Lucid Motors has been working through some quality “hiccups” in the early stages of delivering its long-awaited electric SUV, according to interim CEO Marc Winterhoff.
“It is true that we had some technical issues that we had to overcome around software” and the Gravity’s heads-up display, Winterhoff said on a conference call Tuesday. “There have been some hiccups. To be quite frank, I think this is absolutely normal in the beginning of launching a vehicle.”
In particular, Winterhoff cited supply chain issues with Gravity’s heads-up display as a source of trouble. The company has pulled that option back for now while it works with the supplier to increase production of the part.
Winterhoff said these early quality snags are the reason why Lucid has been slow to bring the Gravity to its showroom locations, including SUVs that are supposed to be used for test drives. But he said the company is “knocking those [issues] out.”
“We’d rather push it out a few days or weeks, rather than putting a half-baked product in front of the customer,” he said.
Lucid’s first SUV arrives at a critical juncture for the company. It has so far failed to sell its Air sedan at anywhere near the levels it once promised to Wall Street. Its total losses to date are now over $13 billion, according to a new regulatory filing. And in February, its long-running CEO abruptly stepped down, which led to the installation of Winterhoff.
The Gravity was originally supposed to hit the market in 2023. The launch was pushed back a year thanks to the disruptions caused by the covid pandemic. Lucid did technically start delivering Gravity SUVs in late 2024, although only to employees and people close to the company.
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The SUV, which currently starts at $94,000 and gets 450 miles of range, started shipping to regular customers in the last few weeks. But progress has been slow thanks to some of these early production challenges.
Lucid has said it doesn’t expect to grow the volume of deliveries until the back half of this year. And it is not alone in dealing with early-run quality problems. Automakers of all sizes tend to deal with issues big or small as they start building new vehicles. Elon Musk once said in a 2021 interview that he tells friends to wait until Tesla is making new cars at scale before they buy one.
Partnerships as a service
Selling cars makes up the overwhelming majority of Lucid’s business. The company has often said it wants to be a supplier of EV tech to other automakers. To date, it has only inked a deal with Aston Martin, but Winterhoff teased other possible partnerships on Tuesday’s call.
The interim CEO said “several players” have reached out to explore “joint manufacturing” in the U.S., potentially at the former Nikola factory in Coolidge, Arizona that Lucid is now leasing.
“The President and the administration want to have a strong manufacturing sector in the U.S., and we are looking at potential ways we can leverage our assets,” he said.
Winterhoff also said Tuesday that Lucid is in “advanced discussions with partners who have told us the Lucid Gravity is the best-positioned AV-capable platform on the market.”
He said aspects like the Gravity’s advanced sensor suite, redundant electrical and control architectures, and fast-charging capability is what makes the SUV attractive in this context. Winterhoff claimed “multiple L4-focused software and mobility companies have engaged Lucid about potential collaboration.”
These potential supplemental lines of business could theoretically provide another stream of revenue for Lucid and shore up its finances as it works towards rolling out a more affordable mid-sized vehicle in late 2026. The company has said it has enough cash and vehicle revenue to make it to that point without raising more funding.
The global economy has become volatile during the early months of President Donald Trump’s second administration, and that could present a risk to companies like Lucid. To wit, Winterhoff said on Tuesday’s call that Lucid is evaluating “vehicle price changes, tariff risk mitigation, and bifurcating [its] supply chain” in order to protect against the volatility.
