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• Lucid Motors (LCID) announced a new car to outpace and out cruise high-end competitors.

• Tesla (TSLA) is seen as an EV bellwether, but that’s overstating its importance to the market.

• EVs will not be going away, and niche markets are key to survival.

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It was quite a news-filled week for the electric vehicle sector, and Lucid Motors (NASDAQ:LCID) was one of the headliners. LCID stock didn’t get a bump from the news that it’s releasing an even more luxe version of its current sedan, which has more range and more horsepower than its target competitor, Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Model S Plaid.

The EV world is an excellent example of what I call “innovator bias.” What I mean by this is that Elon Musk found a way to bring electric vehicles to the marketplace, and now he and his company are the poster children for the entire industry.

We’ve seen this before in other industries. We saw it in tech with the rise of the dot-com bubble, with CEOs lifted to an exalted status. The press fawns on them and they become almost untouchable, as do their companies.

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Musk certainly deserves credit for taking down the EV barrier erected by the unimaginative, stultified big carmakers. And SpaceX is another incredible effort in forging a new path in a notoriously capital intensive effort.

LCID Stock Has Its Own Lens

But the world is changing, and so is the EV sector.

Unfortunately, most investors still see EVs through the TSLA lens, as though if TSLA isn’t doing well, the entire industry is at risk.

That is a completely false narrative. However, despite huge competitors entering the space, that hasn’t seemed to cool the ardor of TSLA analysts’ glowing expectations. TSLA has a market cap of more than $1 trillion. It sold less than a million cars last year. And it has a massive target on its back from newcomers and big name companies with global supply chains and service operations.

Despite all this — not to mention the supply chain crunch in China — its truck isn’t close to prime time. Its delayed opening of its Gigafactory in Germany, where only a quarter of the workers are hired, is apparently a non-event. When factories shut down in China due to the latest Covid-19 surge, the headline was about Nio (NYSE:NIO).

But all this Tesla news shouldn’t be seen as also being Lucid news.

The Rich See Recessions More Than Feel Them

As big carmakers enter the market, many are looking down market to attract buyers who aren’t interested or capable of spending six-digit sums on a car to go to the grocery store.