Transportation

Lucid Motors will only build 9,000 EVs in 2024 after once predicting it would ship 90,000

Comment

Lucid Air on the road
Image Credits: Lucid Group

Lucid Motors plans to build just 9,000 electric vehicles in 2024, only 500 to 1,000 more than it made in 2023, as it struggles with demand for its luxury sedans. If it sticks to that number, that means Lucid will wind up building around 10% of the 90,000 EVs it predicted it could make and sell in 2024 when it went public three years ago.

The chasm between the new figures and those original expectations spotlights how much freedom companies like Lucid had in promoting the reverse mergers that helped so many become publicly listed. And it’s a sign of the brutal reality Lucid now faces: that it’s still scrambling to find buyers and losing money on every EV it builds.

Lucid announced the 2024 production targets on Wednesday alongside its financial results for last year, where it shared that it lost $2.8 billion in 2023. The modest projection comes a few days after the company slashed the prices of its Air sedan by $8,000.

CEO Peter Rawlinson has spent much of the last year talking about how important it is for his company to improve its sales and marketing efforts, while also pointing to the upcoming Gravity SUV as a potential boost. The Gravity is one of the reasons Lucid originally forecasted being able to make and ship 90,000 vehicles in a few short years. In fact, in the presentation Lucid used to promote its 2021 merger with a special purpose acquisition company, it predicted the Gravity would outsell the Air sedan in 2024.

The reality, though, was that Lucid ran into a number of supply chain and production problems in the early days of the Air and in 2022 had to push back the launch of the Gravity. The company finally revealed the SUV in November 2023, and says it plans to start building them by the end of this year.

The Gravity means a lot for Lucid’s immediate future — so much so that the company announced last week that it gave Rawlinson a $6 million cash bonus for unveiling the SUV. Lucid is working on a mid-size platform meant to compete with Tesla’s Model Y, but that won’t come until late 2026 at the earliest.

There are other things that could give the company a boost. It only just recently started selling a rear-wheel drive version of its base model Air Pure, which — with the recent price cuts — now starts under $70,000. Rawlinson said Lucid ran into technical challenges with the early production of the Air Pure, but that it is now fully ramped.

Lucid also last year announced it was selling some of its EV technology to Aston Martin. Rawlinson said on a call Wednesday that Lucid continues to talk to other companies both in and outside of the automotive industry about striking similar technology licensing and supply agreements. He even said Lucid is “seeing interest in our technology for use in hybrid electric vehicles.”

Saudi Arabia, which owns a majority of Lucid Motors through its Public Investment Fund, has also agreed to purchase as many as 100,000 EVs from Lucid over the next decade. The company started shipping Air sedans to the Kingdom late last year, though Rawlinson said Lucid initially ran into “different market dynamics and intricacies unique to that market” that slowed the initial rollout. But he said Lucid “expect[s] good growth in the region this year.”

This story has been updated with details from Lucid Motors’ investor call.

More TechCrunch

The best known mycoprotein is probably Quorn, a meat substitute that’s fast approaching its 40th birthday. But Finnish biotech startup Enifer is cooking up something even older: Its proprietary single-cell…

Meet the Finnish biotech startup bringing a long lost mycoprotein to your plate

Silo, a Bay Area food supply chain startup, has hit a rough patch. TechCrunch has learned that the company on Tuesday laid off roughly 30% of its staff, or north…

Food supply chain software maker Silo lays off ~30% of staff amid M&A discussions

Featured Article

Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

Meanwhile, women and people of color are disproportionately impacted by irresponsible AI.

11 hours ago
Meta’s new AI council is composed entirely of white men

If you’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here’s some inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator goes about choosing companies.

Garry Tan has revealed his ‘secret sauce’ for getting into Y Combinator

Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operating in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with its executive. The move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help…

India’s BluSmart is testing its ride-hailing service in Dubai

Under the envisioned framework, both candidate and issue ads would be required to include an on-air and filed disclosure that AI-generated content was used.

FCC proposes all AI-generated content in political ads must be disclosed

Want to make a founder’s day, week, month, and possibly career? Refer them to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024! Applications close June 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. TechCrunch’s Startup…

Refer a founder to Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2024

Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is officially launching DMs (direct messages), the company announced on Wednesday. Later, Bluesky plans to “fully support end-to-end encrypted messaging down the line,”…

Bluesky now has DMs

The perception in Silicon Valley is that every investor would love to be in business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital fundraising environment has become so difficult that even…

Peter Thiel-founded Valar Ventures raised a $300 million fund, half the size of its last one

Featured Article

Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Several hotel check-in computers are running a remote access app, which is leaking screenshots of guest information to the internet.

14 hours ago
Spyware found on US hotel check-in computers

Gavet has had a rocky tenure at Techstars and her leadership was the subject of much controversy.

Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet is out

The struggle isn’t universal, however.

Connected fitness is adrift post-pandemic

Featured Article

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized…

16 hours ago
A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

HoundDog actually looks at the code a developer is writing, using both traditional pattern matching and large language models to find potential issues.

HoundDog.ai helps developers prevent personal information from leaking

The changes are designed to enhance the consumer experience of using Google Pay and make it a more competitive option against other payment methods.

Google Pay will now display card perks, BNPL options and more

Few figures in the tech industry have earned the storied reputation of Vinod Khosla, founder and partner at Khosla Ventures. For over 40 years, he has been at the center…

Vinod Khosla is coming to Disrupt to discuss how AI might change the future

AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known…

Truecaller partners with Microsoft to let its AI respond to calls in your own voice

Meta is updating its Ray-Ban smart glasses with new hands-free functionality, the company announced on Wednesday. Most notably, users can now share an image from their smart glasses directly to…

Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses now let you share images directly to your Instagram Story

Spotify launched its own font, the company announced on Wednesday. The music streaming service hopes that its new typeface, “Spotify Mix,” will help Spotify distinguish its own unique visual identity. …

Why Spotify is launching its own font, Spotify Mix

In 2008, Marty Kagan, who’d previously worked at Cisco and Akamai, co-founded Cedexis, a (now-Cisco-owned) firm developing observability tech for content delivery networks. Fellow Cisco veteran Hasan Alayli joined Kagan…

Hydrolix seeks to make storing log data faster and cheaper

A dodgy email containing a link that looks “legit” but is actually malicious remains one of the most dangerous, yet successful, tricks in a cybercriminal’s handbook. Now, an AI startup…

Bolster, creator of the CheckPhish phishing tracker, raises $14M led by Microsoft’s M12

If you’ve been looking forward to seeing Boeing’s Starliner capsule carry two astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. The…

Boeing, NASA indefinitely delay crewed Starliner launch

TikTok is the latest tech company to incorporate generative AI into its ads business, as the company announced on Tuesday that it’s launching a new “TikTok Symphony” AI suite for…

TikTok turns to generative AI to boost its ads business

Gone are the days when space and defense were considered fundamentally antithetical to venture investment. Now, the country’s largest venture capital firms are throwing larger portions of their money behind…

Space VC closes $20M Fund II to back frontier tech founders from day zero

These days every company is trying to figure out if their large language models are compliant with whichever rules they deem important, and with legal or regulatory requirements. If you’re…

Patronus AI is off to a magical start as LLM governance tool gains traction

Link-in-bio startup Linktree has crossed 50 million users and is rolling out the beta of its social commerce program.

Linktree surpasses 50M users, rolls out its social commerce program to more creators

For a $5.99 per month, immigrants have a bank account and debit card with fee-free international money transfers and discounted international calling.

Immigrant banking platform Majority secures $20M following 3x revenue growth

When developers have a particular job that AI can solve, it’s not typically as simple as just pointing an LLM at the data. There are other considerations such as cost,…

Unify helps developers find the best LLM for the job

Response time is Aerodome’s immediate value prop for potential clients.

Aerodome is sending drones to the scene of the crime