I think the disconnect is maybe just in the title: Lucid is obviously just trying to be the next Mercedes. Duh, of course they don't make a cheap car (how much did Lucid pay for this ad in the WSJ?); but their competitors kind of do. Tesla literally told their shareholders during the most recent earnings call that "more affordable models are coming in the first half of 2025". Jim Farley has spoken on how one of the reasons Ford's EVs are still rather expensive is because they clean-roomed much of the assembly for them to better compete with Tesla, so while ICE cars have a century of process optimization behind them, their EVs aren't at that same level... yet.
Its just clickbait paid by Lucid to make their $90,000 cars seem reasonable because, well geeze, no one is making cheap EVs anyone. Wrong: Everyone is trying to, and its very obvious that this is direction the market needs to go in (just look at the depreciation on modern Teslas, new cars cannot compete with what is happening in the used market).