Lucid expects to deliver more vehicles in the fourth quarter than the 3,806 it delivered in the third, Chief Financial Officer Alexander De Bock said, the EV maker’s first indication of volumes since it withdrew its 2026 targets earlier this year.
“We also expect to increase our deliveries going from Q3 to Q4,” De Bock told analysts on Monday’s third-quarter earnings call, in response to a question from Bank of America.
He tied the outlook to the wider market. “Going into the fourth quarter, we see an improving BEV market,” he said in his prepared remarks. “And as a result, we expect our H2 deliveries to be sequentially above H1.”
Chief Executive Officer Silvio Napoli made the same half-year comparison later in the call. “Our direction and expectation is H2 stronger than H1,” he said.
Neither executive gave a number. Lucid has not issued production or delivery guidance since Napoli declined to set a 2026 target in August, and it has said formal guidance for 2027 will come with its year-end results.
What the Outlook Implies
The two statements set different bars. Lucid delivered 7,046 vehicles in the first half, so second-half deliveries would exceed that with as few as 3,241 in the fourth quarter.
De Bock’s quarter-on-quarter statement is the more demanding one. It requires at least 3,807 deliveries and would take the full-year total above 14,658.
That would still leave 2026 below last year. Lucid delivered 15,841 vehicles in 2025, up 55% from 2024, and would need 4,989 in the fourth quarter to match it, a 31% increase from the third.
The fourth quarter of 2025 was the company’s best, at 5,345 deliveries. Matching that would take a 40% increase from the third quarter.
The Numbers So Far
Lucid delivered 3,109 vehicles in the first quarter of 2025, 3,309 in the second, 4,078 in the third and 5,345 in the fourth, according to its quarterly reports.
This year it delivered 3,093 in the first quarter, 3,953 in the second and 3,806 in the third. That is 10,852 in nine months, 3.4% more than in the same period of 2025.
The quarterly pattern has been uneven. Deliveries fell 0.5% from a year earlier in the first quarter, rose 19.5% in the second and fell 6.7% in the third, when they also slipped 3.7% from the second quarter.
Production has moved the other way. Lucid built 8,412 vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2025, 5,500 in the first quarter of this year and 4,774 in the second, before cutting output to 2,954 in the third after eliminating a shift at its Arizona plant.
The company said in its presentation that fourth-quarter production would again be below deliveries, as it sells vehicles from stock.
A Weaker Market Than Expected
De Bock said the U.S. battery-electric market “turned out to be weaker than was expected in August,” with volumes down 13% from the second quarter. Lucid’s deliveries fell 4% over the same period.
From a year earlier, the U.S. market fell 41%, according to the S&P Mobility data Lucid cited, “largely due to the ending of the U.S. federal EV credits,” De Bock said.
Napoli said the comparison is about to turn. “Barring exceptional circumstances, finally, it seems that Q4 will be a BEV increase year-on-year,” he said.
Gravity and the Sales Process
Napoli pointed to the Gravity SUV as the main support. “We observed quarter-on-quarter and steadily an increase in deliveries of the Gravity,” he said. “We’re talking about high double-digit increases.”
Lucid does not publish deliveries by model, and outside estimates for the U.S. give a mixed picture. Motor Intelligence put Gravity sales at 831 in September, its highest monthly total, while registration data showed Lucid’s California sales falling 11.6% in the third quarter, with the Gravity down for a second straight quarter.
The older Air sedan had its weakest U.S. quarter since mid-2022, according to Cox Automotive estimates.
Napoli also credited better control of the sales process. He said Lucid now tracks where each vehicle is and can match cars to orders, and that the improvement in sales cadence is visible “month after month.”
Third-quarter deliveries had fallen short of the 4,687 analysts expected, according to a Visible Alpha consensus.
Lucid ended September with $534.7 million of finished vehicles in inventory, down from $623 million three months earlier, its quarterly filing showed.
The company secured a $1.75 billion increase to its loan from an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and cut inventory write-downs by 69% in the quarter.
Lucid shares closed up 9.4% at $3.60 on Monday, before the results, and were trading 6.25% higher at $3.83 as of publication time.
