Lucid Motors has lost another senior executive ahead of the midsize Cosmos launch, with Zach Walker departing as Senior Director of Product Management and Advanced Product Creation to join General Motors.
Walker announced the move on LinkedIn on Wednesday, ending a six-year, nine-month tenure at the Saudi-backed EV maker to join GM as Director of Global EV Architecture.
“I am extremely excited to announce that I will be joining General Motors as Director of Global EV Architecture,” Walker wrote on LinkedIn.
“I am so thankful for my time at Lucid Motors and for all the amazing friends I made along the way. I’m also excited for the rest of the world to get to see Cosmos and Earth,” he added.
Production of the Cosmos model is planned to begin in Saudi Arabia by the year end.
Walker’s new role is based in Warren, Michigan, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The departure is the latest in a string of exits at the EV maker that has now spanned more than two years.
Based on EV‘s research, Lucid has lost at least 14 C-suite officers, senior vice presidents, and vice presidents in under three years.
Walker’s Lucid Career
Walker joined Lucid in January 2015 as a Mechanical Design Engineer working on chassis systems, when the company was still operating under its original Atieva name.
He left in early 2018 to join Chinese-backed startup BYTON as Lead, Chassis Mechanical, before returning to Lucid in August 2019 as Engineering Manager for Chassis Mechanical.
Walker was promoted to Senior Manager of the Gravity Program Engineering Lead in December 2021, then to Director of Engineering and Chief Engineer for the Gravity SUV in May 2023, the role he held through the SUV’s launch.
In July 2024, he was promoted to Director of Engineering and Chief Engineer for the Midsize Program — the internal name for the Cosmos platform — overseeing the engineering of the volume model the company is positioning as its path to profitability.
Walker became Senior Director of Product Management and Advanced Product Creation in June 2025, holding the role for ten months before announcing his exit on Wednesday.
Cosmos Unveiling Approaches
The departure lands as Lucid prepares to unveil its midsize Cosmos crossover later this year, with production scheduled to begin at the company’s Saudi Arabia plant by the end of 2026.
Walker referenced the upcoming launch in his LinkedIn farewell, naming both Cosmos and Earth — the second midsize model in Lucid‘s pipeline.
The Cosmos is the first vehicle to roll off the AMP-2 plant in King Abdullah Economic City, with the Saudi facility positioned as a key production base under the Public Investment Fund’s investment in Lucid.
Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff told Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu in March that the Cosmos is “very much up there on par with how the Air and the Gravity perform.”
“The big game changer is our midsize platform, which is scheduled to SOP the first model by the end of the year, and we have big plans for that,” Winterhoff said in the post-investor day interview, referring to start of production.
“We also discussed how we are enabling ourselves to get the same Lucid DNA into a midsize at a much lower cost,” he added.
The midsize platform is central to Lucid‘s long-term volume targets, with internal plans previously pointing to annual sales of 150,000 to 500,000 units across future midsize models.
Latest Departures
Walker is the second senior departure Lucid has seen this year.
Claudia Gast, the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, left in February 2026 after joining the company in December 2022.
Several members of the software team were let go late last year following issues with the Gravity model.
CEO Transition
The exits in early 2026 came against the backdrop of leadership changes at the top of the company.
Lucid named Silvio Napoli as permanent chief executive officer earlier this month, ending a 14-month search that had begun when Peter Rawlinson left the CEO role in February 2025.
Napoli, who most recently served as Executive Chairman and CEO of Schindler Group, joined Lucid‘s board of directors and is relocating from Switzerland to the United States.
Winterhoff, who had served as interim CEO since February 2025, transitioned into the role of Chief Operating Officer once Napoli took over.
The Napoli appointment also came alongside a $1.05 billion capital raise that included a $300 million public offering, an additional $200 million Uber investment, and a $550 million convertible preferred stock investment from Ayar Third Investment Company, an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
GM’s EV Architecture Push
Walker’s hire by General Motors signals continued investment by the Detroit automaker in its EV architecture strategy, even as the broader US EV market has been weakened by the September 30, 2025 expiration of the federal $7,500 EV tax credit.
General Motors reported on Tuesday that adjusted earnings per share rose to $3.70 in the first quarter, well above analyst estimates of $2.62, with the company raising full-year 2026 adjusted EBIT guidance to between $13.5 billion and $15.5 billion.
The automaker holds the second-largest US EV sales position behind Tesla, with March US EV market share at roughly 13%.
The company sold 25,851 EVs in the first quarter, down 19% from the same period in 2025, with Cadillac EV sales rising 20% year-over-year on roughly 9,500 deliveries.
