"They Built the Wrong Car" – Lucid Cuts 19% of Jobs After EV Sales Disappoint

**Pat** (0:00)
So, Lucid is cutting 18% of their workforce. Why the EV maker is struggling? This is a barren story, barren story on this topic. So, high-end electric vehicle maker Lucid is slashing staff for the second time. This year, as part of its path towards profitability, the company said Monday morning in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the stock was down more than 4% on the news and has fallen more than 50% in 2026, while rivals Rivian and Tesla have also fallen by 20 and 9%, respectively. Lucid's decline has been far steeper. Lucid said it would cut 18% of its workforce, including employees and contractors, for an estimated annual savings of 158 million a year, while the company declined to provide the exact number of affected workers. It reported 9,000 employees globally at the end of 2025, up from 6,800 at the end of 2024 Humberto, your thoughts on the story?

**Humberto** (0:58)
Making cars is hard, especially in mass production. You burn through money, like putting cars together, like nothing ever before. They had a lot of Saudi money in the start. They became an IPO. Everyone was very hot on this. I think I can be fact-checked, but I think they were evaluated over Ford, Pat. These guys were putting out 20,000 cars a year when the whole EV bubble was going on. And their target was 60,000 units, and I think they managed to hit 20,000 units, and they started burning through money.
In simple, I think they released a wrong car at the wrong time. What Americans won is a $60,000-ish SUV where they can put the whole family, and they're offering a super luxury S-class competitor that is 100,000. So I don't know. It was a very hot product.
And I think bad decisions, they have repercussions. That's the story here.

**Pat** (1:56)
They had a $1.35 billion revenue, so it's not like this was a small little thing.

**Humberto** (2:01)
It was huge.

**Pat** (2:02)
Can you pull up the cars to see what they look like? I actually want to know what it looks like.
They're nice looking cars, but they did have some mixed reviews. You know what this reminds me of?

**SPEAKER_3** (2:10)
It reminds me of Fisker Karma.

**Pat** (2:12)
You guys remember the Karma? He owned a Fisker. The first, the Karma was a beautiful car.

**Humberto** (2:17)
Yeah, the second one was very nice.

**Tom** (2:18)
Fisker Karma, they sold the assets to General Motors at the garage sale. And then Fisker...

**Pat** (2:23)
Tom was an investor in Fisker. Tom was one of the...

**Tom** (2:26)
Fisker 2.0.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:27)
The second, yeah, the second round.

**Tom** (2:29)
You know, they're both beautiful cars.

**Pat** (2:30)
You can buy an original Fisker for like $25K right now. But you don't have anywhere to get the parts.

**Tom** (2:34)
There's no servicing, and they use unique parts.

**Pat** (2:36)
It was a beautiful, beautiful car when it first came out.

**Humberto** (2:39)
And that's a big deal, Pat, if you think about the economics of this.
Since they're so software heavy, and the parts are very complicated, and maintenance is very complicated, it's not like a 1985 Ford F-150 that you can make parts in your garage. Like, you need constant service from these EV companies to make the car run. Batteries, they don't last forever. You need to replace them every certain amount of charges. You know what I mean?

**Tom** (3:07)
So, Lucid is facing the modern era of EVs.
Subsidies are expiring, so you have to actually pay for the car based on some sort of cost, not on a government subsidy. And thanks to President Trump, states that were forcing EV mandates are reeling those back. And by the way, in one of, I think, example number 61 of where Gavin Newsom has never used a spreadsheet, when he mandates everybody uses EVs and forgets to look at what is the total power output possibility over a 10-year period of the California electric grid and find out that one doesn't equal the other. And he says, I don't know what the problem is. We do deficits all the time in government. Yeah, well, you can't print electricity. And so Lucid finds itself with an aging and early entrant. Lucid finds itself with consumers not getting the discounts, Pat. And Lucid finds itself moving forward. So it's doing what everybody else did.
Hey, they went back to PIF, Saudi PIF. You know what part of Lucid, Saudi owns now with additionally the 550 million that they in February of 2026?
57%, 57% of the company. It's a Saudi electric car company that happens to be public on the US. Stock Exchange, and they're going, wait for it, Pat, electric robo-taxis, because they could do volume and deploy them all around the world. And they're going to delay the coming out of the mid-size. So guess what? Market factors are causing them to pivot. Will they be able to pivot to robo-taxis and their mid-size? Will Saudi Arabia be able to hold that 57% and see what goes on? Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode of EVs in Transition.