August 19, 2025 - How Much Time Does Lucid Have Left?

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for August 19, 2025 and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.

The vast majority of automakers that have been started since Karl Benz debuted his Motorwagen in 1886 have gone out of business. In recent years that has included Fisker in two different incarnations, Canoo, Lordstown, Coda and others. One that has managed to hang on despite the odds is Lucid Motors. Unlike most of the startups, Lucid has at least managed to get to the stage of launching volume production and delivering vehicles. However, since beginning deliveries in 2021, it has only shipped about 21,500 vehicles. 

Unfortunately, Lucid's launch timing could hardly have been worse, coming out first with a sedan when the world is shifting to SUVs and coming in the middle of a global pandemic that disrupted supply chains. As a result, the company's costs were much higher than planned and sales were lower in spite of generally glowing reviews for both the Air sedan and the new Gravity SUV that debuted this year. Despite billions of dollars in accumulated losses, for a time it looked like Lucid might be able to survive because the majority of its shares were owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. Those shareholders have deep pockets and seemed unwilling to let their investment fail.  In the latter half of 2024, it looked like the impending launch of the Gravity would finally push Lucid sales up to a level where it could start to staunch the losses. 

However, the production launch of the Gravity has not gone smoothly. Since kicking off in late 2024, Lucid has continued to struggle with quality and delivery problems from suppliers. Despite producing Gravity for at least eight months, customer deliveries have only begun at a slow pace in July 2025. Lucid did recently announce a partnership with Uber and Nuro to deliver at least 20,000 Gravities equipped with the Nuro automated driving system for robotaxi use, but that's still two years away. In the meantime, Lucid's stock continues to decline and it's unclear how long the Saudi's will remain patient and willing to inject capital if Lucid can't start delivering the Gravity in volume. Right now the company's liquidity is enough to carry it until mid-2026, but they need to fix their operational issues and generating cash flow sooner rather than later.

Thanks for listening.