On March 10, as part of Chabot STEM Center’s speaker series, two representatives from Lucid Motors spoke about their experiences and roles in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and automotive industries.
Lucid, an up-and-coming electric-only automotive brand based in Newark, California, was founded in 2007 as Atieva and focused on creating batteries and electric drivetrains for other vehicle manufacturers, including the powertrains for the racing series Formula E. Atieva rebranded as Lucid in 2016 and began production of its first car, the Lucid Air, in 2021.
Tia Battle, Director of Remarketing, started the presentation talking about her past experience hopping around the automotive industry. She’s worked and traveled across the country with companies including Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai and now with Lucid, working in both sales and after-sales in the service department.
Jenn Anderson, Senior Product Owner and member of the remarketing team, also described her journey through professional life, and previous work with Rivian, another American electric vehicle start up. With Lucid, she said, “I’ve had like two or three different roles when I started off in sales and delivery. I used to be a delivery program manager, then I was a senior product lead, and now I am a senior product owner here in the remarketing team.” On her position as Senior Product Owner, she said, “So in the role that I’m in currently, I support programs, processes, and improvements for our wholesale automations, for our trade-in vehicles, for our used vehicles, and also for anything else related to continue on the life cycles of cars that are on their second or more owners.”
What exactly is remarketing? Well as Tia explains it, “A lot of people see our word remarketing and they think oh you’re in marketing, well kind of. So whether you’ve ever leased a vehicle, or if you’ve ever traded in a vehicle it will get back into the lifecycle of our fleet. So when you’re purchasing a used car, or as we like to call them, pre-owned, it gives it more of a luxury feel. We work with owners and people looking to buy cars that aren’t coming straight off the production line.”
Mustafa, an electrical engineering major, opened up the first round of student questions, asking what daily life was like working for Lucid. Tia responded, “So, on a Tuesday or like every day? ‘Cause everything is different. So a different day could be meeting with different stakeholders from IT, or marketing, or service, and it’s just getting those blocks of time to sit down and talk about the different projects that we have and how they can impact those.” She added, “A day also could be talking to our partners in the EU, or in the Middle East. It’s our whole go-to-market strategy as a part of remarketing.”
The work schedule in a startup often requires some sacrifices to social life, and as Jenn attests, it’s still a struggle but there are ways to lighten the load. “For myself, I’m going to be honest with you, I’m still trying to define work-life balance right now. It’s something that I’m actively working on, and I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not going to be like, oh, yes, I’ve got great work-life balance. Especially in Silicon Valley at a startup there are a lot of timelines that we do need to be on.” However, to help out with that she says, “I do try to schedule times where I like to do things that benefit myself and my mental health. I also have a therapist that I block off time on Fridays. I do not have any meetings, and I just block it off, and that’s my time.”
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, as of 2023, women make up about 26% of workers in STEM, with Engineering taking the lowest share, comprising only 14% women. On this disparity, Jenn noted, “I think that STEM should be accessible to everybody, every person, every woman, every woman of color, every woman outside of color. Like we should have programs that provide accessibility. So that’s why we really wanted to be here too, to show that, hey, there are different types of women in these different STEM careers. Now, for Lucid specifically, we do have Women at Lucid, which is an employee resource group that connects women to different parts of the company.”
Seeing as Lucid is headquartered only about a 15 minute drive away from Chabot, it’s no surprise that they would send representatives to speak to Chabot students. According to Tia, however, that’s not the only reason. “I love the fact that you have a STEM Center on campus, because you guys are the future of our company.” Jenn added, “We want people in STEM, and we want them to come and see it and be interested in using it, because a lot of the time they just think Lucid is just cars, but there’s so much more.”
While it’s no surprise electric luxury cars depreciate in value at a higher rate than normal gas-powered cars due to high starting prices and general taboos about battery longevity, Lucid’s flagship vehicle Air does the category no favors. Depreciating at a staggering 51.4% after three years compared to 24.2% for an average sedan, I questioned whether that makes the job at remarketing more or less difficult.
“It definitely makes our job harder,” Tia claimed. “It all depends on the trim levels that you have back and what you put into the market. I look at my average selling price as well because that also affects the value of the car. We have to be more strategic about that, because when you drop the price of a car on the market, that will affect that depreciation. So you have to make sure that you’re still giving people that value.” On how that affects her job, she said, “A lot of people don’t know everything that goes into our car and what benefits it has, so that’s another piece of it. When you have things like subscription services, we have our advanced driver assistance systems,we have all these things. So it’s that job of educating second-hand owners so that people will understand everything they’re getting in it as well.”
As a young company, customer retention is an important indicator, and one of the largest aspects of remarketing. Jenn claimed, “Average customer retention is 36 months and that’s great for a very young company because in some younger companies or companies in our competitive set, it’s usually between 18 months and 24 months. So what I’m studying now is like, how are we getting customers to have our cars longer and also want to come back and buy our cars?”
For students in attendance, this presentation wasn’t just about electric vehicles, but a glimpse into the life of people working in a Bay Area startup, and what life working in STEM is really like. Students can visit the STEM Center’s page on the Chabot website to see upcoming speakers and learn more about what the center offers at https://www.chabotcollege.edu/stem/.
