Lucid Motors has pushed out Marc Winterhoff, its chief operating officer (COO) and former interim chief executive, a source familiar with the matter told EV on Monday — the same day the company told staff it would cut 15% of its US workforce.
Winterhoff’s removal comes barely three weeks after he stepped back into the COO seat.
Lucid hired him as chief operating officer in December 2023, reporting directly to the then CEO Petwe Rawlinson, with responsibility for manufacturing, supply chain, international expansion and go-to-market strategy.
He had run Lucid as interim chief executive for roughly 15 months before Silvio Napoli took over as permanent CEO on June 1, at which point Winterhoff returned to the operating role he had held since joining the company.
Lucid had not publicly announced the departure as of early Monday.
His exit marks the 15th departure of a C-level executive, senior vice president or vice president since October 2023, by EV‘s count, extending a leadership exodus that has now turned over nearly the entire senior team assembled under founder Peter Rawlinson.
Hours after EV’s report, Lucid confirmed this Monday the departure detailing that it closed the COO role.
“On June 22, 2026, the Company announced that Marc Winterhoff, Chief Operating Officer, has departed the Company, effective immediately following the elimination of the Chief Operating Officer position,” the company stated.
“Mr. Winterhoff is eligible to receive severance benefits under the Company’s Executive Severance Plan, subject to the terms and conditions thereof,” Lucid added. “In addition, the Company has agreed to provide certain continued security support and have him keep his company vehicle.”
Paid to stay, then pushed out
When Napoli’s appointment was disclosed in April, Lucid raised Winterhoff’s financial conditions.
The base salary rose to $1,000,000 from the $595,000 he earned when he joined, lifted his target bonus to 150% of salary, set a $5.4 million long-term incentive target, and added $2 million in cash retention bonuses.
One $1 million tranche of that retention award was due to vest on Napoli’s start date; the second was tied to the first anniversary, a payment Winterhoff now stands to forfeit.
In April, Winterhoff had publicly welcomed his successor, writing on LinkedIn that he looked forward to “building on that momentum alongside Silvio.”
Three weeks after collecting the first half, the German executive leaves.
From consultant to interim chief
Winterhoff spent most of his career in consulting before Lucid.
He was a senior partner at Roland Berger from 2011 to 2023, where he led operational and cost-efficiency work for large automakers, and earlier spent more than a decade at Arthur D. Little in Frankfurt.
The former interim CEO holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and management from the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany.
Lucid hired him as chief operating officer in December 2023, reporting directly to the then CEO Petwe Rawlinson.
The Saudi-backed brand named him interim CEO on February 25, 2025, after Chairman Turqi Alnowaiser forced out Rawlinson, EV previously reported.
The interim package added a $20,000 monthly stipend and a $4 million stock award on top of his salary.
For the next 15 months he ran the company without the permanent title, eventually losing the job to an outside hire after a search that stretched well past a year.
A mixed scorecard
By the production numbers, his interim tenure delivered.
Lucid nearly doubled annual output to 17,840 vehicles in 2025 from 9,029 a year earlier, expanded its European footprint, and signed the Uber robotaxi partnership that has become central to its strategy.
In the first quarter of 2026, the company delivered just 3,093 vehicles, down 42% from a year earlier, after a 29-day halt to Gravity deliveries tied to a supplier defect.
The quarter’s net loss topped $1 billion, and the company suspended its full-year delivery guidance.
He also imposed cost discipline, ordering a 12% cut to the US salaried workforce in February that the company said would save roughly $500 million over three years.
At the time, Winterhoff told CNBC the reduction was “nothing that will continue in the future” — a line the new 15% cut under the new CEO directly contradicts.
The same stretch exposed deep problems.
He inherited and escalated a software crisis after the Gravity SUV’s troubled launch, telling reporters in January that he had “basically replaced the whole software leadership team.”
In November he ousted chief engineer Eric Bach after what a source described as years of misattributed production delays— a move that drew a wrongful-termination lawsuit the company called “absurd.”
The optimism that did not hold
Winterhoff was often the public face of Lucid‘s case for itself, and several of those claims have aged poorly.
He told Automotive News in mid-2025 that customer reaction to the Gravity was “phenomenal,” adding that in 25 years in the industry he had never seen such positive feedback.
He pointed repeatedly to disaffected Tesla owners as a demand engine, telling Yahoo Finance that buyers leaving Tesla“always were the source of our sales.”
In a December interview with Bloomberg, he framed the mounting losses as a phase, saying Lucid was “not in a money-making situation right now.”
His optimism extended to Europe even as the timeline slipped beneath him.
At the Financial Times Future of the Car summit in London in mid-May, Winterhoff told EV that the company’s European expansion remained on track, insisting a push from four to as many as 12 markets this year was “still the plan.”
Within hours, European President Lawrence Hamilton pushed the UK launch to early 2028, its third delay, and EV later reported exclusively that Spain and Austria had slipped to 2027.
Legal and financial overhang
Winterhoff leaves with unresolved legal exposure attached to his name.
A federal securities class action filed in late May names him and CFO Taoufiq Boussaid as co-defendants, alleging the company concealed that supplier defect while touting improved manufacturing; the lead-plaintiff deadline is July 28.
The backdrop is bleak.
Lucid posted a net loss of about $2.7 billion for 2025, its shares have fallen to record lows near $5 — a decline of more than 99% from the 2021 peak — and its market value has slipped to roughly $2 billion, less than a third of what Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has invested.
A reorganisation still in motion
Winterhoff’s removal fits a pattern set since Napoli arrived with a mandate to streamline the company.
The first major departure under the new chief executive was Senior Vice President of Engineering and Software Emad Dlala, who left after nearly 11 years, and EV has since reported a steady drip of director-level and below exits.
Hiring had collapsed alongside the cuts, with open roles down about 76% from a year earlier as the company pared back to conserve cash.
In confirming Dlala’s exit, Lucid said it was “transforming its organization” and would “communicate further actions soon” — wording that now reads as a warning of the cuts and the COO’s removal that followed.
