Lucid Motors interim Chief Executive Officer Marc Winterhoff declined to confirm whether the company will meet its 18,000-unit production target for 2025, despite saying the EV maker is “on a good track.”
In an interview with Bloomberg on early Wednesday, Winterhoff was asked if the EV maker would produce 18,000 EVs this year.
“Well, I cannot say that right now, so we have to wait until we show the earnings at the end of the year,” the interim CEO stated, referring to the first days of January when Lucid is planned to report its Q4 2025 production and delivery figures.
“We are on a good track right now,” Winterhoff noted.
The interim CEO acknowledged the company has repeatedly lowered its guidance this year citing supply chain issues.
“Earlier in the year, we guided between 18 and 20, and then recently we lowered a little bit because of some supply chain moves that we had,” Winterhoff said. “We’re doing everything we can in order to get there.”
Repeated Target Cuts
Lucid started 2025 aiming to produce “approximately 20,000” units.
In early August, the company reduced the target to a range of 18,000 to 20,000 units.
By early November, the California-based manufacturer said it now expects to produce 18,000 vehicles.
The latest cut came less than two months after Winterhoff said the company was internally aiming higher.
“Internally, we’re shooting for 20,000 and the team is giving everything to make that happen,” the CEO stated in September.
Over the last years — still under the leadership of former CEO Peter Rawlinson — Lucid trimmed its annual production or sales targets several times after starting each year with ambitious estimates.
Supply Chain Headwinds
Asked whether rising costs for metals and materials are making vehicles more expensive to produce, Winterhoff confirmed the pressures.
“Definitely does,” he said. “And it’s also, I mean, on top of the things that are maybe driven by, you know, more macro and political things, and you talked about aluminum, we also, the US industry was also hit by a fire actually by one of the big suppliers, which you had to navigate around. So it definitely is.”
Uncertain supplies of rare earths have been affecting the EV industry over the last months. A fire at one of Lucid‘s aluminum suppliers two months ago has also disrupted production.
Dual Production Strategy
Winterhoff said Lucid‘s second manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia will provide flexibility to navigate future supply chain disruptions.
“That’s where we have a little bit of a benefit right now, because we have two production sites. We have one in the United States. Right now, all of our vehicles are being built in the United States,” he said.
“But coming end of next year, our next platform will also be built in Saudi Arabia, which we agreed with the Saudi Arabian government and also with our backers there already long, long time ago. So we will have different ways of navigating.”
Speaking at a UBS conference last week, Lucid’s CFO Taoufiq Boussaid reminded that the units produced at the Saudi plant won’t face the tariffs on Chinese-imported parts as faced with the US-manufactured vehicles.
Fourth-Quarter Challenge
Lucid built 3,891 vehicles in the third quarter at its Casa Grande, Arizona, plant, along with more than 1,000 partially assembled units shipped to its Saudi Arabia facility for final assembly.
Total production for the first nine months of 2025 reached 9,966 completed vehicles, excluding those still in transit for final assembly, which will be counted in fourth-quarter figures.
Based on the year-to-date total, Lucid needs to build 8,034 vehicles in the fourth quarter to reach its 18,000-unit target — more than doubling the third-quarter pace.
Boussaid said last week that the fourth quarter will be “primarily the Gravity quarter,” with the SUV representing the majority of production and sales in the record quarter.
