IN AUTOMOTIVE DESIGN, THE WIN ISN’T always a flashy new feature. It might be a tool that saves $800 per car and makes a technician’s job easier that takes the W.
At Lucid Motors, Pranay Gadiya designed a fixture that could be used across both the Lucid Air and Lucid Gravity. He expressed that it’s always a surreal moment to see his designs move into production and work in real life, but this one was special.
“Whenever I see my design parts on a car, it’s a proud moment. But that was my first project at Lucid, and it saved a lot of money per car,” Gadiya said.
The project took four to six months of design work, and there was a lot of thought put into balancing cost, function, assembly, and ease of use. “Seeing technicians using my design part and getting good feedback—it’s a proud moment,” he said.
Precision After Production
Gadiya works on the service side at Lucid Motors, designing for technicians in service centers and body shops. It’s a specific corner of electric vehicle engineering, but one that asks a critical question: After a vehicle leaves the factory, how do you help repair teams recreate factory-level accuracy?
“Cars are built by the robots mostly, and they are very close to accuracy,” he said. “Whereas when it comes to service centers, everything will be manually built by a person.”
The tools he designs help technicians replace parts, align components, and follow the right sequence during repairs. The best tools, he said, are not necessarily complicated. His Lucid fixture worked because it was simple to assemble, easy to use, and cost-effective.
Gadiya’s work spans the full path: understanding the repair challenge, designing the tool, prototyping and validating it, refining the design, working with suppliers, reviewing manufacturability, choosing materials and tolerances, releasing drawings and 3D data, and supporting the instructions that help technicians use the tool correctly.
“So, it comes down to problem solving, from design to production,” he said.
Gadiya earned his bachelor’s degree in India and first imagined himself going into aerospace. Aeronautical engineering opportunities were limited though, so mechanical engineering became the broader path: close enough to aerospace, and flexible enough to keep his options open.
“Once I started taking courses in mechanical, I got more interested in automotive,” he said. “Tesla had just gotten big during that time, and I thought the future is electric vehicles.”
And as a self-described “overthinker,” Gadiya saw design engineering as a way to put that tendency to good use, while staying in a broad enough field to keep his options open. The choice paid off: as electric vehicles gained momentum, he found himself drawn to automotive design. He worked at Force Motors in India for two years before moving to the U.S.
“I was an overthinker, so I wanted to utilize that overthinking toward my design and mechanical engineering.”
—Pranay Gadiya, Mechanical Design Engineer, Lucid Motors
Gadiya has an athletic side: he’s a basketball player who also snowboards, surfs, and plays pickleball at tournament levels. “It really helps me balance my personal life,” he said.
Foundations Meet Future
Gadiya works on the service side at Lucid Motors, designing for technicians in service centers and body shops. It’s a specific corner of electric vehicle engineering, but one that asks a critical question: After a vehicle leaves the factory, how do you help repair teams recreate factory-level accuracy?
“Cars are built by the robots mostly, and they are very close to accuracy,” he said. “Whereas when it comes to service centers, everything will be manually built by a person.”
The tools he designs help technicians replace parts, align components, and follow the right sequence during repairs. The best tools, he said, are not necessarily complicated. His Lucid fixture worked because it was simple to assemble, easy to use, and cost-effective.
Gadiya’s work spans the full path: understanding the repair challenge, designing the tool, prototyping and validating it, refining the design, working with suppliers, reviewing manufacturability, choosing materials and tolerances, releasing drawings and 3D data, and supporting the instructions that help technicians use the tool correctly.
“So, it comes down to problem solving, from design to production,” he said.
Gadiya earned his bachelor’s degree in India and first imagined himself going into aerospace. Aeronautical engineering opportunities were limited though, so mechanical engineering became the broader path: close enough to aerospace, and flexible enough to keep his options open.
“Once I started taking courses in mechanical, I got more interested in automotive,” he said. “Tesla had just gotten big during that time, and I thought the future is electric vehicles.”
And as a self-described “overthinker,” Gadiya saw design engineering as a way to put that tendency to good use, while staying in a broad enough field to keep his options open. The choice paid off: as electric vehicles gained momentum, he found himself drawn to automotive design. He worked at Force Motors in India for two years before moving to the U.S.
Sarah Alburakeh is strategic content editor.
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