Lucid’s Gravity SUV arrives with excessive expectations, and large dangers | USAEMALL.com

Lucid Motors gets rave reviews from critics. But it’s sorely lacking customers.

That’s a problem the company can’t afford.

The Arizona-based EV maker has top-shelf tech, deep-pocketed backers, and highly praised cars. However, it has struggled to meet production targets, and has been unable to steal the spotlight away from established luxury brands with century-old pedigrees.

Lucid is ramping up production of its high-end, three-row, Gravity SUV, though it has sold only a few hundred units so far in 2025. The Gravity’s production ramp has faced a slew of challenges, primarily supply chain shortages.

Yet the company already has plans for another vehicle aimed more at the middle of the market, where it would compete with the top-selling Tesla Model Y SUV. And it’s investing in self-driving cars for consumers while working on a robotaxi fleet with Uber and self-driving tech maker Nuro.

In the process, Lucid is burning through a lot of money. The company’s third-quarter results were worse than Wall Street expected, with a net loss of close to $1 billion.

“Their gross profit has been getting kind of worse,” said Tom Narayan, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “A lot of people are doing the math. How long can the company keep losing cash?”

Adding to its challenges is a tougher environment for all EV manufacturers. Demand has fallen short of expectations, and many automakers are pulling back. EVs have lost key support from the federal government, including a $7,500 tax credit, funding for charging, and restrictions on state level programs that incentivize automakers to produce zero-emission vehicles.

A ‘fantastic car’

Lucid’s first vehicle, a sedan call the Air, is the most popular vehicle in its segment, according to Cox Automotive. Through the third quarter, it was the third best-selling full-size luxury sedan, and the top selling electric one, according to the company. The Air is frequently a “critic’s pick.” No other EV can touch the 512-mile range of the Air Grand Touring, one of its top trim levels.

Last year, Lucid delivered 10,241 vehicles, the majority of which were Air sedans, a 71% increase from 2023. U.S. EV leader Tesla delivered 1.8 million.

Unfortunately, sedans have consistently compared to SUVs, crossovers, and pickups–which now all but dominate the roads. Of the top 10 best-selling models in the U.S., seven are from those three segments, according to Edmunds.

“It was a fantastic car,” said Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research for Telemetry. “It still is a fantastic car. But it came to market at kind of the wrong time.”

In 2023, Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling vehicle in the world, according to JATO Dynamics. It sold more than 265,000 units in the U.S. through the third quarter of 2024, according to Cox Automotive, about 100,000 more than the Model 3 sedan. Among EVs, the Model 3 is unusually popular for a sedan. Behind the two Tesla Models, the three vehicles that round out the top five are crossovers — Chevrolet Equinox, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Hyundai Ioniq5.

The Model S, the Air’s closest Tesla competitor in terms of size, performance, and price, sold just over 4,500 units in the same period.

The highest volume EVs, such as the Model Y, are also less expensive than the Air, which starts just above $70,000 and runs up to about a quarter of a million dollars. The Model 3 is nearly half that. The average EV transaction price in November was just above $59,000, according to Cox Automotive.

“There’s just not enough of a market for those premium electric sedans right now,” Abuelsamid said.

Lucid sold slightly more than 300 Gravity SUVs in the US through the third quarter of 2025, according to Cox Automotive. Like the Air, the Gravity has a high price tag. Nevertheless, the company has said the Gravity stands to attract six times as many customers as the Air.

“We’ll see if that’s the case,” said Narayan. “The latest numbers I’ve seen show it kind of equalizing the sales of sedans.”

Lucid interim CEO Mark Winterhoff told CNBC in an interview that the company has seen “a very good uptick in demand when it comes to the Gravity as compared to the Air.” He added that most customers are configuring the car in ways that run the price up above $100,000.

Production trouble

Demand might be strong, but Lucid also has to get the vehicle into customers’ hands. Gravity’s launch earlier in 2025 was beset by shortages of key materials like magnets, aluminum, and chips, Winterhoff said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

“We haven’t been able to produce as many as we wanted up until this point,” Winterhoff told CNBC. “We’re very confident right now that we solved those problems.”

Deliveries have risen for seven straight quarters, culminating in a 47% percent jump over the third quarter of 2024. Lucid has added a second shift to the final assembly section of its factory to meet demand.

The company said demand has been resilient despite worries the EV market is stalling after the federal EV incentive ended on Sept. 30.

“In October, our delivery numbers went up,” Winterhoff said. “Whereas in many other pure EV players or even EVs for incumbent players that also have [internal combustion] vehicles, the deliveries dropped down drastically.”

Still, analysts say it’s a tougher time to make EVs than it was when Tesla was ramping up the Model 3 and Model Y.

“They were the only game in town,” Narayan said. “So there wasn’t competition there. They also benefited from battery prices falling significantly. And they got a lot of government support. Today we’re in a very different world.” 

If gross profit does keep getting worse, the company will eventually have to return to investors, Narayan said. Lucid is currently about 55% owned by the Saudi Public Investment fund, according to FactSet.

In the third quarter, Lucid and the PIF agreed to increase a delayed draw term loan credit facility from $750 million to roughly $2 billion. A DDTL is a loan the company can draw on over time, rather than all at once. That brings its total liquidity to $5.5 billion. The company has said it has enough to get through the first half of 2027.

“So far, the Saudis have put many billions of dollars into Lucid, and they’ve been very patient through Lucid’s struggles as they try to ramp up production and sales,” said Abuelsamid. “It’s unclear how long they will continue to be patient.”

The company also received a $300 million investment from Uber in September to develop a platform for robotaxis with a third partner, autonomous driving tech developer Nuro. On top of that, Uber plans to buy 20,000 Gravity vehicles for the self-driving fleet.

Separately, Lucid has a partnership with Nvidia to develop what it calls the “the first true eyes-off, hands-off, and mind-off (L4) consumer owned autonomous vehicle.” L4 means Level 4, nearly the highest level of autonomy in the current system devised by the Society for Automotive Engineers.

“You need to invest first and then you reap the benefits later on,” Winterhoff said. “And therefore we have to do a lot of things in parallel.”

Smaller SUV on the way

Despite Gravity’s production challenges, the company is already at work on its next vehicle — a mid-size crossover priced closer to the industry average of about $50,000.

This could boost volumes, but deepen losses.

“If gross profit is negative at a vehicle transacting around $100,000 or more on average, what Lucid’s Air and Gravity are currently going for, what will it look like when the company is selling a vehicle that is closer to half of that?” Narayan said.

“One answer could be, well, it’s a much bigger scale, so you have better operating leverage,” Narayan said. The argument, he said, is that Lucid’s technology enables it to squeeze a lot more range out of a battery than competitors.

“Our vehicles are way more efficient by 30% to 40% than the competition, which means smaller battery use smaller battery to achieve the same range,” said Emad Dlala, senior vice president of engineering and digital at Lucid. “That means a lower [bill of materials] cost. That means better margins.”

Dlala said the Lucid Air Pure has a battery size of a Tesla Model Y, but has a range of 420 miles, about a hundred miles more than the Tesla Model Y.

Lucid says the money it’s spending goes to developing an array of technologies and manufacturing processes that are hard to copy.

“Lucid has about over 10 years of powertrain history,” Dala said. “This didn’t come overnight. There’s lots of IP patented technologies across powertrain, vehicle and software,” which lead to “gains in efficiency across the board,” he said.

That even extends to the way the cars are made.

“We use manufacturing processes here that no one else in the industry uses in powertrain,” said Adrian Price, senior vice president of operations at Lucid.

“Lucid is very highly vertically integrated,” he said, meaning it brings much of the car-making process in house. “We have a lot more of our own subassemblies. That’s also how we get the performance that other people don’t. A lot of that engineering is outsourced by other major automakers. Not only do we do the engineering, but we also do the manufacturing, and we can control some of the Lucid secret sauce by doing it in-house.”

One area where Lucid appears to lag competitors is brand awareness.

“A lot of people don’t know what Lucid is,” Narayan said. “That’s the biggest, I think, hurdle that they have.”

The company has given more thought to marketing, and raising its profile in the luxury market, where it’s going up against names like Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and BMW.

“The buyer of a luxury brand, typically, they like things like heritage,” Narayan said. “The brand matters. So, you know, how do you create that from scratch?”

“We are very well known and have tons of accolades in the motor press, Winterhoff said. “So everybody who’s interested in cars knows about it. But that’s not the majority of vehicle buyers.”

So, it has begun a new marketing and advertising strategy for the Gravity, with Hollywood actor Timothee Chalamet as its first “global brand ambassador.”

“We’re shifting from focusing on our vehicles, about the capabilities of our vehicles, to what does it mean to own a Lucid and what does it say about you?” Winterhoff said.

Winterhoff said he’s confident the company can successfully ramp the Gravity, while building and eventually delivering its mid-size vehicle.

“That is the point where I think this is a sustainable business going forward,” he said. “We have a clear plan also to profitability.”

Watch the video to get an exclusive inside look at Lucid’s Gravity production and to find out what’s next for the automaker.