Lucid CEO: Musk guilty of ‘historical revisionism'

The rivalry between the CEOs of Tesla and Lucid Motors is heating up.

Lucid's Peter Rawlinson, who used to work for Elon Musk at Tesla, took some swipes at his former boss during an interview for the TV series "Axios on HBO."

Rawlinson accused Musk of "historical revisionism" for claiming that Rawlinson was not heavily involved in the development of the Tesla Model S. Rawlinson says he was the car's chief engineer and that he still has business cards that say so.

In May, Musk tweeted that Rawlinson "arrived after Model S prototype was made, left before things got tough & was only ever responsible for body engineering, not powertrain, battery, software, production or design." (Inside EVs, a website that is generally pro-Tesla, looked into Musk's claim at the time and declared it to be false, citing a 2010 Tesla announcement of Rawlinson's hiring as "chief vehicle engineer" for the Model S.)

Rawlinson left Tesla after three years to join Lucid as its chief technology officer. He became CEO in 2019.

He called Musk's frequent use of Twitter "entertaining" but said he doesn't use the social media platform because he thinks it's "a bit narcissistic."

Also unlike Musk, Rawlinson said he had no plans to go into outer space, dig tunnels under Los Angeles or host "Saturday Night Live."

"I have no aspirations. I know my place. I do cars," he said. "I'm a one-trick pony."