Elon Musk has sounded another warning bell for Lucid Motors, suggesting yet again that the fledgling automaker might not be around for much longer.
Lucid has struggled to ramp production, cutting its annual guidance from an original 20,000 vehicles down to between 6,000 and 7,000 vehicles. Even that lower guidance might not be met based on their performance through the first three quarters of the year.
The slow production ramp has been paired with reservation holders getting cold feet and cancelling their orders. At the end of Q2 Lucid had over 37,000 outstanding reservations, but by the end of Q3 that number had dropped to 34,000, despite the fact that Lucid had only delivered 1,398 Air sedans during that time.
Then came the news that Lucid was offering cars on their website for immediate delivery, and that the company was offering an $18,000 discount to employees who want to purchase an Air themselves, as well as a 10% discount to customers who ordered after prices increased.
If that wasn’t enough, Business Insider reported Lucid has recently implemented what many would call an aggressive tactic to potentially call customers who want to cancel their order more than a dozen times to try and persuade them not to.
We reported on this most recent development yesterday, citing an internal email obtained by Drive Tesla that Lucid wanted employees to “encourage forward movement” to help the customer finalize their order.
In response to our story Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned that all of this is pointing towards Lucid not being around for much longer.
They are not long for this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
This is not the first time Musk has sounded the warning bell about Lucid. Back in June during an interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Musk said Lucid (and Rivian) were “tracking to bankruptcy,” and that unless they make dramatic changes, both “will end up in the car cemetery.”
Rivian seems to have been able to turn the tide and have posted some positive production and delivery figures in recent quarters, but Lucid is still clearly struggling and their future is uncertain.
Based on their most recent financial statements Lucid still had about $3.85 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments, a figure which the company said would be enough to fund operations “at least into the fourth quarter of 2023.”
