California-based automaker Lucid reported third quarter results on Tuesday, and the numbers aren’t great. The company announced that it built 1,550 Air sedans in Q3, and delivered 1,456 to customers. Each of those cars delivered accounted for $433,000 worth of red ink on the company’s balance sheets, which is particularly rough as the car has a starting price of just $77,400.
Lucid entered 2023 with a goal of selling around 14,000 cars, but waning demand for the EV sedan is causing Lucid to reduce expectations to just 8,500-ish units with just October, November, and December left to be accounted for. The company is rushing to get its Gravity electric SUV to market sooner than later, as it knows competitor Tesla sells about twice as many Model Y crossovers as it does Model 3 sedans.
In the third quarter Lucid reported just $137.8 million in revenue and net losses of a whopping $630.9 million. Not only is revenue down from the same period last year ($195.5 million), but losses are up as well. Across the first nine months of the year Lucid has burned through 2.17 billion dollars, up from the 1.83 billion dollars it incinerated in the same period in 2022.
While the company is in rough shape right now, things are starting to look up for the automaker. Not only did it launch the new quarter-million dollar, 1,200 horsepower flagship Air Sapphire in October, but it also debuted a new base model at a new low price, the $77,400 Air Pure RWD. The Gravity should also debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show later this month. It also inked a deal with British automaker Aston Martin to provide EV powertrains for its upcoming electric projects. The company also built a new factory in Saudi Arabia.
“We delivered on our commitments to complete the Lucid Air lineup on time with Pure RWD and Sapphire, transition general assembly to our Phase 2 factory in Arizona, and open our first plant in Saudi Arabia. We recognize we still have work to do on our customer journey and deliveries,” said Peter Rawlinson, Lucid’s CEO & CTO. “Next week, we look forward to the world premiere of the Lucid Gravity, our amazing vehicle that will redefine the electric SUV. Gravity remains on track to begin production in late 2024.”
Things will probably get worse for the automaker before they get better. The Q3 report also states that Lucid has about $5.5 billion of liquidity runway, so it’s not in danger of going belly up any time soon, but it really has to hope the Gravity is a sales success, and it can ramp up production across the board.