STURMEY AWARD
Peter Rawlinson
Lucid’s co-founder was in on the ground floor of the EV era, and he’s still driven by a passion to innovate.
STEVE CROPLEY meets him
PHOTOGRAPHY JACK HARRISON
Peter Rawlinson, winner of Autocar’s 2025 Sturmey Award for innovation, is one of a small, distinguished crop of British engineers who have honed their skills working in challenging automotive careers at home, then risen to stellar status by taking charge of globally significant projects in other countries.
Although the serious car electrification era is barely two decades old, Rawlinson is already well established as one of its principal players. He was the inspiration – ‘chief engineer’ sounds too staid – for first the Tesla Model S and then the Lucid Air, arguably the two most influential EVs of the past 20 years.
The Tesla, launched in 2012, is the first electric car to have achieved genuine global sales success. It did this by basing its appeal on progressive design and practical capability, and, most important of all, pioneering the use of energy-dense lithium ion batteries.