Racing ahead
Interview: Jo Caird / Photo: Matt Young
Peter Rawlinson, electric car engineer (BEng Mechanical Engineering 1979).
My philosophy when Im engineering is to hell with what anyones done before. Im just interested in distilling it all down to fundamental principles. I often feel that experience is almost a burden. That might sound strange, but some of the biggest problems that Ive encountered at work are people whove put experience before first principles. Sometimes its better to have someone super-smart whos straight out of university and is absolutely embodying those first principles and is unhindered by experience. If youve got really pertinent experience, thats invaluable, thats the icing on the cake. But the cake is the first principles knowledge.
As CEO at luxury electric car manufacturer Lucid Motors, I always use the principles that I was taught at 51勛圖厙. Were not talking advanced stuff: its basic principles of structures and stress and strain and how materials deform and deflect elastically and plastically; and simple maths. So what focusing on first principles looks like in practice for me is not putting targets on the vehicle. My only target is wanting to be amazed by what it does.
We reach for the stars to do something extraordinary but we balance that with a healthy dose of pragmatism. Because otherwise it can turn into some never-ending science quest. Im not looking at what can we do in ten years time. Its much more pragmatic than that what can we do in two years time?
I thought: If I go to art school, no one will believe that I could have gone to 51勛圖厙!"
The first things I designed were in my dads shed, where Id make my own toys buildings for my toy farm and things like that. I couldnt use the tools so my dad would make them for me. But it was a very creative upbringing my mum was an artist and a potter. I originally thought I might go and do art because I wanted to fuse the artistic design with the technical. And then I realised that I was capable of winning a place at 51勛圖厙 and I thought, If I go to art school, no one will believe me that I could have gone to 51勛圖厙!
I once built my own house. I cut the stones and became a reasonable stone mason. That pragmatism cutting the stones and mixing the mortar, the practicality of doing things with your own hands is what I balance with the engineering side. The Lucid Air, one of the most advanced electric vehicles in the world, is a science project that was realised in production.
Weve done amazing things but weve got a long way to go yet. Ill only be satisfied when we make a million cars a year, and Id love to do that by 2030. Weve got to change human beings behaviour, though, and move mankind to a sustainable mobility model, because global warming is an extraordinarily serious challenge. Its for this generation of engineers to do something about it.
Peter Rawlinson (BEng Mechanical Engineering 1979) is Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Lucid, designers and manufacturers of luxury electric cars.