Lucid Motors‘ chief financial officer Taoufiq Boussaid said on Thursday the company expects to reach 100,000 units of annual production by 2028 and generate positive free cash flow by the end of the decade.
The target would represent a nearly fourfold increase from the company’s 2026 production guidance of 25,000 to 27,000 vehicles, disclosed last month alongside its fourth-quarter results.
“Great products don’t make great companies. We want to become a great company,” Boussaid said. “And the only way to assess what a great company is, is in its ability to generate cash.”
The executive closed the company’s first-ever investor day in New York with a presentation he framed around three pillars: scale, profitability, and capital discipline.
He described the company as entering “a pivotal time” — the end of what he called a cycle of heavy investment and the beginning of a phase focused on harvesting returns.
“It’s not like we were shovelling dollars in an oven,’ Boussaid said. “We were taking every dollar and building a manufacturing system, bringing our technology to maturity. Now we’re entering into a cycle where it’s about time to start harvesting the fruits of this investment.”
Three-Phase Roadmap
Boussaid outlined a trajectory in three stages rather than a single improvement curve.
The first phase covers 2026, which he described as focused on execution — stabilising production, driving down unit costs, and scaling the Gravity SUV.
The company faced internal and external issues in ramping up Gravity production in the first half of 2025.
He said the company expects high double-digit revenue growth this year and pointed to fourth-quarter production of 2,100 units per month as proof of the manufacturing system’s readiness.
Lucid has guided for 25,000 to 27,000 manufactured EVs and $1.2 to $1.4 billion in capital expenditure for the year.
The second phase, covering the midterm period of 2027-2028, centres on the midsize platform as the proof point for scale.
By 2028, Boussaid said the combined output across the Air, Gravity, and midsize platforms would reach 100,000 units per year.
Non-vehicle revenue streams — including ADAS, autonomy, and B2B partnerships — would begin contributing meaningfully to the top line in this period.
The third phase targets the late decade, when Lucid expects to “outperform” through global scale, autonomous solutions, and what Boussaid described as an “advantaged cost base.”
Revenue targets for this period are in the “high teens” of billions, with positive free cash flow.
Cost Reduction
Boussaid said the company is targeting a 50 to 60% reduction in overall unit costs — a figure he described as covering the entire company, not just the midsize platform.
“We will go after every dollar that we can find in the bill of material,” he said. “We have already sourced a significant portion of the midsize bill of material in a way that makes us quite satisfied.”
The levers include bill-of-materials reductions, engineering simplification, the mix effect from higher midsize volumes, and what he called “ad hoc opportunities” across the organisation.
He said the effort is already underway and framed it as an acceleration rather than a new initiative.
For 2026 specifically, the company presented data showing it achieved a roughly 25% reduction in Gravity bill-of-materials costs during 2025 while doubling production throughput, as interim CEO Marc Winterhoff noted earlier in the day.
Boussaid said he plans to constrain both R&D and selling, general, and administrative costs to approximately 10% of revenue each in the midterm, through measures including streamlining engineering operations, standardising software across the vehicle lineup, and deploying AI tools to reduce overhead.
Revenue Diversification
Boussaid emphasised that Lucid‘s growth strategy does not rely on vehicle sales alone. He described software, ADAS, and autonomy revenue as ‘golden revenues’ that the company favours for their low capital intensity and higher margins.
“We are also a technology company, and we want to monetise this aspect of our company,” he said. “We were a little bit too humble about that.”
The company is targeting over $2 billion from robotaxi and B2B partnerships by the late decade. International expansion — across Europe, the Middle East, and the rest of the world — is expected to contribute approximately $5 billion in additional revenue over the same period.
Thirty-five new locations are planned for 2026 across Europe and the Middle East.
The diversification in terms of revenue streams and also the diversification in terms of manufacturing footprint is a significant mitigating factor’ to fluctuations in the global EV market, according to Boussaid.
Capital Expenditure Shift
The CFO said Lucid‘s heavy investment phase is ‘virtually done’ and will be completed by the end of 2026, after which the company will shift to a maintenance capital expenditure model.
“It doesn’t mean that we will be underinvesting. It means simply that we’re moving to a new model where we spend more efficiently, and our CapEx profile is more about maintenance capex rather than adding capacity,” he said.
By the late decade, Boussaid said capital expenditure would fall to single digits as a percentage of revenue, down from the ‘teens’ targeted in the midterm.
Saudi Arabia and PIF
Earlier this week, Boussaid commented on the Public Investment Fund’s commitment to Lucid, saying the EV maker is a priority for the Fund.
PIF has invested more than $9 billion in the company since 2018 and holds a stake of over 50%.
“We are a financial priority for them, but we are also a domestic priority for them,” Boussaid said. “We have a manufacturing facility in the kingdom, which is strategic.”
Last December, the CFO said that producing the upcoming midsize SUV at Lucid‘s Saudi plant — set to begin later this year — will help avoid US tariffs on certain Chinese-made components.
Financing
In January, Bloomberg reported that interim CEO Winterhoff said in Riyadh he saw no reason to expect additional funding from PIF.
According to the report, Lucid was seeking additional international financing without naming any investor.
Hours later, a spokesperson for the company told EV that Bloomberg‘s report of Winterhoff’s remarks “was taken out of context or misinterpreted.”
Late last month, Winterhoff confirmed “there will be another fundraise” when asked whether Lucid would require further capital before turning profitable.
In the earnings call that followed Lucid‘s fourth-quarter results on February 24, Boussaid told investors the company has $4.6 billion in liquidity, which he said is sufficient to fund operations into the first half of 2027.
Workforce and Operating Losses
Lucid reported last month its largest quarterly operating loss on record, despite revenue beating Wall Street expectations with a 123% year-over-year increase.
A week before the results were published, Lucid announced a 12% workforce reduction as part of its push toward profitability.
Boussaid said the layoffs would save $500 million over three years, as the company reallocated resources to ‘support the next stage of execution, operation and discipline and margin progression.’
Stock Performance
As of press time, and shorter after the event ended, Lucid‘s stock was trading 7.4% lower at $9.89.
The stock hit a record low of $8.90 immediately after the earnings release on February 24.
