Lucid‘s sweeping restructuring is the most serious in the company’s history, and Chief Executive Silvio Napoli has told staff the business is being pared back to survive until its next model arrives.
According to a person inside the company who spoke to CleanTechnica, Napoli has made clear that the company’s earlier approach of building manufacturing capacity ahead of demand is finished, the source said.
Additionally, the CEO — who took over as chief executive on June 1 — said that everything is being “recalibrated to survive until Cosmos launches.”
The Cosmos SUV is planned to start production at the Saudi Arabian plant by the year’s end.
Staff were told to expect a smaller, more focused Lucid for at least the next year.
Matching the Record
The internal characterization aligns closely with the moves Lucid has made in public over the past two months.
The company cut about 18% of its US workforce in late June, its second mass layoff of the year after a 12% reduction in February.
As exclusively reported by EV, the company is weighing reductions of up to 40% of its European staff by September.
The company eliminated a production shift at its Casa Grande, Arizona plant and, at its first-quarter results, suspended its 2026 production guidance of 25,000 to 27,000 vehicles pending a strategic review by the incoming chief executive.
The leadership itself has turned over almost entirely.
Napoli’s arrival was followed within weeks by the departure of engineering and software chief Emad Dlala, the exit of former interim chief executive Marc Winterhoff as the chief operating officer role was cut, and a July overhaul that replaced most of the remaining senior team, including the chief financial officer.
That record gives weight to the source’s framing, describing a company deliberately shrinking its ambitions rather than one merely trimming costs at the margins.
Europe Bears the Brunt
The pullback has fallen hardest on the region Lucid had planned to grow fastest.
The company’s board has decided to slow its expansion into new European markets and will carry out a regional workforce reduction before the end of September, a decision that follows the postponement of planned entries into Spain and Austria to 2027 and a third delay to a United Kingdom launch, now targeted for early 2028.
European sales have stayed minimal throughout, with Lucid registering just a few dozen vehicles a month across its core markets, a demand shortfall that former Chief Financial Officer Taoufiq Boussaid has attributed to the company’s current cars being too large for European buyers.
The Cosmos Bet
At the center of the survival thesis is the Cosmos, the mid-size SUV Lucid is preparing to sell below $50,000.
The company has cast the Air sedan and Gravity SUV as brand-building vehicles rather than volume drivers, positioning the Cosmos as the model meant to reach a mass market.
A public reveal is expected this summer, with low-volume production due to begin late in 2026 and a European arrival in 2027, built at a second plant in Saudi Arabia.
Framing the entire restructuring around a single unreleased vehicle underscores how much rests on that launch. Should the Cosmos slip or arrive to soft demand, the runway the cuts are meant to preserve would shorten accordingly.
Selling Down What It Has
The near-term recalibration is visible in how Lucid is clearing existing stock.
The company is still selling 2026 model year Gravity SUVs in July, more than three months after launching the 2027 version, and has stacked incentives to move them, including zero-percent financing for 72 months and a $10,000 company credit that the newer model year does not qualify for.
That discounting extends a pattern that began last autumn and widened through the spring to as much as $12,500 in combined lease incentives, the practical face of a company prioritizing cash and inventory discipline over growth.
What allows Lucid to run a survival strategy at all is its ownership.
The company lost $2.7 billion in 2025 and remains majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the backer that has repeatedly funded its losses.
