Lucid Motors doesn’t know how many EVs it will build this year

Lucid Motors said Tuesday that it’s nary longer definite however galore EVs it volition physique oregon merchantability this year, arsenic it navigates a modulation to a caller CEO and a company-wide cost-cutting push.

The institution said successful February that it planned to build betwixt 25,000 and 27,000 vehicles this year. That’s acold from the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that Lucid Motors estimated it would physique and merchantability this twelvemonth erstwhile it went nationalist backmost successful 2021. But it would person represented a important bump from past year’s fig of astir 18,000.

The alteration to Lucid’s guidance was announced during the company’s first-quarter net telephone by main fiscal serviceman Taoufiq Boussaid. It comes conscionable a fewer months aft the institution laid disconnected 12% of its workforce, which TechCrunch archetypal reported successful February. Lucid Motors said successful a filing Tuesday that those layoffs volition outgo the institution astir $40 cardinal successful the adjacent term, though it believes the cuts volition yet prevention arsenic overmuch arsenic $500 cardinal implicit the adjacent fewer years.

Boussaid said the determination to propulsion Lucid Motors’ guidance for the twelvemonth was a “governance decision,” and that incoming CEO Silvio Napoli is conducting a reappraisal of the business. Boussaid said Lucid Motors expects to supply a “full updated outlook” during the second-quarter net telephone successful a fewer months.

“It’s wide that realizing Lucid’s afloat imaginable volition necessitate sharper absorption and accordant execution, peculiarly astir simplification, prioritization and speed,” Napoli said during the call.

Lucid Motors besides shared Tuesday that it had a worse-than-expected archetypal quarter, mostly owed to a 29-day accumulation disruption and a impermanent stop-sale that was a effect of problems with a spot supplier. These problems coiled up inflating Lucid Motors’ inventory, and the institution said it volition person to cautiously negociate accumulation measurement successful the adjacent word successful bid to trim that glut.

“We are not constrained connected capacity. We are constrained by our ain subject not to physique inventory up of demand. As marketplace conditions develop, we volition standard accumulation accordingly,” Boussaid said.

This each comes arsenic Lucid Motors is expected to commencement gathering its archetypal high-volume conveyance this year, priced astatine nether $50,000. The institution has said it would statesman producing the archetypal EV connected this mid-size level by the extremity of 2026. On Tuesday, the institution kept the absorption connected adjacent year, saying it “remain[s] connected way for accumulation ramp-up of the mid size successful 2027.”

Lucid Motors is besides readying to motorboat a robotaxi work with Uber and Nuro by the extremity of this year, utilizing autonomous versions of its Gravity SUV. Lucid confirmed Tuesday that it remains connected way to commencement gathering the road-ready versions of those vehicles successful the 4th quarter.