April 14, 2026 - Slate and Lucid Raise More Capital

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for April 14, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. 

Starting a car company and ramping it up to volume is very hard and very expensive. Most of the companies that have tried have ultimately run out of money.  However, two of the most interesting companies in the electric vehicle space have both just raised a significant amount of new capital as they prepare to launch critical new models. 

More than a year after the departure of Peter Rawlinson, Marc Winterhoff is no longer the interim CEO of Lucid. The California-based automaker has named Silvio Napoli as its new permanent CEO. Napoli spent 31 years with Schindler Group, a Swiss manufacturer of industrial machinery. At the same time that Napoli's appointment was announced, Lucid revealed that it had also received $750 million in new investment, with $550 million coming from the Saudi Public Investment fund which already owns the majority of the company. Uber is also investing another $200 million following a $300 million injection last fall. This all comes as Lucid prepares to publicly reveal the first two of its upcoming midsize models, the Cosmos and Earth, later this spring. Uber is also raising its purchase commitment for Lucid Robotaxis powered by the Nuro automated driving system from 20,000 to 35,000 units, including the Cosmos. 

Slate Auto, which is planning to launch a minimalist compact electric pickup later this year, also raised a new $650 million funding round led by TWG Global. TWG has a wide range of sports investments, including majority stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers and Dodgers, Andretti Global racing, and the Cadillac Formula 1 team, among others. This will be crucial for Slate to launch its first product and hopefully get to a follow-up vehicle. While there has been a lot of interest in the Slate truck, which is expected to start at about $25,000, it may struggle in the marketplace. It is highly customizable, with all trucks getting an unpainted plastic body that can be wrapped starting at $500. But it has no infotainment, manual crank windows, and only two seats and a 150-mile range. It can be converted to a small SUV, but it remains to be seen if consumers will actually want a vehicle where the back seat is hard to access through the two doors. This will be a very interesting product experiment to watch.

Thanks for listening.