A recent job opportunity on LinkedIn posted by Lucid Motors less than 24 hours ago hints at an incoming new media app infotainment for its EV drivers. According to Lucid’s new role of senior product manager, media partner management, one of the key responsibilities will include working with Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other “media app partners.”
Lucid Motors ($LCID) remains a relatively young EV startup with one flagship model on the market and another in the pipeline that we are sure to learn more about before year’s end. While the overall response to the Lucid Air sedan has been primarily positive, its top-tier pricing as an ultimate luxury and performance vehicle has isolated its customer base.
Air sales continue to trickle in, but the American automaker is sitting on a ton of inventory. According to Lucid’s recent Q3 report, it produced 1,550 cars – a near 29% drop compared to a quarter prior, setting the stage to fall well short of its target to produce 10,000 EVs this year.
To drum up some hype, Lucid introduced a new referral program benefiting new and current owners. Meanwhile, while infotainment might not be the deciding factor in a consumer’s choice to go through with an Air purchase, convenience and familiarity certainly don’t hurt.
That’s why it makes a lot of sense, and Lucid is apparently looking to add access to both Apple and Amazon Music in its EVs. Furthermore, a recent job posting begs the question, “What other media apps could be soon seen added to Lucid’s infotainment screen?”
According to the following job posted 17 hours ago by Lucid Motors, its new senior manager of media partner management will get working on implementing Apple and Amazon Music to its EVs right away. Here are the duties of the new role, according to the job post:
- Fulfill responsibilities of Product Owner for Apple, Amazon Music and other Media app partners
- Work with internal stakeholders to define requirements and deliver solutions that bring value to our ecosystem of third-party systems
- Be an expert for our internal business partners’ needs, motivations, and challenges
- Perform qualitative and quantitative research to discover feature ideas and validate them before development
- Work closely with Program Management, Engineering and Partner Development team to develop the roadmap and own specifications, development cycle, and monitoring for success
- Plan and prioritize work across multiple projects, and communicate priority to relevant stakeholders
- Plan and prioritize product feature backlog and development for internal systems team(s)
- Be responsible for identifying and hitting the key performance indicators
- Use data and statistics to inform decisions
- Leverage metrics to improve system usability
Given this information, it appears the addition of Apple Music is imminent. The automaker finally introduced Apple CarPlay to Air owners via an OTA update this past March, so further integration of Apple technology makes sense. What may be even more interesting, however, is the latter part of the first line of responsibilities – “other media app partners.”
With Spotify, Tidal, and iHeartRadio already available, plus Apple and Amazon Music assumedly on the way, Lucid appears to have the major music apps covered. So what other media apps will we see next? AppleTV+? Amazon Prime Video? Netflix? What about YouTube? Lots of options.
However, if you’ve been inside an Air EV before, you’ve probably noticed the center display is vertical, which is not ideal for video streaming. Surely, that is something the automaker has already considered when discussing video streaming and will perhaps provide a solution in its Gravity SUV.
This is all hearsay at this point, but it does seem like Lucid Motors is making moves (or at least hiring the best staff to make those moves) in the realm of media apps.
Perhaps we hear more during its upcoming Q3 report. Stay tuned.
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