A new aerial flyover of Lucid‘s Casa Grande factory shows staging lots still full of Gravity SUVs and thinner employee parking, according to drone operator Neil Tracht, who has filmed the Arizona plant from the air since August 2024.
Tracht shot the flyover on July 14 and published it on YouTube on Tuesday, his latest comparison survey of the AMP-1 plant.
There were “probably fewer employee cars in these lots now” after the company’s US workforce cut, he said, “but there’s a lot of cars down in the staging lots.”
The EV maker announced it was cutting its US workforce, as EV first reported late last month.
Lucid confirmed it hours later while announcing it was cancelling the second production shift at the Casa Grande facility.
Production Keeps Outrunning Sales
Lucid built 4,774 vehicles in the second quarter and delivered 3,953.
The figures were a slight gain on the year, but fell short of analyst hopes amid soft demand for the Gravity. Tracht expected that gap to show up as a fuller factory.
He judged them little changed from his June 10 flyover. “I actually expected to see more cars this time,” he said, before settling on “about the same or just maybe slightly less.”
He put the shortfall down to inventory held elsewhere.
Cars are increasingly “being staged closer to the sales and design studios for quicker delivery,” he said. “Those inventory cars have to be staged somewhere,” he added.
Lucid is still clearing 2026 Gravity stock, months after it announced the updated 2027 model in April.
EV reported it now runs zero-percent financing for 72 months on the leftover cars, its most aggressive terms yet. Buyers must take delivery by July 31.
What remains at Casa Grande skews to the Gravity.
The mix is “trending more towards Gravity” and away from the Air sedan, Tracht said. The west lots were full, in his account. But the dirt overflow near the factory’s north end held “a lot fewer cars, or very few cars,” than on June 10. Only “a couple car haulers” were on site.
He also pointed out the semi-knockdown area.
There, Air and Gravity models are partly disassembled, crated and shipped to Lucid‘s Saudi Arabian plant for final assembly, he said.
Fewer Cars in the Employee Lots
The footage also pointed to a shrunken workforce, which Tracht tied directly to Lucid‘s restructuring. The company cut nearly a fifth of its US staff last month, on top of layoffs earlier in the year.
Coolidge told a different story.
At the site 25 minutes away, “there still looks to be like quite a few people working here,” he said. Lucid is understood to test its midsize prototypes there.
The company also runs robotaxi work at Coolidge on Gravity vehicles fitted with Nuro’s autonomous hardware, for a planned Uber service.
The service is due to launch in the San Francisco Bay Area later this year before expanding to Houston in mid 2027.
A Midsize Line at Casa Grande
The clearest sign of progress was a new body-in-white area at AMP-1 for Lucid‘s three midsize models. Tracht described it as “nearly completed on the outside,” fed by a new conveyor to the paint shop.
The tooling matters. Those midsize cars, led by the Cosmos crossover, are Lucid‘s route beyond its low-volume Air and Gravity.
They target the high-volume segment held by the Tesla Model Y and Rivian R2.
Lucid has detailed the sub-$50,000 Cosmos in stages.
The car rides on a new platform and an in-house drive unit called Atlas, with an 800-volt system and a 69-kilowatt-hour battery.
The company claims about 300 miles of range, a 3.5-second run to 60 miles per hour and a recharge of more than 200 miles in 14 minutes. Lucid targets efficiency of about 4.5 miles per kilowatt-hour, a figure it says lets the Cosmos match rivals on range with a smaller battery.
The Cosmos is the first of three midsize models, with the Earth about a year behind and an unnamed adventure variant to follow.
An Uber commitment for at least 35,000 vehicles backs the line. Lucid showed a body-in-white validation car at its March investor day.
The company plans to build the Cosmos first in Saudi Arabia, at a plant designed for about 150,000 vehicles a year, by the year’s end.
The Cosmos Waits in the Wings
Tracht’s flyover also caught two camouflaged Cosmos prototypes at Coolidge.
EV reported that sighting last week.
He said he spotted them only while editing, could not follow them and saw nothing on the test track. Lucid is due to reveal the Cosmos this summer, without a date set.
The company has spent 2026 under heavy financial strain. Leadership has changed, with Silvio Napoli taking over as chief executive on the first day of June.
