Shares of the struggling EV maker Lucid Motors jumped more than 15% on Friday, as investors weighed a week of deep job cuts — exclusively reported by EV — against signs that its plans to start production of its third model by year-end remained on track.
The stock closed at $5.92, up 80 cents, on volume more than double its three-month average.
Friday’s advance recovered much of a June slide that had driven the shares to a new all-time low of $4.47.
Even after the rally, Lucid remained down about 44% for the year and roughly 72% over 12 months on weaker than expected demand across all its markets, leadership exodus, and a concerning cash burn rate.
Most prominent among the week’s news was a cut of about 18% of its US workforce, or about 1,500 jobs.
A Relief Rally
Friday’s gain was Lucid‘s sharpest single-day move in months, and the biggest since Silvio Napoli became chief executive on June 1.
A 10.6% gain on April 30 had been the strongest of the recent rebounds.
Volume reached 35.5 million shares on Friday, the heaviest since late April and more than double the three-month average of about 16.9 million.
At Friday’s close, the company was valued at about $2.31 billion, down from a 52-week high of $33.70.
Shares slipped about 1% in after-hours trading.
Lucid is set to release second-quarter production and delivery figures within days and to report full results in early August.
First-quarter deliveries of 3,093 vehicles had badly missed analyst expectations of about 5,237, the company reported in April.
Deliveries of the Gravity were frozen for 29 days by a supplier defect, a halt EV first reported on February 12.
After that April disclosure, the stock fell about 11% over two sessions.
No fresh company news accompanied Friday’s rally, suggesting investors were reassessing the prior week’s developments.
Cost Cuts in Focus
The week’s dominant theme was the scale of the retrenchment.
Lucid cut about 18% of its US workforce, where most of its staff is based, in the deepest of this year’s rounds.
An earlier round in February had trimmed about 12% of US staff and reached Michigan, where a safety specialist was let go months after joining.
Management expects about $158 million in annualized savings from the latest cuts, against roughly $32 million in severance.
Napoli ordered the reductions within weeks of becoming chief executive on June 1.
Alongside the layoffs, Lucid eliminated the chief operating officer role and removed Marc Winterhoff, ending an eight-year association.
Winterhoff had returned to the role only weeks before his exit.
Arizona absorbed the deepest reductions, with a state filing covering 705 positions at the Casa Grande plant.
That round also ended the plant’s second production shift, the first this year to reach the factory floor.
A separate filing is due to detail job cuts in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Talent has churned, with Lucid hiring from Tesla and Detroit while losing engineers to Rivian, according to recruiting data.
Slate has poached senior engineers from Lucid ahead of its own electric-truck launch.
In Michigan, a Lucid spokesperson described the cuts there as “limited to a small number of Michigan-based employees.”
Abroad, the company is weighing a reduction of up to 40% in its European operation.
Signs of Progress
Set against the cuts were signals that Lucid‘s growth plans remained on track.
The company hired a former Ford executive to run its Saudi plant as the Cosmos crossover nears production.
Lucid had days earlier registered the Cosmos design in the European Union, its clearest look yet at the model.
Priced below the Air sedan and Gravity SUV, the Cosmos is Lucid‘s bid for higher volumes.
Cosmos enters low-volume production by the end of 2026, the company has said.
On autonomy, the company named Houston as the second city for a planned robotaxi service with Uber and Nuro.
Under the plan, Uber provides the ride-hailing platform and Nuro the self-driving system.
That service is due to launch first in the San Francisco Bay Area around year-end, with Houston following in mid-2027, the company said.
Uber holds an 11.5% stake in Lucid and has committed to buy at least 35,000 vehicles for the fleet, according to a regulatory filing.
Engineers are building the first validation robotaxis for the partnership, the chief executive has said.
A Company Under Pressure
Lucid lost $2.7 billion in 2025 on revenue of $1.35 billion, with negative free cash flow of $3.8 billion, the company reported.
First-quarter revenue rose about 20% to $282.5 million but missed estimates, and the net loss neared $1 billion.
Output of 5,500 vehicles outpaced deliveries in the quarter, swelling inventory the company is now working down.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which owns more than half the company, has funded it through repeated capital raises, including about $1.05 billion in April.
That April raise drew $550 million from a PIF affiliate, $300 million from a stock sale and $200 million from Uber.
Hiring has slowed sharply, with open roles down about 76% from a year earlier, as recently reported by EV.
Production guidance remains suspended after the company withdrew its 2026 target of 25,000 to 27,000 vehicles, with a revised outlook due alongside the second-quarter results.
Last year, the company bought assets from bankrupt rival Nikola, adding more than 884,000 square feet across a Coolidge plant and a Phoenix site.
In Europe, where it is weighing the deeper cuts, Lucid registered just 35 vehicles in May.
A securities class action filed this year accuses the company of concealing the Gravity defect, naming Winterhoff and the chief financial officer.
Napoli’s restructuring is his first major test since succeeding Winterhoff, who ran the company on an interim basis after founder Peter Rawlinson was ousted from the role in February 2025.
