Lucid is moving its United Arab Emirates business from direct-to-consumer sales to an indirect model, two people familiar with the matter told EV, extending to the Gulf a distribution change the US brand began in Europe earlier this year.
The switch makes the Emirates the second market where Lucid has abandoned the company-owned retail approach it built its brand identity on, and the first outside Europe.
The change is proceeding even though the only completed test of the alternative is yet to deliver strong results.
Wackenhut, the German retail group Lucid signed as its first-ever distribution partner in a deal EV exclusively revealed in February, has delivered a single digit number of vehicles in the four months since it began selling the brand — a source told EV this week.
Lucid has made no public announcement about the UAE, and has named no importer or distributor for the market.
However, the direction was already legible in Lucid‘s own materials.
The go-to-market framework presented to investors in New York on March 12 splits the company’s markets into two columns: Direct names the United States, Canada and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, while Indirect names Europe and, in Lucid‘s phrase, other international markets.
The UAE, the only market outside Saudi Arabia where Lucid operates a Middle East studio and a delivered customer base, is absent from the three direct countries.
By elimination, the chart already placed the Emirates on the indirect side five months ago despite not having announced it.
The financial case arrived with the second-quarter filing, which shows revenue from the Middle East outside Saudi Arabia of about $32,000 — roughly a third of what one entry-level Air sedan sells for in Dubai.
The Emirates Case
Lucid opened its Dubai studio at City Walk in May 2024, its 38th retail location worldwide and its second in the Middle East.
Retail deliveries began that December, making the UAE the company’s sixth market.
Faisal Sultan, promoted to President for the Middle East in 2025, said at launch that the company had taken many reservations, promised expansion into Abu Dhabi, and said Lucid intended to enter one or two new Gulf markets a year.
The company acknowledged the slowdown as it happened. “I know UAE started very strong but it kind of slowed down,” Sultan said in an October interview, contrasting the market with rising Saudi fleet orders.
Discounting followed.
Lucid ran a 0.99% financing package with Dubai Islamic Bank as local sales stayed minimal, and the Air Grand Touring has since been cut about 5.5% below its launch price, to AED 491,190.
A $32,000 Quarter
Lucid disaggregates Middle East revenue into Saudi Arabia and a residual line labelled rest of Middle East.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the company’s only two markets in the region, which makes that residual a direct read on the Emirates.
Saudi Arabia produced $98.2 million in the second quarter. The residual produced about $32,000, as EV reported this week.
The entry-level Air Pure lists in the UAE at AED 313,635, or roughly $85,400. On that basis, an entire quarter of UAE revenue amounts to about 37% of one car.
The drop is a cliff rather than a fade. The line held between roughly $300,000 and $700,000 across the five preceding quarters before falling about 90% in the second quarter of 2026.
Cumulatively, the disclosures imply the UAE has generated on the order of $5 million since retail deliveries began, equivalent to roughly 50 vehicles over nineteen months at local transaction prices, according to EV calculations.
The German Partner
EV first revealed on February 24 that Lucid had signed Wackenhut, the family-owned Mercedes-Benz retail group headquartered in Nagold, as its first-ever distribution partner, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Lucid confirmed the name three weeks later, on March 16, presenting the signing as the formal launch of a hybrid retail model it said it would replicate across the continent.
Lawrence Hamilton, Lucid‘s President for Europe, framed the timing in that announcement. “With two award-winning vehicles available, now is the right moment,” he said of the decision to sell through retailers.
Wackenhut opened Lucid sales and service at its Baden-Baden site on March 30. The four full months that followed — April through July — produced two handovers, according to figures reviewed by EV.
Germany registered 79 Lucid vehicles over the same window, according to Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt data: 21 in April, 21 in May, 31 in June and six in July.
The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA) counts new vehicle registrations, not retail sales.
The agency does not disclose how many units reached private or fleet buyers and how many were registered by the manufacturer, its studios or its partners as demonstrators, showroom stock, press cars or courtesy vehicles, and it publishes no breakdown by model.
Every one of those categories inflates the national base against which the dealership’s two handovers are measured, which makes the comparison a generous one for Wackenhut rather than a harsh one.
Lucid registered 108 vehicles in the country over the first half of 2026, up 47.9% from 73 in the same period of 2025, before July fell to six units — an 87.0% drop against the 46 registered in July 2025.
July was the strongest month of Lucid‘s 2025 in Germany by a margin of 17 units, which flatters the size of the fall even as the absolute figure stands as the company’s weakest month of 2026.
The one Wackenhut handover Lucid has publicised was a Gravity delivered to the celebrity chef Johann Lafer, which the company announced in May as the first Gravity sold through a retail partner anywhere in Europe.
What Baden-Baden Looks Like Now
Wackenhut’s Lucid brand page, reviewed by EV on Sunday, describes the operation as sitting in Baden-Baden and in Rastatt.
Two employees are listed against the Lucid brand. One is a salesman at Baden-Baden.
The other is a brand manager based at Rastatt and Nagold who simultaneously covers smart and BYD — the Chinese giant Wackenhut has taken on since signing Lucid, and one that outsells it in Germany by several orders of magnitude.
Lucid‘s March announcement said a second Wackenhut location would open in Stuttgart “this summer.”
Lucid said in February it was in advanced discussions with more than ten additional dealer groups and importer candidates across Europe.
No second European retail partner has been announced in the five months since.
Why the Model Spreads Anyway
The case Lucid makes for indirect distribution is a cost case, not a volume case, and that distinction explains why the UAE is following Germany rather than waiting for Germany to work.
Erwin Raphael, Lucid‘s senior vice president of global revenue, set out the arithmetic on the same Investor Day slide that classified the markets.
An indirect model requires roughly 85% less up-front capital, reaches market up to a year faster, and converts inventory more quickly than a company-owned network.
Describing the approach, Raphael told the audience the company was choosing its route deliberately. “That’s smart growth. It’s intentional and it’s demand driven,” he said.
Marc Winterhoff, then interim chief executive, conceded the transition was slow-moving even while defending it, saying in May that “It actually takes time to move from a direct to consumer model” to an indirect one, and that partner selection was being built around service capacity rather than sales.
Lucid‘s securities filings treat everything outside North America as open.
In a registration statement filed this year, the company said it is “actively exploring alternative importer and agency models” to add flexibility to its distribution strategy.
Hamilton had already told Automotive News in December that every new European market — Belgium, Denmark, the UK, France, Italy and Spain — would rely exclusively on local dealer partnerships rather than company stores.
What Lucid Has Not Said
Lucid has issued no announcement on the UAE change, has named no importer or distributor for the market, and continues to operate the Dubai studio.
EV reported in July that Lucid‘s board had decided to slow the push into new European markets and would cut the regional workforce before the end of September.
Spain and Austria have moved to 2027, the UK has slipped three times to early 2028, and European registrations fell to 12 in July, down 85.7% from 84 a year earlier on the same registrations-based measure.
At Investor Day the company committed to 25 new locations in Europe and ten in the Middle East during 2026, increases of roughly 200% in both regions.
Four months into its first trial in Germany, the model has moved a single-digit number of vehicles.
