Lucid shares were halted three times for volatility on Tuesday as they crashed to a record low, wiping out most of what remained of the EV maker’s market value.
The sell-off followed an EV exclusive reporting that restructuring adviser AlixPartners had been asked to weigh options for the company that included taking it private or filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Trading in the stock was first paused at about 13:21 New York time, after the shares had tumbled from a $5.51 open to as low as $3.75, a drop of about 31.9% that triggered an automatic volatility halt.
When trading resumed, the slide only deepened, and the stock was halted a second time about seven minutes later, at 13:28, having fallen to $2.98, down about 45.9% on the session.
A third halt came at 13:38 Eastern time when the stock was falling 49.18%. When the trading resumed, the decline continued to over 51%, or $2.37.
As of publication time, Lucid had not issued any statement addressing EV‘s report or the account its sources gave of the strategic options under review, and neither the company nor AlixPartners has commented publicly on the review.
Both had also declined to comment when the adviser’s engagement was first reported last week.
A Deepening Rout
The halt did little to steady the stock once it reopened.
By the time of the second halt, Lucid shares were down about 45.9% on the session at $2.98, a level that marked a record low for the company and left it worth a fraction of its peak valuation.
The move cut the company’s market capitalization to roughly $1.25 billion, down from about $2.3 billion before the report, erasing more than a billion dollars of value in a single session.
Volume ran far above normal, with about 49.2 million shares changing hands by the second halt against a three-month daily average near 17.7 million, as the exclusive rippled through the market.
The stock had opened the day at $5.51, unchanged from Monday’s close, before the report drove one of the steepest single-day declines in its history as a public company.
The scale of the fall, from a company that started the session valued above $2 billion, ranks among the sharpest single-day losses for a major listed automaker this year, and came without any statement from the company to counter the report.
What Triggered the Fall
EV‘s report, published earlier on Tuesday, covered the reported strategic review under way at the company.
Two people familiar with the matter told EV that AlixPartners had been asked to deliver findings to Lucid‘s board before its next meeting, and that the options under review included a take-private or a Chapter 11 filing.
One person close to the matter stressed that neither is a decision the board has taken, and that the adviser’s early recommendations focused on operational fixes, concentrating on the Gravity SUV, temporarily holding back the Air and pausing European expansion.
A Collapse EV Had Been Tracking
Tuesday’s rout capped a series of exclusives through which EV had documented the company’s deterioration months before it reached the tape.
EV first reported that the Gravity SUV had been dogged by safety and quality problems since small-scale production began in late 2024, the same issues the adviser now cites in urging the board to fix product execution before anything else.
Those problems later surfaced publicly in a physical recall of every Gravity built before mid-February, covering 4,476 vehicles over improperly welded seat-belt anchors, a defect that fed a shareholder lawsuit alleging the company concealed it.
EV has also broke the board’s decision to slow European expansion and cut regional staff by the end of September, a retreat AlixPartners’ findings have since widened into a broader instruction to pause market entries.
Last month, EV was first to report the cut to the US workforce and the weighing of reductions of up to 40% in Europe.
A Long Decline
Tuesday’s crash accelerated a collapse that has run for years.
Even before the session, Lucid shares had fallen about 76% over the previous year and roughly 48% since the start of 2026, and the stock was already trading far below its debut levels.
The company went public in July 2021 by merging with Churchill Capital Corp IV, a blank-check vehicle run by investment banker Michael Klein, in a deal that valued it near $24 billion and briefly made the pre-revenue automaker worth about as much as Ford.
The shares reached a high of $57.75 in November 2021, a peak the stock now sits more than 90% below, with heavy share issuance since driving the company’s market value down more than 99% from that level.
At $2.98, the stock trades below any close in its history as a listed company, a milestone reached on the day its own restructuring adviser’s options became public.
The Financial Backdrop
The market reaction reflects how little cushion the company has against the harsher scenarios now being weighed.
Lucid lost about $2.7 billion in 2025 and has continued to burn roughly $1 billion a quarter, building more vehicles than it sells, with 4,774 produced against 3,953 delivered in the second quarter.
The company ended 2025 with $997.8 million in cash and about $4.6 billion in total liquidity, and on July 6 it drew $800 million from a term loan provided by an affiliate of its Saudi backer, its second such draw this year.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund holds a majority of the company and has committed more than $9 billion since 2018, a stake now worth far less than the fund has put in.
The scale of that gap has fed the take-private speculation that has trailed the company for months, though previous management said last year it was unaware of any such plan by the fund.
What’s Next?
Lucid is due to report first-half results on August 4, becoming the clearest near-term read on the restructuring and the cash runway after the April equity raise.
Napoli, who took over on June 1, has already cut about 18% of the US workforce, suspended the company’s 2026 production guidance and replaced most of his senior team as part of the deepest overhaul in the company’s history.
August 4 will mark Napoli’s first earnings call as Lucid‘s chief.
Wall Street had already turned cautious on the stock before Tuesday, with several analysts questioning how long the company could sustain its per-vehicle losses, and the crash is likely to harden those doubts ahead of the August update.
