Electric startups are flaming out all around it, but Lucid Motors is still going.
It’s certainly no secret that starting a new car company from the ground up is an insanely expensive venture. Many companies have tried, and nearly the same number have failed — Lordstown Motors, Fisker, Canoo and Nikola being recent examples. Lucid Motors, for its part, is gunning to achieve profitability before it endures the same fate, though its most recent financial report still revealed it burned through $3 billion last year through expanding its production facilities and trying to boost sales growth for its existing Air sedan and the new Gravity SUV. At the same time that it posted that gigantic loss, including a $397 million net loss in the last quarter of 2024 alone, CEO Peter Rawlinson has stepped down from the CEO post.
After leading Lucid since 2019, Rawlinson — who was Tesla’s engineering VP and chief engineer of the Model S before joining the company that would become Lucid Motors in 2013 — will stay on in an “advisory capacity”, according to the company’s announcement. Marc Winterhoff, who came in as Lucid’s COO in November 2023, is now interim CEO while the automaker’s board finds a successor.
While Lucid garnered glowing press for both the Air (especially its long driving range) and the Gravity, that praise hasn’t translated to actual sales. It did post a 71% jump in year-over-year deliveries in 2023, but that still translated to 3,099 examples of the Air in total. Meanwhile, it produced 3,386 cars.
The company projects annual production of 20,000 vehicles in 2025, largely riding on the base model Gravity SUV’s arrival later this year, and told investors it has sufficient liquidity of about $6 billion to see through its operations, at least into the second half of 2026. While the more expensive $94,900 Gravity Grand Touring did start deliveries in December, its more affordable $79,900 won’t be available to order until late 2025 — and Lucid needs more affordable cars to boost its sales volumes.
It’s a tough situation all around, as the company will continue to eat into its cash reserves through the year, thanks to a slowdown in market-wide EV demand compared to the past few years (market share is still growing, but overall sales aren’t as rapid these days). Lucid says it expects its capital expenditures to be approximately $1.4 billion this year, which is roughly $500 million higher than it was in 2024, where it posted $3 billion in negative cash flow. As the folks over at Jalopnik point out, that sort of loss equates to Lucid losing about $300,000 for every car it sold last year.
As of mid-day February 26, Lucid Group’s stock is down about 13% from Tuesday, while share values are half what they were in late August.
