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Peter Rawlinson

lines on the record: 77
first: 2024-06-20
most recent: 2024-06-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So it's very interesting. I think there is a common narrative that he pushes everyone his subordinates really hard. I never had that experience Because I push myself so crazy how to do it. There was someone pushing me harder than he ever could, and it was me, because I'd had years and years of wanting to do something like a model S, and I could never have done it, say Janky or Lotus. But what I had was the freedom of picking, hand picking, brilliant engineers, and he was totally aligned with that.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she's a widow, and she was in her nineties, and her health was failing. And I just had to go back, so I resigned my position at Tesla in january twenty. I went home for Christmas end of twenty eleven, and it was clear that mum needed me. And so crazy, I gave up my job at Tesla, flying round with El on his jet, and I went home and I was literally cooking dinner and washing the dishes for mum. And then her felt, it's only when she passed that I really came out and joined a little company and set up Lucid from it.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm glad you asked me that because actually there's a sort of interlude between the two. So while I was doing all this, my mother was living. In England”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For everything else. Totally. And it's not the only thing because we knew we didn't have silicon carbide switching technology in those days. So we were using insulated bipolar transistors, which was limiting us to around 420 to 430 volts. So we knew what sort of range of and we knew there could be some peak overloads that voltage spikes that we had to cover for. So we knew roughly the voltage range that we could hit. But it was sort of absolutely consistent with how many cells could we fit? Because each cell had an amount of energy. And so the number of cells would determine the range of the vehicles. He wanted to get as maximized that as well. And even the gaps between Without changing the wheelbase of the car from the original design. Which was quite an achievement, I can tell you”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you believe that the seatbelt anchorage structural loads start splitting up the pack into discrete modules which influence the electrical voltage? That's truly joined up thinking.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the seatbelt load would go through the floor through a long bolt through the cross member which is in the battery pack. And these had to go in a specific location where the people fitted. And so that starts determining where you can put the cross members in the battery pack. So when I started laying out the architecture of all the cells fitted in that battery pack, I noticed that we could actually divide that into seven elements along the rocker section, and we'd be able to get these cross members in precisely the right point. And why this is a very interesting example of joined up thinking is that then led to the design of the module of the battery pack, and we ended up with sixteen modules of four hundred fifty cells on the model S and actually had a determining factor upon the voltage that the car ran at.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, exactly. And so there was a desire to have a fully flat floor, but one of the big loads that you have to design for structurally in a car the seatbelt pull test, particularly the lower anchor points which go through the seat and through the seat mountings into the floor, and so flat sheet metal floor wouldn't have been strong enough. So it was very clear we'd have to link the battery pack structure under the floor through and make the battery pack contribut to the seat belt strength. The structural reaction. Yeah, exactly, exactly.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How is that going to fit in motors, transmission, drive shaft, suspension, people package leg room crumple zones cooling, just space for luggage, all of that within that predetermined outer shape? Because it being signed off, and I realized within a millisecond that that wasn't going to change much. So it was a fascinating three-dimensional puzzle. It was like a Tetrix on steroids, tetras on steroids to solve how we were going to fit all these parts in the car. And I can give you a very interesting example. We wanted to have a flat floor in the car to differentiate it. No transmission tunnel inside the cabin And a traditional car has got a transmission tunnel at the rear, and of course that is an obstruction to comfort for the occupants.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, August 08. And before I'd arrived, the exterior styling design, the shape of Model S, had been signed off and approved by between France and Elon, and that was pretty well predetermined before I arrived. Now that set in stone effectively the outer shape constraint the parameters that I as an engineer could work to. Now that's very different from how we approach Lucid Air and I can go on to that later. But this presented a very interesting and compelling intellectual puzzle three Duzzle. How was I going to fit all the battery cells in to give that car to endow that car with sufficient range?”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was the big picture thinking, and right down to detailed execution. I think you need to have both. I think you need to have a strategic oversight of joined up thinking, of how systems interact relative to each other as a complete ecosystem. And then you need to have that loving attention to detail. I mean, I'm well known for my mantra that every millimeter counts, and I felt that every gram counts, particularly with electric car where every joule of energy is a precious commodity. So it was really a very interesting intellectual puzzle because when I arrived at Tesla in February, prior to my arrival, Franz von Holtzen, who was the design chief, arrived around, I think it was about autumn oh eight.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You look at the Lucidaire Pure, we're able to do the Carlets in production right now for any journey you take from A to B, whether it's from home to the office, down the shops on your vacation, you will use less electricity to go from A to B than any other car on the market today bar none because it's the most efficient. And because you're able to use less electricity, not only will it cost you less as a user. It means you don't have to carry such a large battery pack around. And that means better use of the world's precious resources, less mines for lithium, nickel, cobalt, less dependent geopolitically in this world for the US. And this is of a profound significance. We can go further with less through technology.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For a high-end EV about thirty seven percent of that value is the battery pack. Wow. But for a more affordable family car It's over forty percent. There is no gasoline engine car equivalent to this imbalance of cost. So what we're doing at Lucid is addressing the cost of the batteries, and we're doing it in an unorthodox way rather than saying, right, can we make batteries cheaper through an economy of scale, or actually saying, do we need that many batteries in the first place? Can we go further with higher technology? We've reinvented the electric motor, we've reinvented the inverter, to go further with less batteries in the first place. And so if you look at our products today.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We need to address the barriers to widespread adoption of electric cars. And the first barrier was range anxiety. When we launched lucid air, In the autumn, the fall of twenty one, we had a range of 520 miles with our very first product. Nobody believed it was possible. And we did that with a modest battery size. It wasn't a humongous. It wasn't dumb range with just stuffing loads of batteries. Anyone can do And this is cutting edge stuff. And why this is important is the next barrier to widespread adoption is the cost of ownership, the cost of an EV. Why not everybody jumping to EVs now? It's because of cost. Clearly. And if you look at the breakdown of the cost of building the bill of materials, of all the parts that you put into an EV”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If they're lucky, three, two, you're very well versed in this, Barry. Absolutely. I'm a car guy, so I know this. You know your stuff. And why this is important is”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that the mantle has passed to Lucid. I think Lucid is now at the cutting edge. I think we are the company with a true sense of mission. This week I was proud to announce that we'd created a landmark number in the development of the EV, which is going to have a profound impact upon the planet, and that is achieving five miles of range per kilowatt hour of energy.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Relatively late, and this was a core philosophy of my engineering process, to really turn things on the head. Normally there's an emphasis on getting an early prototype so you can learn early with your mistakes. My process was the absolute antithesis, make all your mistakes on the computer, test it a thousand times, ten thousand times, and then cut the metal when you're damn sure. Relatively late and that prototype will be really good. And that's what we did. And that's how we reduced the time scale. And that car was in production three and a half years from the day I said, right, let's design it from scratch back in february two thousand nine.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because here had this incredible opportunity in life to show what was possible and show what I could do, and really one of the main weapons I had was digital engineering. To take everything I'd learned about cutting edge computational engineering and simulation digital wind tunnel, digital everything. So therefore, we could actually go late on prototypes and effectively go for computational prototypes, tens of thousands of times, to get things right. So when we actually built a proper prototype, and the first proper prototype was late 2010.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and really we set up Tesla Engineering. There wasn't a place to do it. And I was actually working in SpaceX. I had my SpaceX security And I found that the second floor of SpaceX was unused. It was early days at SpaceX. And there's just concrete floor. And I said, can I have this? Let's set up Tesla Engineering upstairs in SpaceX. And we rolled some great carpet down, put some desks there, and about probably about 20 of us actually designed the Model S from the ground up through 2009. And then eventually I grew the team to about 150 people through that three-year period. But it was a fascinating time. It was when Tesla was at the cutting edge. An interesting thing was the person who drove me the most was myself.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally, and there was this misconception there wasn't sufficient expertise and experience to do a car let alone something which was really cutting edge. But actually having that clean sheet and having the authority, the go-ahead to recruit my team and handpick my team, that's what changed everything because I could actually handpick an elite team of the best engineers in the world and I called everyone I'd work from with before. That's why a lot of Brits came out and designed Model S. It was a very much international effort. But a lot of British people because those people I knew from my paths from Jaguar from Lotus exactly.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was record time and it was just a crazy because, I mean, I actually had a team of about six people to start with. Everyone had left. And it was obvious I had to start from scratch, from a clean computer screen. So I had to hire the team, attract people to this company that no one had heard of. which no one gave a shot of being successful at”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly, well, it was a labour of love. I was working crazy hours, I working regular 100 hours a week to achieve that against all odds. And so when I joined the company, a start had already been made. They'd been working on it for about a year, and it was a false dawn. It was never going to work. So I had a difficult decision to make the first week I was there I had to go and tell my boss, my new boss, that really needs to start again with a clean sheet. And he had the wisdom to agree with me. And so we started afresh on Model S from the ground up. And that was probably second week of February 2009.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“paper right well i actually i joined in february 09 way before 2010 it was formally announced quite a lot later after that but i actually spoke to a guy called elon musk who called me in in england in january And went out and met him in January 2009, and I was there in the company in February 09, long before there was a conceptual prototype of Model SL.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I've been fortunate I've always worked until more recent years at the cutting edge in advanced engineering. I was responsible for advanced engineering at Lotus and at Jaguar I was responsible for advanced body structure design and it's that sort of technological advancement that is really central to my career and my being really. And also trying to do kind of the impossible with very small teams of people, super smart people, very joined up, everyone knowing what's going on and the power of kind of an elite team of really capable people, kind of like special forces.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We didn't even have a name for it. And we were just transferring files. And we created this methodology of a digital process to design a car which was totally revolutionary in terms of how all the systems were designed, the parts, how the designs were shared digitally, and how they were analyzed computationally for stress and crash performance.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. We're talking 1980s. And I was very fortunate that Jaguar made a big investment and a big push to pioneering the use of computer to digitally design a car. And it'd never been done before, seriously. I was one of the first people in the UK to use CAD computer AD design prior to Jank Euro. But it was at Jaguar that we really started using it in earnest. And we used it in a joined up way with CAE computer aided engineering. So we could do the stress analysis by finite element analysis, which was all new stuff. It was cutting edge. And we found a way of transferring files from colleague to colleague, from terminal to terminal. And effectively we developed our own intranet, which is known as an intranet now. That was long before the internet.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it was a wealth of experience. I think if we look at my days at Jaguar, it was a fascinating period because it was the dawn of the use of computers to design cars. Up to that time cars had been designed on drawing boards.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't know what I was going to do. I considered art school or something creative. Anya wanted to design things and in the end I did a mechanical engineering course because it gave me the greatest optionality.”
2024-06-20 · Masters in Business · Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson on Computer Automotive Engineering · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source