Locator: 48605EVS.
Posted earlier. This simply boggles the mind. From the story below:
- Lucid, a $100,000-luxury EV
- "hiccups" with quality issue
- with Gravity's heads-up display
- can't even make enough for SUVs to be used for test drives
- the company has so far failed to sell its Air sedan an anywhere near the levels it once promised
- its total losses to date are now over $13 billion
- it's long-running CEO abruptly stepped down three monthsago
- Gravity was supposed to have hit the market in 2023
- the company said it would "technically" start delivering Gravity SUVs in late 2024, quietly ignoring the fact this was for employees and people close to the company (the "elite")
- range 450 miles -- that is awesome for an; about what my 2012 Honda Civic gets on a tank of non-ethanol gasoline
- CEO talks about "pie in the sky" -- selling its "EV tech to other automakers." LOL.
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The Original Story
May 7, 2025: this is quite interesting -- the "spin." After doing a fair amount of reading regarding the 1Q25 EV production reports for Ford, Lucid, and Rivian, I thought I had a pretty good idea what was going on. Then, as more and more stories "leak" out ..... well, take a look. This one involves Lucid. At first I fell for the company's line ... hook, line, and sinker, as they say. Then this story was posted, link here:
Lucid Motors has been working through some quality “hiccups” in the early stages of delivering its long-awaited electric SUV, according to interim CEO Marc Winterhoff.
“It is true that we had some technical issues that we had to overcome around software” and the Gravity’s heads-up display, Winterhoff said on a conference call Tuesday. “There have been some hiccups. To be quite frank, I think this is absolutely normal in the beginning of launching a vehicle.” [Launch was supposed to be back in 2023.]
In particular, Winterhoff cited supply chain issues with Gravity’s heads-up display as a source of trouble. The company has pulled that option back for now while it works with the supplier to increase production of the part. [Supply chain issues: that's become a meme for US manufacturers who can't execute.]
Winterhoff said these early quality snags are the reason why Lucid has been slow to bring the Gravity to its showroom locations, including SUVs that are supposed to be used for test drives. But he said the company is “knocking those [issues] out.” [Really? Any data to support that?]
“We’d rather push it out a few days or weeks, rather than putting a half-baked product in front of the customer,” he said.
Critical paragraph:
Lucid’s first SUV arrives at a critical juncture for the company. It has so far failed to sell its Air sedan at anywhere near the levels it once promised to Wall Street. Its total losses to date are now over $13 billion, according to a new regulatory filing. And in February, its long-running CEO abruptly stepped down, which led to the installation of Winterhoff.The Gravity was originally supposed to hit the market in 2023. The launch was pushed back a year thanks to the disruptions caused by the COVID pandemic. Lucid did technically start delivering Gravity SUVs in late 2024, although only to employees and people close to the company.
The SUV, which currently starts at $94,000 and gets 450 miles of range, started shipping to regular customers in the last few weeks. But progress has been slow thanks to some of these early production challenges. [Starts at $94,000. I wonder what the "typical price" folks pay for the Lucid?]
Lucid has said it doesn’t expect to grow the volume of deliveries until the back half of this year. And it is not alone in dealing with early-run quality problems. Automakers of all sizes tend to deal with issues big or small as they start building new vehicles. Elon Musk once said in a 2021 interview that he tells friends to wait until Tesla is making new cars at scale before they buy one.
Selling cars makes up the overwhelming majority of Lucid’s business. The company has often said it wants to be a supplier of EV tech to other automakers. To date, it has only inked a deal with Aston Martin, but Winterhoff teased other possible partnerships on Tuesday’s call.
The interim CEO said “several players” have reached out to explore “joint manufacturing” in the U.S., potentially at the former Nikola factory in Coolidge, Arizona, that Lucid is now leasing.
