Lucid: $13 Billion of Accumulated Losses, Missed Targets, and a Vanishing Market Cap

Shares of Lucid Motors soared 19% in their Nasdaq debut in July 2021 after completing a merger with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Churchill Capital Corp IV, backed by Wall Street dealmaker Michael Klein and his partners.

Under the leadership of former Tesla engineer Peter Rawlinson, Lucid was once regarded as one of the most serious challengers to rival Elon Musk’s Tesla.

However, since reaching an all-time high of $64.86 in November 2021, Lucid’s shares have plunged nearly 97%, following multiple missed sales targets and a wave of executive departures that culminated in Rawlinson being let go as CEO last February.

Between October 2023 and May 2025, a total of twelve top executives left the carmaker.

The latest departure was in May when the Investor Relations head Maynard Um announced his exit after three years in the role.

Below is a list of known senior executive departures from Lucid since late 2023.

In May 2021, Lucid said it estimated to deliver 20,000 vehicles in 2022, 49,000 in 2023, 90,000 in 2024, and 135,000 in 2025.

Actual results have come in far below those targets. The company delivered 4,369 vehicles in 2022, 6,001 in 2023, and 10,241 in 2024.

In early 2022, Lucid claimed to have secured more than 25,000 customer reservations, equating to potential sales in excess of $2.4 billion.

Yet between January 2022 and December 2024, the company delivered just 20,611 vehicles — suggesting that a significant portion of those reservations were later withdrawn.

While the precise reasons for the cancellations remain unclear, similar patterns across the EV startup landscape point to factors such as delayed production timelines, shifting delivery estimates, and growing consumer uncertainty over the long-term viability of newer brands.

Fisker Inc., the electric vehicle startup founded by designer Henrik Fisker, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a year ago, leaving thousands of owners without access to servicing, maintenance, or over-the-air software updates.

Other EV makers such as Canoo, Nikola, and Lordstown Motors also filed for bankruptcy after struggling to convert early interest into sustained demand and secure the funding necessary to survive in an increasingly competitive market.

While Lucid initially struggled with production ramp-up, the problem quickly shifted to a lack of demand. The Air sedan — first unveiled in December 2016 — began customer deliveries in October 2021. The production guidance for 2022 was 20,000 units.

However, Lucid revised its production guidance twice, citing supply chain and logistics challenges. It first cut its 2022 production forecast from 20,000 to 12,000–14,000 vehicles in February, triggering a 14% drop in its share price.

In August, it further slashed the guidance to 6,000–7,000 vehicles, attributing delays to shortages in commodity components such as glass and carpet, rather than semiconductor chips.

In the first quarter of 2022, the company’s average selling price stood at $160,000.

As lower-priced variants became available, ASPs declined sharply. The Air Pure, Lucid’s entry-level trim, was introduced in November 2022, with initial deliveries on the final day of that year.

The brand’s average selling price fell from $211,000 in Q4 2021 to $133,000 a year later, and continued to slide — dropping from $106,000 in Q1 2023 to just $76,000 in Q1 2025.

The company slashed pricing repeatedly as demand was weaker than expected.

In February 2024, Lucid cut the starting price of its rear-wheel-drive Air Pure to $71,400 including destination, down from $78,900 in October and $83,900 in August.

Financially, the company remains deeply in the red.

As of March 2025, Lucid reported an accumulated deficit of $13.3 billion, according to its most recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Its market capitalization, based on Friday’s closing price of $2.12, stands at $6.47 billion — less than half its cumulative losses.

The share price is now only 9% above the all time low reached last November, with shareholders concerned with the production ramp-up of the second model, Gravity.

The company has undergone multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, mirroring other EV makers such as Rivian, Tesla but also legacy carmakers.

In May 2024, the company cut 6% of its workforce — around 400 positions — following a larger round in March 2023 that eliminated 1,300 jobs, or roughly 18% of staff.

However, the company has been recently increasing headcount in key areas, listing over 740 open positions as it gears up for full-scale production in Saudi Arabia. Lucid is also developing a new mid-size EV platform to support three upcoming models.

Expansion into Europe has failed to gain traction.

The company entered Germany in May 2022, followed by retail locations in Switzerland and the Netherlands, and a market launch in Norway in early 2023.

Yet sales have remained sluggish. Lucid sold just 28 vehicles across its four European markets last month.

Meanwhile, the role of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has grown steadily.

In September 2018, PIF committed $1 billion to Lucid to help finance the development of the Air sedan, construction of the Casa Grande factory in Arizona, and the launch of retail operations in North America.

In August 2024, Lucid announced PIF would inject up to $1.5 billion in fresh capital.

Two months later, in October, the company warned of a larger-than-expected third-quarter loss and launched a public offering of more than 262 million shares — triggering a 12% drop in after-hours trading.

Year to date, Lucid shares are down 29.8%.

Although the company has started deliveries in the U.S. of Gravity’s higher-end trim, production issues remain in place, as confirmed by the interim CEO Marc Winterhoff this week.

“In the meantime, Lucid is ramping up production of the Gravity, which has gone more slowly than desired,” he said, citing industry-wide tariff pressures and the prioritization of “perfect quality” in delivering the model.