Lucid Motors produced 2,954 electric vehicles ( EV ) in the third quarter of this year, a decrease of 54% compared to the same period last year. The company intends to limit production in order to better match the demand for its electric vehicles.
This is the third consecutive quarter of decline in Lucid's electric vehicle production, which also marks the lowest quarterly output since the first quarter of 2025. The first quarter of 2025 coincided with not long after Lucid Motors began producing its second electric vehicle – Gravity SUV.
Lucid delivered 3,806 electric vehicles in the third quarter, which is roughly the same as in the second quarter, but about 200 fewer than in the third quarter of 2025. The company has been having difficulty finding buyers for its first two luxury electric vehicles. In the past six quarters, there have been five quarters where production exceeded deliveries.
Lucid The new CEO, Silvio Napoli, has been working on "streamlining the company" over the past few months. This effort includes laying off around 1,500 employees, reducing the management team, and canceling the second shift at the factory in Arizona, with the aim of achieving cost savings of $1.4 billion. Lucid has also postponed the release of its third electric vehicle, Cosmos. This model was supposed to be much more affordable, with a starting price of less than $50,000.
The aforementioned third-quarter data was released on Monday afternoon. Just a few days ago, its competitor in the electric vehicle sector, Rivian, announced its best quarter in company history, driven by its newly launched and more affordable SUV model, the R2. Although Rivian did not disclose specific delivery figures for the R2, the company delivered nearly 20,000 vehicles in the third quarter. This was the first full quarter since the R2 went into production, exceeding the 12,194 vehicles delivered in the second quarter.
Compared to the commitments made by Lucid when it went public in 2021, it is even more evident that the company has failed to find a large enough buyer market for its electric vehicles. That year, Lucid Motors merged with a special purpose acquisition company and anticipated delivering as many as 90,000 electric vehicles in just 2024 alone. The company raised $4 billion from this transaction.
At the Lucid second-quarter financial report conference call held in August, Napoli discussed why he believes the company has not been able to make a breakthrough in the electric vehicle market.
He said, "There is no doubt that Lucid has brought leading innovations and outstanding products to the market, but we have been disappointing in many aspects, and this situation has lasted for too long. Our execution has not been stable. We failed to meet our commitments, launching products before they were ready, invested insufficiently in services, responded too slowly to quality issues, and allowed complexity to slow down our decision-making."
Theoretically, a lower price of Cosmos could enable Lucid to reach a broader market, but Napoli also reminds shareholders that rushing to launch this new electric vehicle might bring more troubles.
Napoli stated during the teleconference: 'We will not repeat past mistakes by launching a product onto the market before it is fully ready.'
