One of America’s brightest electric car startups is burning stacks of cash faster than Christopher Nolan’s Joker. What’s going on at Tesla’s worst nightmare?
WORDS OLLIE KEW PHOTOGRAPHY MARK FAGELSON
Imagine it. Your very own clean sheet car company. You confidently seduce investors with talk of offering the business class ambience of a Maybach S-Class, Porsche Taycan-shaming performance and the longest range of any EV on Earth. Why yes, of course you’re going to be making electric cars.
You’ll be headquartered in mid-California, equidistant between San Jose and San Francisco. Nice this time of year. Every time of year. A VR headset’s throw from Meta’s base, if you need to poach some coding magicians. Chassis and design nous will be snared from Europe’s elite. And you’ll perform a brain drain on Tesla, just to wind up Elon. He’ll throw some barbs on X, but it’s not as if anyone will see.
Welcome back to reality, as I furnish you with the raw, unvarnished numbers. In 2023 Lucid Motors aimed to manufacture up to 14,000 Air saloon cars, but only managed to stamp out 8,428. In the first nine months of last year it registered a $2.17 billion (£1.7bn) loss – $630 million (£475m) evaporated between July and September alone. Even Manchester United couldn’t manage that.
In December, Lucid’s chief financial officer resigned. Her unconvincing resignation letter stated, “I am confident in Lucid’s future... I look forward to watching the company continue to grow.” Meanwhile, EV demand in the US cooled from over-caffeinated forecasts, prompting Ford to cancel the extra shift it’d laid on for mass F-150 Lightning production, and forcing Tesla to slash prices as it (successfully) sought to shift over one million vehicles in a calendar year.
Not pretty, is it? Down the financial plughole splutters another plucky would-be Tesla with big dreams, taking with it the fortunes of a few starry eyed shareholders and the livelihoods of thousands. Right? Wrong. Lucid’s amid a monumental land grab. Losses? No. You’re a business mogul. They’re investments.
The bougie EV startup is fervently testing its seven-seat SUV, called Gravity. The first phase of a monstrous factory in Arizona was completed in 2020 – when it reaches its final form it could crank out 400,000 cars a year. Another facility in Saudi Arabia is on its way to churning 155,000 cars per annum. Why there? The kingdom has ordered one hundred thousand Lucids over the next decade in a covenant to
