Lucid Motors’ Derek Jenkins on EVs and Designing an Electric Future

Amy Devers: Hi everyone, I’m Amy Devers and this is Clever. Today I’m talking to automobile designer Derek Jenkins. Derek is the SVP of Design and Brand at Lucid Motors – one of the most exciting car companies in the Electric Vehicle space…Have you seen the Lucid Air? It’s a luxury sedan that was named MotorTrend’s 2022 car of the year…and it’s definitely worth checking out. Prior to Lucid Motors, Derek was Director of Design at Mazda North America and spent almost a decade as the Chief Designer at Volkswagon North America. He got his formal education with a Bachelor’s in Transportation Design from Art Center College of Design but even before he knew it was a career option… Derek grew up steeped in the car culture of Southern California. As a surfer and skateboarder he embodied the physics of locomotion from a very young age, and by his teenage years he was hands-on with the mechanics and engineering – restoring and modifying cars after school. As you’ll hear… automobiles are sun-baked into his DNA and everything about him is electrifying… here’s Derek

Derek Jenkins: My name’s Derek Jenkins. I’m the Senior Vice President of Design and Brand at Lucid Motors. I live in Malibu, California, but I work in Newark, California where the Lucid headquarters is. 

Amy Devers: How does that commute work?

Derek Jenkins: Lots of flying, lot of back and forth. I spend my weekdays up here in Newark at the headquarters and I spend my weekends in, in lovely Malibu with my wife and two boys.

Amy Devers: So I am very excited to hear all about how you got to where you are now. So let’s go back to the beginning and, and start from zero. You grew up in Huntington Beach, right? Surfing and car culture is baked into your, your very being. 

Derek Jenkins: Very much in some ways. I think I was, uh, really fortunate, a small surf town. It’s grown a bit since I, I li uh, grew up there. You know, it is very much a kind of surfing and beach culture and Pacific Coast Highway and VW Micro buses and it had a lot of that. So I was, I was exposed to a lot as a, as a kid. Also, my father was really quite into cars, specifically more German cars. That definitely rubbed off on me. Early age, and so as a result I was mechanically inclined early on so that, you know, manifested in playing with Legos and building go-karts and restoring vintage bicycles and, and building mini bikes and shaping my own surfboards and car stereos. That was the beginning of the big car stereo craze. As I got a bit older, then naturally cars became more of the focus. You know, I restored my first car when I was 15 and that was kind of the beginning of it all, I would say. 

Amy Devers: So backing up a little bit, um, you said your dad was into cars. Were you multi-generational in Huntington Beach or No. So where did your parents grow up?

Derek Jenkins: My mom was from, uh, Toronto, Canada. She moved down to Los Angeles when I think she was 19. And, uh, my father. Was born in Ohio, but, uh, this is a strange twist. My grandfather took the whole family down to Panama to work on the canals. My dad went from three years old to about 18, uh, grew up in in the canal zone in Panama, and then moved to Los Angeles, uh, to become a police officer, and that’s where he met my mom. 

Amy Devers: So this idea of mobility is something that’s sort of been running through your veins for a while? 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah, no question. Both. Both my parents were into cars. You know, my mom, she moved from Toronto to Los Angeles. She drove down in winter in a Austin Healy Bugeye Sprite at 19 years old, you know, I mean, that’s, that’s a bold move, you know, to drive through the Midwest in, in a car like that. And I think it was December. You know, it’s, that’s bonkers. Unthinkable today, you know.

Amy Devers: So it sounds like you grew up with a lot of material agency. I mean, because you were tinkering, you were playing with a lot of things. You were getting your hands on things as diverse as, you know, wood and metal, but also fiberglass, and that fueled your passion. Were you feeling creative within that? 

Derek Jenkins: You know, at the time when I look back, I don’t think I was thinking about it from creative standpoint. You know, it’s like that was the seventies and eighties, so we didn’t have high profile examples of young artists or, or creative types. It was the traditional fields of painting and sculpting and things like that. So I, I felt like even though it’s building stuff and making in a sense creative decisions on all these little projects and things I was building, I don’t think I, I saw it that way. I did like to draw, but I wouldn’t, there was definitely not an artist in that traditional sense. It really was manifesting itself in the physical objects that, that I was working on and going towards probably the most creative thing of all that was my Lego phase. You know, , which I think is, I had really credit for kind of just expanding imagination. It was just such a wonderful toy pre-digital world that led to not only creativity, but the me mechanical in inclination in, in envisioning an object, constructing it and building it and then later on that transition to the actual mechanical things like, like motorcycles and mini bikes and bicycles and, and ultimately cars. 

Amy Devers: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You restored your first car at like 14 or 15. 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that gets back into the Orange County thing because you know, orange County at the time I would venture to argue was the import car capital of America. So I grew up with the first wave of kind of cool Volkswagen water-cooled cars, you know, GTIs and Chicos, and the first wave of cool import Japanese cars, you know, Honda Civics and Toyota Celicas and things like that. So I was immersed in, in that world, and I didn’t care about American cars at all. I only cared about European and Japanese cars and, and it was like that. I feel like I was always that first generation of, of youth that grew up not at all interested in American cars cuz the seventies was a pretty dark era and the eighties was definitely a dark era for American cars and quite the contrary for Japanese and, and German cars.

Amy Devers: I, I grew up in Detroit, so yeah. At the same time, yeah, I was right there. The dark ages of American cars.

Derek Jenkins: So, so you know, then the affinity towards Porsches and Volkswagens and pws and Audis. Mazdas, uh, that all started then and there was a big cruise culture. Obviously Southern California is known for the weather and, and that’s a year round car thing. It’s in everything. And then you combine that with beach culture cuz Orange County is the epicenter of modern skate and surf culture. Those two things go together like perfectly. And that’s just the foundation of all, all those things I was passionate about in many ways still am.

Amy Devers: I can see how that has shaped you. Your first car I read was a VW thing? 

Derek Jenkins: Yes. Yep. type 181 very unusual vehicle with unusual origins. Just a, just a strange, strange car. My father was all into these kind of like a Baja bug or you know, when they like a beetle that they cut up and let the motor hang out. So we, we grew up going down to Mexico and camping and we’d go down there for holiday weekends and things like that. We had a seventies Chevy 10 van with bean bags and shag carpet, nevermind seat belts. I, I sat in, you know, I would take three hour trips sitting in a beanbag. So there you go. That was the seventies. And we’d tow the Baja bug down and we’d tear around San Felipe for the weekend and, and drive home. So I grew up Doing that kind of stuff. And then when I had a chance to buy my first car with my parents’ blessing, the thing just seemed like this cool vehicle suit, total surf safari car. And I found a car down in Newport Beach and this guy’s backyard filled with leaves. The, the floors were rusted out and I got it dirt cheap and just started working on it. Didn’t really know what I was really doing, but you know, my dad helped me a bit and it turned out great. 

Amy Devers: I mean, I love this story. I’m thinking of you as a teenager, and that’s this time when we’re all going through a lot of change and awkwardness and angst. What were you like as a teenager and was there some way in which this outlet was helping you process yourself? And process who you were becoming. 

Derek Jenkins: Mm, mm-hmm. , like a lot of kids that age sports was, was a big deal. So I was kind of balancing my sports life between surfing and soccer. That definitely kind of helps to, you know, give you confidence and group dynamics and things like that. The car thing was very much a, uh, solitary thing. What was cool about kind of as I got into the car thing, got my VW thing, I restored that, that was. the coolest car in at school, you know what I mean? 

Amy Devers: Oh, I’m sure. And of course, I’m sure you stood out. 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah. Everybody wanted a ride in it. The girls all wanted to be in it. That whole idea of kind of like freedom and, and lifestyle, the car kind of represented that. And, and of course the surfing piece of that, like I said, fits in it. So we’d get, we’d get four guys in the car and drive down to San Diego for the weekend and to go surfing in it. And in a way, kind of cliche of. Teenage Freedom. 

Amy Devers: In my mind, a surfer movie is playing out. You know, it’s totally buzzer for teenage movie

Derek Jenkins: Right, right. As I mentioned before, like that was the beginning of the big car stereo thing. This was kind of before car companies got serious about stereos in a production vehicle. So the aftermarket scene, uh, again, was the epicenter of that scene was definitely LA and Orange County. There was like competitions who, who could have the best car stereo. It really has its roots in Southern California. And so I got into that. So I, I was working jobs just to buy amplifiers and subwoofers and, and so I got all into that scene and so then music culture. Tied into it all, you know, so it’s all now, all of those things. It’s lifestyle, it’s beach, it’s surfing, it’s cars, it’s music, it’s all one big kind of thing.

Amy Devers: Yeah. You know, I grew up outside of Detroit and my first car was a a 78 micro bus, which Oh nice. In that area was a very like odd site on the road. Super cool. And also it had no heat or it was like the heat came from the back. I used to drive around in the winter with a comforter, like Yeah, exactly. Wrapped around me. 

Derek Jenkins: Oh, I love that. And that’s a bay window. I love that version. In fact, my close friend, because we, I was in on the surf team in high school. Every morning we’d meet at Huntington Beach Pier. And we’d always take his van because he didn’t care if we would wear our wetsuits. He’d let the water get all over the car. It was all rusted, and it was just this funny thing that we’d all pile in and that that car got so destroyed from three years of just saltwater and, and, but I have this incredible memories. It was orange and white. Yeah. Super cool. 

Amy Devers: This is clearly part of who you are. It’s baked into your identity at this point, what were you thinking about making decisions about going to college or not going to college, or what your livelihood would be as an adult, and how, how were you sort of navigating that?

Derek Jenkins: I look back then, and it’s kind of a miracle that I, I ended down this path of design in a, in a really creative focused field because that was really an unknown entity. Nobody was talking about car design at career day. For that matter. Any kind of creative field in the business world was a very unusual topic. It was usually like, you’re gonna go into economics and you’re gonna go into policing, or you’re gonna go into, you’re gonna be a firefighter, or you’re gonna go study law. The big one back then was marketing. Marketing. I’m gonna go and study marketing again. There’s a tie back to the surfing. I thought I wanted to perhaps be a mechanical engineer so I could be in and around cars and, and, and that, and I also realized what that would require from me from a education standpoint and I wasn’t particularly strong in, in math. Man, is that really what I want to do? My coach for my surf team, he was a, a really interesting guy. He, he was also the teacher of our ceramics class and he’s like, Hey, listen, I know you love cars. You’re always working on your car. You should go see this school in Pasadena. It’s called Art Center College of Design. And they actually teach people how to design cars. And I’m like, 

Amy Devers: oh, bless, bless him. 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah. And, and he’s like telling me about it. And I. , that just sounds so cool. And he’s like, yeah, you really gotta check it out. You know? And he just offered that to me cuz he knew I was always doing stuff with my car and I was customizing stuff and, and I was working on everybody else’s car at that point. And he just offered that information out of the blue. 

Amy Devers: And when he did, did your eyes light up? Like you can, you can study car design in school and you can make that your job. 

Derek Jenkins: That was exactly my reaction. I’m like, really? That’s a thing. Again, there’s no internet, there’s no YouTube, there’s no tutorials on how to become a car designer. It, it just didn’t exist. Right. So I started researching it and then my mom. One weekend we did a tour up at the school and I saw what the students were doing and then the sketching of cars and the clay models. Literally that day it was like, this is what I’m doing. I think I just turned six. I was just driving. I’m super fortunate because it wasn’t like I had to go through college and get a degree before I kind of figured out what I wanted to do, which is unfortunate because for a lot of folks, because they go to college, they’re still trying to figure it out and they can’t use that formative time to drive towards the end goal necessarily. Uh, so directly, at least. I was from 16 you know, and then I started to take the drawing classes and then I started to learn more about all those techniques and I started to do more and more research of who were the top designers and where, who designed this car and who designed this car. And so I was really, really focused on it. And then I started to take night classes up at art center pre-degree classes. And so I gained a lot of momentum and I was able to submit a portfolio and get accept. By when I was 18, which was, I was like the youngest person in my class at the time, you know, most of the people they were coming to art center is for graduate degrees. So I got like a big head start, you know, I really got in young, got out young, started working right away. 

Amy Devers: And were the college years, did you get what you needed? Were they as nutritious as you hoped they would be in terms of teaching? Everything you needed to know about what goes into designing a car, cuz it’s a multifaceted discipline.

Derek Jenkins: I feel like Art Center does provide you the general fields of skills. They teach you drawing, they teach you some fundamentals of vehicle engineering, aerodynamics. Vehicle packaging. Um, it, it gave you a good art history, color theory, and of course just illustrating because the illustrate, especially at that point in time, it being able to illustrate sketch, you know, they’re teaching you how to communicate your ideas as a, as a creative person effectively. And that was when they first started to teach you about like, this is how it works in a corporation. If you think about the, the monolithic nature of car companies historically, And, and what that means from a business discipline standpoint. And then you throw in something as creative, creative and as whimsical as car design. Those two things, to get that all to work is not easy. They teach you a little bit about that, but predominantly what I credit the school with is, it’s a forum where you meet some incredibly talented people. You know, it is, is attracting talented people and the talent, the, the talent pool is feeding off each other in a competitive way and making each other better. So the people that I, I went to school with were just so inspiring and drove you to another level that. Was a big thing. And then the other thing it did is the school was so well connected with the industry that, you know, you’re getting all the top design leadership, visiting the school, uh, from these, from all, all over the world, sponsoring projects, meeting students, and, and then offering internships and scholarships. I did an internship at at Porsche in Germany. It just like catapulted my experience and knowledge because then now you’re like, okay, now I’m in the place where it really happens. I’m not just going through the motions. 

Amy Devers: So the fact that they put a lot of energy into those pathways, that those industry pathways is really huge.

Derek Jenkins: Huge, huge. Which is, yeah, I’m sure it’s not unlike other big, you know, really well known school. I’m, that’s what happens at Harvard. That’s what happens at Stanford. It’s the connections with the industries that are on the forefront of those disciplines and that the students are real time contributing and, and then at the same time learning from, from the real world.

Amy Devers: So you mentioned an internship at Porsche. Did you go to Audi right after graduation or? I did, yeah. Can you talk about the early chapters of your career? What that foundational experience was like and how it helped you sort of shape not only your practice, but your philosophies? 

Derek Jenkins: Sure, sure. Yeah, so I did the portion internship and I followed that up with a internship at Volkswagen at the advanced studio in, in Los Angeles. That was a combined studio of Volkswagen and Audi. So I met the leadership, the both brands. Facility, um, made some great contacts with Jay Mays. Um, at the time he was leading the Audi studio. I went back to school and then he hired me straight out of college, did a couple of projects in California, and then he got promoted to take over all of Audi design in English stat in, in Germany at the Audi headquarters. So then I’ve moved over to Germany at that point. 

Amy Devers: How old were you? What an adventure!

Derek Jenkins: I know, it’s crazy. I was 23, you know, I’ve been back and forth to to Europe a few times but I knew that if I wanted to really pursue the German car thing, I had to go, go live over there and that was an interesting time because, you know, on one hand they had an American leading the design team in, in Jay Mays uh, but Audi was at a real low point in the industry. You know, that was a recession period in Germany, 19 93, 94 Germany reunification was just getting started. There was a, a really difficult economic time, and so I came into Audi. They were at a real low point, you know, I started there and in the first two weeks they cut my salary by 25%.

Amy Devers: My God. 

Derek Jenkins: So I was like poorer than I was as a student, you know? But what was interesting is that they were so hungry to elevate the company to kind of BMW Mercedes status, which Audi was not anywhere near that at the time. There was a big push to reinvigorate the company and create new products. So my timing couldn’t have been better cuz I was coming into this time where there was really great leadership at the top, uh, all the way through the company and they were hungry for change and they wanted young talent to help them get there. And I came in there again with talented people from all over the world, and I was able to just kind of like, in a period of like two years, soak up so many skills and so much, um, experience working on my first projects and got to see the transformation of the brand real time because

Amy Devers: yeah. That’s incredible. 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah. Audi was literally, Barely skipping off the bottom when I joined, they had a couple new models coming to market that elevated things, but what came next and that I’m happy to say the thing, some things that I was directly involved with, but also just everything, the momentum they had over the next five years. We just saw massive improvement and being part of that rebirth or re kind of creation and establishing of that company taught me so much. That and what design could do and what, how a brand could transform in those early stages. 

Amy Devers: Wow. That is fortunate to be able to witness that from inside the Beast too uh, the transformation as it’s taking hold, it’s happening in all of the micro corners of the brand and. Hopefully it sounds like you were privy to those conversations and all, and then part of something that grows and you feel like that collective camaraderie of growing something together too. That’s really powerful. I’m so excited you had that experience and that totally feels a little bit like a rocket ship. 

Derek Jenkins: It was, and it’s unusual. If you think about in the industry, how often do brands go through like such a transformative period. Keep in mind it took 12, I always say about 12 years before the company got to that BMW Mercedes status. It took that long to refresh the company. But how many companies go through that kind of transformation? I can’t really think of many to be honest. I was super fortunate. 

Amy Devers: Super fortunate. That sounds also that you were able to have some impact. You were able to sort of realize the impact that you were participating in one of your foundational career moments, which is really great, so many people could possibly have the experience of going to a big brand and just being kind of a cog in the wheel or a drone and not really realizing, I, I imagine you gained some creative confidence. Agency chops in, in all of that. You spent about seven years there, right? Something like that? 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah. I mean, in total, I was in Audi for about six years, but I was in the Volkswagen group for 16. 

Amy Devers: Okay. Because after Audi then you sort of segued over to Volkswagen of America. 

Derek Jenkins: Yes. Yeah. And it’s important to understand, like originally when, when I joined it, Volkswagen group was Volkswagen and Audi, and that was under the late, Dr. Ferdinand was at the, at the helm of the whole ship at the time. You know, he had so much vision and so much leadership. He was really driving the group and that’s when it started to, they started to buy other brands. So they bought Lamborghini, they bought Bugatti, they took over Scota, they took over Sayat, they took over Bentley, and now the VW group become this very, very prestigious, Just going off in every direction. And so that elevated that group. And just so being part of that, that gave me a lot of credibility. And, and you say kind of confidence and, and just awareness, you know, and, and so that was 16 years of kind of starting at the bottom and, and seeing that thing grow into this. Now it’s a, obviously it’s a world dominating force. 

Amy Devers: Yeah, absolutely. 

Derek Jenkins: That was just awesome to see. And again, because they were buying up these other smaller brands, these prestige brands, in many cases, they were also all going through these transformations that Audi went through, you know? So they bought Bentley at a low point and fixed that. They bought Lamborghini at a low point and fixed that. So we were witnessing all of that at the same time, and that was also remarkable. These rebirths. 

Amy Devers: Yeah. And as you’re witnessing all that, are you also discerning the pattern? There’s some things that work, right, and they’re repeating that over and over again, and it’s working each time?

Derek Jenkins: Because each one of those was an exercise in rebranding, right? It was about rebirthing, the company, taking the kind of legacy things that are awesome, infusing new technologies and new development, and of course new design and refreshing it all, you know? And so there was absolutely a kind of pattern that was forming there. It was just incredible to watch, you know, there was a lot.

Amy Devers: well, you say watch, but you were participating in it as well, right? I mean, the microbus concept is, is exactly that, what you just described. I don’t know which are your favorite projects? I’d actually like to know. It must have been cool to sort of revisit a, a microbus that you have such fond feelings for and, and give it a update.

Derek Jenkins: yeah, that was the nice thing, and really the appeal of moving over to focus on the Volkswagen brand. When I very first joined to work with Jay Mays in the concept studios, they were working on the new Beatle. So when I hired in, uh, the, the whole studio was focus. 

Amy Devers: That was a big moment. 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah. So I, I was, I got to be part of that in the early stages with Jay Mays and another gentleman by the name of Freeman Thomas. And so in the early nineties was this kind of wave of nostalgia in the car industry. And so there was a lot of retro design going on. Jay and Freeman were super focused on kind of the rebirth of that nostalgia within the Volkswagen group, which originally the German management was really resistant to because the history of Volkswagen in America was very different than how it was viewed in Germany and in Europe. You know where americans, the first thing when you said Volkswagen, they thought about the Beatle even though the beetle hadn’t been sold for 15, 20 years at that point, where bringing all that back in the Beatle and then later on having the chance to work on the, the early microbus concept was really, really cool because it, it was very much at, at the roots of where I came from. And of course it wasn’t just a microbus. We had ideas- a new thing and, uh, Carmen GIA and everything imaginable, you know, and so, uh, it’s just the microbus was, was a pretty high profile concept.

Amy Devers: This all sounds like really fruitful. Time for you. Your whole path so far feels a little charmed. I’m sure there were challenges, and I don’t wanna minimize how much you were growing and learning along the way. I don’t wanna skip over Mazda, which is where you went next. I guess I wanna understand why did you make the jump from Volkswagen to Mazda where you did some really amazing work and then to the startup?

Derek Jenkins: After 16 years of VW Group, having gone through that really exciting, explosive kind of growth, seeing it get to a certain level and having been a part of that, I felt like it was kind of a career plateau in a way where I felt like I need to find that explosive growth again. I realize seeing change rapidly and then also being at a company when it’s hungry for change is the best place for a designer to be. You’re given freedom, you’re listened to, you can affect change. And change is what motivates me, uh, uh, and, and others. I think in, in my field. 

Amy Devers: That’s a really profound thing to recognize and for me to tell my students. But yeah, being at a, a company that’s hungry for change does open up doorways for designers more readily.

Derek Jenkins: It really does, and, and you hear it all the time, but timing truly is everything. And it’s like when I came into the VW group, Audi in Volkswagen, when I made those changes, the timing was. And I was feeling restless a bit later on in my Volkswagen career. I was seeing a complacency set in that was not in any way appealing and I felt like boxed in, like, we’re not getting anything done here, think it’s, it’s time and that can be soul sucking for a creative right. That that where you’re kind of like, I can’t break down this, these boundaries cuz people have boxed us. And, and unfortunately in big corporations, these things are cyclical, right? They go through waves. 

Amy Devers: Yes. And I’ve heard this from people in all industries.

Derek Jenkins: Yeah. It’s super common, right? Big companies, they hit troubled times and they get scared and then they get. O open and hungry for change and then they change and they have success, and then they g grow and they bring people in that don’t know how they got there in the first place, and then they get yet complacent and then it goes through the cycle again.

Amy Devers: And when you get boxed in, it makes everything that you wanna do, all of your creative energy. It’s such a heavier lift. 

Derek Jenkins: It is. Especially as a creative in the corporate world, because what ends up happening is you spend up, you’re spending much more of your time. Selling and strategy over the creative content itself. So, you know, it’s like I realize like I’ve become like a really good pitch man because over the years, cuz I’m always pitching ideas and, and that’s great talent and, and, and all designers should learn that, those skills. But you start to realize like, shit, am I just a sales person? I realized that, uh, that’s a fundamental thing in to have any impact on any business, uh, and to have any leadership capability within an organization. I just realized that, yep, that’s part of being a good designer. The Mazda opportunity came along. Mazda was at a low point, super hungry. They had just separated off from the Ford group. They were no longer American owned. They were going back to their Japanese roots which somehow had appealed to me. Uh, I knew Mazda’s history well, because I was enthusiastic about it in, uh, in my teenage years. They were always a company known for fun, to drive sporty vehicles, lightweight, nimble, very, very youthful brand. They were hungry. They’re like, yeah, they wanted to change and grow. And so I, I jumped into, Exactly at the right time. It was also culturally interesting because I had gotten so used to a European point of view. I considered myself this kind of American Euro hybrid, spoke German and all of that stuff, and then to go work for the Japanese and really couldn’t be more culturally different, you know? 

Amy Devers: Wow. 

Derek Jenkins: It was just drastically shift and the approach to car design was drastically different. I mean, drastically different. That was like a really great learning experience. And also because they, they were hungry. They were learning from me. I was learning from them, and that was just awesome. Those first few years were exciting and dynamic and really helped mature me.

Amy Devers: Adding that new cultural framework to the repertoire also sounds like a really fascinating learning adventure for you. And then also now that you, you come to where you are now with a broader cultural perspective because you’ve been to those different places. You’ve, you’ve operated from those different perspectives. 

Derek Jenkins: Totally. And you know, the Volkswagen Group, every car company has this, but there was like a bible to doing good design, right. And you just believe like, well that’s, that’s the truth. And that’s the only way. and then you go to another company, it’s like, oh shit, they have their own Bible. Like it’s a totally different Bible. And you’re saying, yeah, but did you think about this? And, and then you realize like, okay, there’s benefits to both of these worlds and, and now you have something again completely new. Um, and so it is just a really interesting experience for growth. 

Amy Devers: So talk to me about the jump to a startup, an EV startup in, in 2015. Was this more getting itchy and restless and chasing the hunger and the, and the change? 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah, I think it was because I was also fortunate, again, th through that period of my, uh, after I came back from Germany working in California, I had been kind of focused on Volkswagen, especially through, um, the early two thousands in California and that’s when the, the first rise of the hybrid in California, cuz like, you know, the Prius really kind of captured southern California and, and just California in general is, is a, a bit of a, um, new trend. And so there, there was already a lot of hybrid talk and, and, and then the beginnings of like electric car experimentation was 2005 around that time. So I was watching all that happen. I had a close friend of mine say, Hey, um, he, in fact, I took his job at Mazda. He’s like, I’m leaving Mazda. I’m going to, to, uh, this company Tesla, with Elon Musk. At that time, nobody had really heard of Elon. And even Tesla was just really, really under the radar. You know, it was a, a real, uh, uh, science project. And I’m like, you’re crazy man. Nobody starts a car company. That’s insane. You know, that I’ll take your job, I’ll take your old job. Um, yeah. And, and so. And then we had all the Southern California design studios, which was, there was a lot of them. We had people leaving the studios to join Tesla. So I had a lot of friends joining up and you’d hear all these crazy stories of what they were doing and was like, wow. And then to watch that manifest itself kind of from 2010. onward to 2015 while I was at Mazda. You know, busy on that. It was like, man, they did it. They pulled it off. This is incredible. You know? So then there was a lot more electrification discussion. Mazda wasn’t really interested in that. They just didn’t, wasn’t on their radar. They weren’t focused on, uh, electric cars. They weren’t fo focused on connected technologies, autonomy. And that was just exploding in California, and this was all before like Dieselgate and Germany and all of that stuff. Then this opportunity came up. I met Peter Rollinson and said he, you know, he had left Tesla kind of the engineer behind the Model S and we wanna start this new company. That’s when I was like, okay, this is a kind of opportunity that doesn’t come along. I should, I should probably give this a shot.

Amy Devers: Yeah. And talk about an opportunity to have real impact. So you joined Lucid Motors, it was then Ava, in 2015, uh, as the head of design and brand, you tell me, but I assume you have something to do with the whole ethos of the company in the, in the design being so integrated with engineering, they’re not separated. They’re not asking to apply the design on top of the engineering to make the engineering look good. It’s a collaborative in concert kind of effort. To me, that seems like it would make all the difference. In just making a better outcome, solving problems in a more elegant way, working through things through the, both the design angle and the engineering angle in a collaborative and synergistic way so that you end up with a greater output than from being asked to just deal with something and make it look good later. But I’m not a car designer, so I, I wanna hear your take on that. 

Derek Jenkins: Yeah, when I joined it was only like 50 people or 75 people maybe at the time. And there were groups within the building, you know, there was the engineering group and the suspension team and aerodynamicist and, but the design team was only a handful of people and so we, it was really like, okay, you know, roll up our sleeves, let’s design a car. And then it was like, well, what are we designing? Is this, what’s the company? What, what’s our, you know, what are we going after here? So we had to kind of create parameters cuz you can’t do everything. And it’s like, you know that that’s where we started to talk more about the brand and the customer and how we want to position the company. What type of vehicle should it be? What kind of attributes should it have? We had a lot of debate and discussion in those early days in, in 2015, and then really got to work on, on a design and try, try to visualize the design and lay it out and, and that, because there was no departments per se, everybody was in one building just working together to get stuff done and, and Peter Rowlandson also had a very strong ethos. Design and engineering, just working hand in hand to solve problems, support each other on that effort and working collaboratively where it’s less the case in the big car companies, partly because they’re so big, they’re working on multiple vehicle lines and there’s platforms and it’s much more prescriptive. And so this was an opportunity to really clean sheet, uh, approach everybody working tight together, and then also teaching the teams to have empathy for each other in terms of like, the design is trying to achieve this. Like, I want the car to be low. They want the car to be widen, da da da. And then the engineering team needs the car to be aerodynamic or else we can’t make it efficient. the car has to be spacious and comfortable, so the proportion might be a little unusual compared to cars today. Design has to try to make that work and understanding what you’re trying to achieve and really taking them many ways, a form and function, being complimentary to each other approach and trying to embrace that was really, really, uh, exciting. and all the while trying to create something that was unique to us, that felt new and fresh, but at the same time wasn’t so futuristic that it would scare existing luxury customers away. You know, we had had to find that sweet spot of, of new versus traditional because you know, at the time all luxury cars were very traditional that was kind of the starting. 

Amy Devers: seems like something in there’s working because the Lucid Air was named Motor Trend’s 2022 Car of the Year. Congratulations on that. Thank you. Thank you. I would love to learn a bit about your creative process and what you think your real strengths are in terms of, maybe it’s a management style or get coalescing a team, or maybe it’s clay modeling, but can you talk me through the major highlights of your creative process?

Derek Jenkins: Yeah, sure. I mean, probably the Lucid Air is a good example of that. when I came in, there was really no understanding of where to start. There was not even descriptive adjectives of what we were trying to do, you know? 

Amy Devers: This makes sense now. This is why you’re head of brand as well as head of design.

Derek Jenkins: Yeah, because it’s like those things are chicken and egg, in my opinion. At at MA or Audi. They already had all the descriptive terminology. For what a Mazda needed to be, or an Audi needed to be. And you, you, you can tweak that stuff and adjust it and, and have word play on it. But those things were in place and you, most of the time you weren’t challenging those things or if you were challenging, you were doing it in an evolutionary way. It’s like, we’re here, we’re about this. And let’s shift it here. So we, we shift to the market in a new consumer, or adjust the consumer or evolve the company. But that was really like shades of gray. And in here we, we had nothing. So you really had to sit down and say, okay, what are we going after? That was a psychographic discussion about who are these people that would buy this really advanced electric car? Do they really care about range? Do they care about performance? Are they kind of green focused or are they luxury? Wanna brag about their success, what is it? You know, so you’re trying to dig down into consumer mindset and, and I think we all had a strong understanding that the industry was in on the verge of big changes. And it was gonna also have be driven partly by consumers and early adapters, and we’d already witnessed that for those first few years of Tesla. And we’d saw, saw where some of, that’s why I brought up the hybrid thing because a lot of the, uh, Prius owners went and bought Teslas, you know, and so those are the early adapters. And, and, and that was a Californian phenomenon. And so we were like, okay, what’s next? You know? And so laying out that strategic framework rather than just starting to sketch designs, what are you designing? What’s your objective? I always feel like laying out your objectives first and giving the team a target to go after creatively and then evolve from there is super important. What was also exciting at the time is, so we had no brand identity. We had no exterior design dna. We had no interior design dna. We had no user experience, user interface, roadmap, or parameters. We had no branded visual language for photography or fonts or, you know, so we. Build out each one of those columns with a common DNA and some individual goals in each column to try to link it all together at once. Again, you get some little opportunities like that in the big car companies, but it’s very monolithic and it’s very established. That was super exciting and that’s where the brand component came into play. 

Amy Devers: Yeah. I mean, how juicy for you to be able to be in a decision making capacity through every element of the DNA of this brand.

Derek Jenkins: It, it, it was, uh, super exciting, but it was out of necessity, , because the company was so small. When I came in, I think they were like, okay, Derek’s here. Let’s start designing the car. And, and I kept saying, wait a second. Like we gotta get all this figured out. You know, that was just outta necessity. It was like nobody said, Hey Derek, we need you to set up the DNA for all of these things. And it was like, we kind of took it upon ourselves in the design group to just map all this out. And in many ways that was the beginning of our, uh, investor pitch, cuz that that’s the pitch. When you’re in a startup like that, more than half of your job is raising money. And so we had to come up with a story that we were telling investors that were coming through.

Amy Devers: And you already got the pitching skills from before. 

Derek Jenkins: Exactly. Exactly. So this is great . Yeah. So we, we had to kind of put string together a, a plausible story of who we are. What our mission is, what we’re about to make, who the customer is, uh, where it’s gonna be positioned in the marketplace, where the customer’s gonna come from. You know, they’re driving this today, they’re gonna drive this tomorrow. We had to really fine tune that pitch to get investment interest. And that was all part and parcel of this whole thing. And of course, Peter and others were involved in that pitch, but somehow it, you know, your first product is a major part of that and, and the market you’re going after is all I made a big part of that. So it all became one cohesive story as we were developing the car. 

Amy Devers: That makes a lot of sense. That’s a very holistic ecosystem that the car is born from. I truly hope I get to drive one, one day . You just really 

Derek Jenkins: come on by., We’ll get you in a car.

Amy Devers: Beautiful. So I wanna ask you one more question before I let you go. It’s related to cars, but it’s also just kind of related to the future. I’m sure your, your brain and your heart has been trained on the future of cars for a long time, and you’ve continually gone to where the action is, where the change is, where growth is happening. I wanna know what you think about the future of roads and parking lots. So much of our world is paved. Can you envision a different future? 

Derek Jenkins: It’s undeniable that we have our mobility challenges, whether you talk about traffic or parking, there are many things happen in the world that affect the, that dynamic. But you know, there is a, uh, tipping point where you just can’t build roads fast enough, you know?

So I think there are a lot of challenges around mobility and vehicle ownership. I think are being explored on, on many different levels, but at the same time, I do think there is a desire for personal mobility, which is still very much alive and well, you know, globally and certainly in this country. And trying to find that balance between personal ownership versus a, a shared experience versus autonomous robo taxis and, and, and, and then things like mass transit as well as people working from home. You know, all of these things have an effect on dynamic. I personally think, you know, one of the most important things we can possibly do is accelerate this transition to electrification because I, as I genuinely think, that has a dramatic impact on the environment, on the air that we breathe on, on greenhouse and, and global warming. And, and the automobile is a major contributor and has traditionally been so, uh, even if I just look at, you know, growing up in and around Southern California and how, seeing how the impact of, uh, smog regulation and now the shift to EV has changed the, the air. It’s, I remember not being able to breathe in the summers growing up, and that never happens anymore. Uh, and so this stuff does make a difference in the immediate, that’s, that’s a big priority. I think as we transition to autonomous technologies, this is gonna help things a lot. It’s gonna help with safety, it’s gonna help with finding a parking spot, it’s gonna help with traffic congestion. Uh, and I think that that future is inevitable on some level.

Amy Devers: Yeah. I talked to a designer who’s a kind of re-imagining urban planning, and his position was that the grid is a, is a real problem, but if we’re thinking more along the lines of a cellular formation, then we wouldn’t have so many intersections and we wouldn’t have to walk along the roadways. We could you know, separate our green space and our living space from our roadways. And I think what makes me really excited about the future is the electrification coupled with a kind of reimagined urban arrangement. 

Derek Jenkins: I think the urban planning discussion is an interesting one, and there’s many different philosophies there, but those are also very difficult to implement long-term, especially in existing cities where 

Amy Devers: oh, you, you can’t tear down a whole city and rebuild it.

Derek Jenkins: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really tough. I tend to put more thought towards kind of where are we going with the electrical grid infrastructure and how electricity as a resource is implemented across all channels, whether it be home office, commercial, how that balances with electric cars plugging into the grid. Are they charging off of solar? Um, are we balancing as we grow our renewable energy? Infrastructure. Uh, can electric cars pay a part of that energy storage or help balance the grid? You know, all of this needs to grow If everybody all of a sudden drives electric cars tomorrow. We won’t be able to charge ’em, right? So, so all, all of the infrastructure in of this is so important to grow this in unison and make sure that it’s balanced and, and so the adaptation can happen in a responsible and rational way. We’re watching the Revolution as we speak. I mean, the United States is about 24% renewable energy right now. That’s pretty exciting. But that needs to grow substantially along with the charging infrastructure, you know, whether it be in public places or in in homes. And how are, how are, how are we addressing that? These things are super important because energy independence and, and supporting the mobility side of it is just so important to growth and. And I, if I look at what other countries are doing, how Europe’s handling this and evolving how China’s way ahead on, on these topics and, and how to handle it, um, it, it’s a super important, uh, focus.

Amy Devers: Agreed. This has been really fascinating. Thank you so much for, for giving me the, the inside intel on your whole career and your life story, but also on the dynamics that need to be in place in order for the great moments that you had at each of these corporations had to do with them being hungry for change. And I think that’s, that’s a really important piece of this that I’m gonna be thinking about for a while. Thank you so much. 

Derek Jenkins: Awesome. Thank you, Amy. Appreciate it and look forward to talking to you again.

Amy Devers:  Hey, thanks so much for listening for a transcript of this episode, and more about Derek, including images of his work, and a bonus Q&A – head to cleverpodcast.com. If you can think of 3 people who would inspired by Clever – please tell them! It really helps us be out when you share Clever with your friends. You can listen to Clever on any of the podcast apps –  please do hit the Follow or subscribe button in your app of choice so our new episodes will turn up in your feed.We love to hear from you on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter – you can find us @cleverpodcast and you can find me @amydevers. Please stay tuned for upcoming announcements and bonus content. You can subscribe to our newsletter at cleverpodcast.com to make sure you don’t miss anything. Clever is hosted AND produced by me, Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven.