Lucid Motors just delayed its affordable EV. Now what?

The Cosmos had been seen by some as a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s supposed to be the first of several cars built on Lucid’s next-generation “mid-size” EV platform, which is smaller and cheaper to build. The much lower price tag is supposed to help Lucid attract more customers and reach higher sales volumes.

But Napoli seems worried that the upside of getting the Cosmos EV to market could be negated if Lucid doesn’t get the launch right.

Though he didn’t explicitly name the SUV, Napoli said on the call this week that he delayed Cosmos because he doesn’t want to run into the same kind of problems Lucid has had with previous vehicles, clearly referring to the Gravity.

The company has struggled with build quality and software issues on the Gravity. Things got so bad at one point that Napoli’s predecessor, interim CEO Marc Winterhoff, apologized to Lucid owners.

“We will not repeat the mistakes of the past by bringing a product to market before it is ready,” Napoli said on the call.

The decision to delay Cosmos will likely disappoint some customers who were hoping to buy one by the end of this year. But the delay, combined with the decision to lower production in Arizona, is also affecting Lucid’s supply base.

In the company’s quarterly filing with the SEC, it wrote that “lower production volumes or demand, or reductions in our projected production volumes, have negatively affected, and could continue to adversely affect, our relationships with existing suppliers, who may seek to increase pricing, assert contractual or other claims, or otherwise fail to perform or comply with contractual obligations.”

Napoli’s big “reset” of Lucid Motors means the company now has to tread water for another year until the Cosmos EV goes into production. The company said Tuesday that it has “sufficient liquidity runway well into 2027.” But it also warned Wall Street analysts that it is going to build and sell fewer vehicles this year than it had previously predicted. As a result, the company’s stock price plummeted more than 15% on Wednesday.

With Cosmos delayed, there will now be even more attention on Lucid’s planned robotaxi service with Uber and Nuro, which is supposed to launch by the end of this year. Napoli called it a “top priority and, indeed, a must-win project for Lucid” on Tuesday’s call.

As part of that collaboration, Uber has ordered 10,000 Gravity SUVs that will be retrofitted with autonomous vehicle tech from Nuro. Uber has also ordered 25,000 robotaxis based on Lucid’s mid-size platform, though those aren’t expected to enter production until late 2028.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on his company’s own earnings call Wednesday that Napoli is “taking some bold steps to go back to the fundamentals” at Lucid, and said he believed the restructuring is “necessary” and “positive.”

Khosrowshahi also pointed out that Lucid’s majority owner — Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — is a major investor in Uber, and said the Kingdom is “the definition of a long-term fundamental investor.”

“We think the combination of ourselves, Nuro, and the Public Investment Fund backing Lucid, along with the actions that Silvio is taking, are kind of the right formula for them to deliver on the commitments that we have on the books with them,” Khosrowshahi said.