The CEO of EV startup Lucid Motors had a really good year in 2022. A new CEO compensation survey from Automotive News and Equilar says the head of the luxury EV company's compensation package is valued at more than a third of a billion dollars.
Peter Rawlinson's base salary, at $575,000, is reasonable. He also took home $5.5 million in stock options and some $373 million in stock awards. The total tally is about $379 million — not a bad year at all.
For comparison, GM's Mary Barra made $34 million in 2022, which includes a $2.1 million base, a $6.3 million bonus and some $24 million in stock award gains. Ford's Jim Farley's package is worth $18.3 million, RJ Scaringe of Rivian took home $1 million, and Henrik Fisker of Fisker Automotive rounds out the auto top five with a $783,000 salary. Elon Musk's salary remains heavily incentive-laden, so his salary stands at $0 for 2022, but let's not forget the $23.5 billion he made in 2021.
As always, Musk had an opinion on the Lucid CEO's pay plan, taking to his social media platform, X, to say, "Beware any company where leadership compensation is not linked to performance." There is a bit of history, though, as Rawlinson was the chief engineer of the Tesla Model S and worked at the company for three years before joining Lucid as CTO.
Rawlinson's payout was so large, according to Fortune, because the car company hit market-cap targets early last year. So, some of Rawlinson's pay is structured around performance. However, in 2022, Lucid's stock fell more than 82%, the company's total revenue was $608.2 million, and the company only made 7,180 vehicles last year, which still beat the company's goals of 6,000-7,000. The company's goals double in 2023; we'll see if Rawlinson's pay does the same.
Fun fact: Rawlinson made more than the GDP of the Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu.
