A model-year 2026 Lucid Gravity Touring — an $82,550 SUV from the company’s remaining unsold inventory — can now be leased for less per month than Rivian‘s $58,000 R2 Performance, on every comparable term the two companies advertise.
The offer applies exclusively to 2026-model-year vehicles in existing stock — available-now units, not new orders — which the company must clear before the 2027 cars, already listed on the same page without the credit that makes the math work, become the only Gravity there is.
The inversion, first flagged on X by user Nick (@TheAppleCore) and confirmed by EV calculations based on both brands’ current offers and payment estimators.
On the advertised offers, the 2026 Gravity Touring starts at $699 a month for 24 months with $5,569 due at signing, with the Grand Touring at $999 and $7,499 down under the same structure.
The offer rivals the $949 per month the R2’s 24-month term carried at its June lease launch and $829 a month with $5,724 due at signing on its 36-month structure, still advertised on Rivian‘s site on Monday.
On matched zero-down, 36-month, 10,000-mile terms before taxes, the Gravity computes to roughly $883 a month for any qualified customer — below the roughly $939 zero-down figure documented for the R2 — and to $800 for returning Lucid owners who claim the brand’s $3,000 loyalty credit, a gap of about $139.
The vehicles sit $23,065 apart including destination. The lease market currently prices them upside down, while the 2026 stock lasts.
How Each Side Built Its Number
Lucid‘s number is bought with subvention.
The advertised Gravity Touring lease assumes the full $10,000 Lucid Credit the company attached to unsold 2026 stock alongside zero-percent financing for 72 months, applied as a capital cost reduction on an $82,550 vehicle.
Stackable on top is the $3,000 loyalty offer for existing owners and a $3,000 trade-in allowance, with delivery required by August 31 and the vehicle picked up within seven days of readiness.
The campaign has escalated in steps through the year, from a $7,500 credit and up to $12,500 in combined lease incentives in the spring to the current structure, after opening the year at $749 a month with $12,500 in stacked incentives.
Rivian‘s number is inflated by lease economics rather than lowered by them.
The R2 carries no purchase incentives — the company’s August programs concentrate on the R1 line, whose July lease increases were just unwound.
The R2’s residual value has also quietly come down.
Estimator quotes pulled Monday in two ZIP codes both show $36,286 on the 36-month, 10,000-mile term, or 62.6% of sticker, where June’s published figure was $38,070 — a roughly $1,800 reduction that flows directly into higher payments.
Term and mileage sensitivity runs the same direction as the estimator returns $843 a month at 12,000 miles on 36 months, and $970 on a 24-month, 12,000-mile quote, all with $3,500 down.
Rivian‘s own fine print carries two internal discrepancies worth noting.
The payment estimator’s terms require lease approval “on or before 8/31/2026.”
And the homepage’s worked example cites an $895 acquisition fee where the estimator itemizes $695 — a $200 gap between the two places Rivian states its own offer.
One number on each side captures the philosophy.
Lucid is writing down roughly $10,000 per vehicle to move 2026 Gravitys.
Rivian is charging nearly 9% implied interest to lease its most affordable product at launch.
What the Inversion Is
The Gravity’s advertised due-at-signing excludes tax, title, license and fees, while a real-world R2 quote with taxes rolled in runs to about $1,003 a month in a Florida ZIP code — a construction that flatters the Lucid by several hundred dollars of tax treatment if quoted side by side without adjustment.
Matched pre-tax, the inversion survives; matched post-tax, both numbers rise together.
The best Lucid number requires being a Lucid customer already.
The $800 figure assumes the loyalty credit, restricted to current owners and lessees of at least 30 days’ standing; the general-public figure is the ~$883.
And the advertised $699 is a doorway price, not the median car. Lucid’s live inventory listing near a Bay Area ZIP code on Monday showed a dozen 2026 Gravitys — eleven Tourings and one Grand Touring — with the cheapest real unit, an available-now Touring in the Sacramento area, priced at $84,650 and quoted at $732 a month.
The rest of the California stock carries options taking stickers to between $96,900 and $104,450, with lease quotes of $921 to $1,038 — above the R2’s advertised figure.
The inversion is genuine at the entry point, where the cheapest physical Gravity still undercuts the R2’s $829 advertised rate by about $97 a month, but a typically optioned Gravity in remaining stock leases above the Rivian, not below it.
And the cars occupy different segments.
The Gravity Touring as configured is a 560-horsepower, 337-mile, 120-cubic-foot luxury SUV on Lucid’s 926-volt architecture, which the company bills as the fastest-charging SUV platform on sale.
The R2 Performance is a 656-horsepower, 330-mile midsize built to a $57,990 price.
A Clearance Artifact With an Expiry Date
The offers page itself shows the inversion is temporary — and quantifies the gap between the Gravity’s clearance price and its real price.
The 2027 Gravity Touring, listed alongside the 2026 cars, carries no Lucid Credit at all, with leasing running from an $81,750 basis with $6,299 due at signing, and its financing rate is 1.99%, whereas the 2026 car’s is zero.
The model-year split traces to April, when Lucid introduced the 2027 Gravity with previously optional equipment made standard and a higher Grand Touring price — $100,750 including destination against the 2026 car’s $96,550 — leaving the outgoing stock to be cleared underneath it.
The loyalty offer’s own terms confirm the boundary, applying only to “a new MY2026 Lucid vehicle.”
The inventory listing deepens the muddle: its footnotes attribute the identical advertised Air lease prices not to the $12,500 Lucid Credit cited on the offers page but to a “Conquest Offer” and an “On-Site Vehicle Bonus” — the Conquest program’s own terms elsewhere on the site expired June 30 — while the Gravity Grand Touring footnote invokes a “Lucid Advantage Credit” and the vehicle cards note prices include “Pro Credits and Air Credits as applicable.”
Five differently named incentive programs across two pages of one website, describing what is functionally a single clearance.
The strategic reading runs through both companies’ product calendars.
Lucid needs 2026 Gravitys gone before the Cosmos launch redefines its volume story, and every quarter of Air-style aging inventory has produced impairments.
The company booked more than $200 million of them against a $1.47 billion inventory balance in the first quarter alone, making the subvention cheaper than the write-down.
Rivian, meanwhile, can price the R2 lease defensively because the product is new and its own offer terms note “limited vehicle availability” — the $829 figure drew buyer backlash precisely because the company declined to subsidize it.
Lucid reports second-quarter results on Tuesday — where the cost of manufacturing this inversion, in margin and inventory terms, will be visible in the numbers.
