Lucid pushes its affordable midsize SUV back to late 2027 as new CEO Slims the Company Down
Lucid Group missed Wall Street's second-quarter targets on Tuesday and said it is pushing its long-awaited midsize electric SUV back to "most likely the second half of 2027," the first big call from new chief executive Silvio Napoli as he runs what the company calls an operational reset. Lucid published the full results in its earnings release.
The maker of the Air sedan and the Gravity SUV said it has identified $1.4 billion in cash-flow improvements for 2026, built from roughly $600 million to $800 million in trimmed vehicle inventory, about $500 million in lower capital spending and $200 million in operating expenses. The company swung to a net loss of more than $1 billion for the quarter, worse than the $539.4 million it lost a year earlier, and revenue of $405 million came in shy of the $416 million analysts had penciled in.
Shares slid about 8 percent in after-hours trading on the news, adding to a rough 2026 that has already left the stock down nearly a third.
Napoli bets on discipline over speed
Napoli, the former Schindler chief who took over from interim boss Marc Winterhoff on June 1, told CNBC that Lucid is done rushing products to market. The midsize SUV, which the company had hoped to launch around the end of this year, will now land late in 2027 at the earliest. CNBC's earnings coverage had the full interview.
"We're not going to make the mistake of the past where products, great cars, were in fact tainted by launching before things were ready," Napoli said. "I think it's going to be '27. Most likely the second half of '27."
The delay keeps Lucid competing almost entirely at the premium end for now. The Air sedan starts at roughly $70,000 and the Gravity SUV at about $80,000, which leaves the company exposed to buyers who have pulled back on expensive EVs since key federal tax credits disappeared late last year.
Napoli framed the reset as a question of execution rather than technology. "Lucid has leading technology, compelling products and deeply committed people, but potential is not performance," he said in the earnings release. The plan centers on three buckets, which he named as cash and cost, customer and quality, and culture and team.
He also declined to give fresh 2026 guidance, saying the company wants numbers it can actually hit. "I want a guidance that I'm confident Lucid will be able to deliver on, and possibly even do better than that. This takes time," Napoli told CNBC.
Where the $1.4 billion comes from
The biggest single chunk is inventory. Lucid said it has deliberately cut production to line up output with demand, convert unsold cars into cash and free up working capital. It made 4,774 vehicles in the second quarter, up 24 percent from a year earlier, but that was with the Arizona plant running a single shift after the company dropped from two in June.
Deliveries climbed 19 percent to 3,953 in the quarter, so the gap between what Lucid built and what it moved to customers has narrowed.
Outside inventory, the plan calls for about $500 million in capital-expenditure cuts and $200 million in operating expenses. Lucid built in part on the roughly 18 percent U.S. workforce reduction it unveiled in June, which it expects to produce about $158 million in annualized savings.
The company ended June with $3 billion in total liquidity and said its recent financing, plus the cost actions, should keep it funded "well into 2027." That matters because Lucid's largest shareholder, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, and Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who took a 5 percent stake last week, are betting on a turnaround that still has a long road ahead. Reuters reported the details of the savings plan.
Robotaxis step up as a bridge
With the midsize SUV pushed out, Lucid is leaning harder on its robotaxi program to keep the growth story alive. The company said the initiative with Uber and self-driving startup Nuro is a top priority and is now in active testing.
Lucid has begun delivering production-validation Gravity vehicles to Nuro and said a fleet of nearly 100 cars is being tested across the San Francisco Bay Area and Houston. Napoli said the company expects to deliver about 100 of the preproduction vehicles to its partners by the end of the year, with actual production starting early next year.
He argued that the shift plays to Lucid's strengths. "The robotaxi opportunity is huge, and it's an industry that is about to start an exponential growth," he told CNBC. "Not many companies are ready for it. We are a software-defined vehicle company, so we are well positioned."
The robotaxi work will move into a dedicated unit called Lucid Technologies, which will bundle the company's AI, driver-assistance and digital software. Separately, the AMP-2 factory under construction in Saudi Arabia has moved from construction into industrialization, with installation and tuning of manufacturing equipment underway.
A company fighting for credibility
The reset arrives weeks after Lucid denied an online report that it was weighing bankruptcy or a take-private deal, a story that knocked the shares sharply before they recovered some ground. Napoli repeated that denial on Tuesday. "I wholeheartedly reinforce the denial," he said. "We are here to stay. We are here. We have a plan."
Chairman Turqi Alnowaiser backed the new course in the release. "Silvio and his leadership team are transforming the company, and the Board stands firmly behind their actions," he said.
The wider situation is a hard one for Lucid and its U.S. rivals. Demand for pricey electric cars has cooled since the federal tax credits were removed late last year, pushing several automakers to cut output, shelve new models and focus on cheaper EVs. Lucid's own range tops out well above where most of that market sits, which is one reason the delayed midsize SUV matters so much to the company's long-term plan.
For now, the boardroom message is patience. Napoli says the company is rebuilding its cost base and its product line in parallel, and that investors should judge it on what it ships rather than what it promises. Whether that buys enough time before the cash runs low will depend on how fast the robotaxi revenue and the midsize program catch up with the bills.
Lucid remains a niche player in a crowded global market, and the operational reset is a bet that a smaller, leaner company can still win. Our EV coverage keeps track of how that bet plays out, alongside the ramp at Rivian and the rest of the industry's push toward cheaper electric cars.