares to launch its Lucid Air, the first car from the company. The Lucid Air is a four-door sport sedan with a top speed of more than 235 mph, power output equivalent to 1,000 horsepower and a target launch date of sometime in 2019.

Lucid’s goal with the car is to design something that can stand on its own, instead of just matching up favorably in a comparison chart with the Model S. The company designed the vehicle from the ground up with a shared use model in mind, creating a luxury vehicle that’s also suitable for a collaborative consumption car-sharing future supplemented by autonomous vehicle technology.

The automaker still cites the “next two years” as a “defining period” for the direction and product development, so it sounds like it’s still on track to make the Air happen in the 2019 time frame. It’ll have some heavyweight company, however — that’s the same target Tesla is shooting for with its $200,000 new Roadster.