Racing ahead
Interview: Jo Caird / Photo: Matt Young
Peter Rawlinson, electric car engineer (BEng Mechanical Engineering 1979).
My philosophy when I鈥檓 engineering is 鈥榯o hell with what anyone鈥檚 done before鈥. I鈥檓 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 I鈥檝e encountered at work are people who鈥檝e put experience before first principles. Sometimes it鈥檚 better to have someone super-smart who鈥檚 straight out of university and is absolutely embodying those first principles and is unhindered by experience. If you鈥檝e got really pertinent experience, that鈥檚 invaluable, that鈥檚 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 Imperial. We鈥檙e not talking advanced stuff: it鈥檚 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. I鈥檓 not looking at what can we do in ten years鈥 time. It鈥檚 much more pragmatic than that 鈥 what can we do in two years鈥 time?
I thought: If I go to art school, no one will believe that I could have gone to Imperial!"
The first things I designed were in my dad鈥檚 shed, where I鈥檇 make my own toys 鈥 buildings for my toy farm and things like that. I couldn鈥檛 use the tools so my dad would make them for me. But it was a very creative upbringing 鈥 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 Imperial and I thought, 鈥淚f I go to art school, no one will believe me that I could have gone to Imperial!鈥
I once built my own house. I cut the stones and became a reasonable stone mason. That pragmatism 鈥 cutting the stones and mixing the mortar, the practicality of doing things with your own hands 鈥 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.
We鈥檝e done amazing things but we鈥檝e got a long way to go yet. I鈥檒l only be satisfied when we make a million cars a year, and I鈥檇 love to do that by 2030. We鈥檝e got to change human beings鈥 behaviour, though, and move mankind to a sustainable mobility model, because global warming is an extraordinarily serious challenge. It鈥檚 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.