Lucid CEO says the company didn't know where its own cars were

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Lucid, the California-based Tesla rival that makes luxury EVs like the Air and Gravity, has an interesting excuse for its third quarter earnings underperformance. The company said it lost sales due to inventory control issues, with CEO Silvio Napoli admitting in an earnings call that sometimes "we did not even know where cars were." That chaos resulted in slow delivery times up to two weeks that caused Lucid to lose orders from impatient buyers. 

The company doesn't have millions of cars to keep track of like Tesla, either. Lucid built just 2,954 vehicles last quarter and delivered 3,806, down seven percent from the year before. Building fewer cars than it sold helped it reduce inventory, but it still had $1.22 billion worth on the books at the end of September. 

With its logistics issues, Lucid's sales suffered like Tesla's did when the latter started ramping up the Model 3. Elon Musk's company had to take drastic measures to solve supply issues (like building its own car carriers and buying trucking companies), but once it did, sales took off. 

Lucid's Napoli suggested that its latest fixes to shipping problems will have a similar effect by allowing the commercial team to "sell the cars that we know can be available on the day for the customers who require it." With that, along with a growing US EV market due to high gas prices (plus a deal it recently cut with robotaxi company Bolt), the company has positive expectations for the latter half of 2026. 

Fixing its supply chain won't solve Lucid's other problems, though, like quality control issues and customer service complaints. The other tiny issue is that the automaker lost $831 million last quarter on revenue of just $350 million, due to cost of making each vehicle that far exceeds the selling price. However, that didn't discourage the company's primary investor, the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), from injecting an additional $1.75 billion into Lucid.