Lucid Only Managed To Move 478 Cars In August

Just 478 Lucid Airs were registered in the U.S. in August, and that brings the eight-month total of sales to 4,267 units. At that pace of new vehicle registrations, it’s fairly likely the luxury EV startup will fall well short of its “more than 10,000” vehicles sold production goal by the end of the year unless some big changes happen. Keep in mind that the original goal was to sell 14,000 vehicles this year.

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According to Automotive News, in the first half of the year, Lucid reportedly produced 4,487 vehicles and delivered 2,810, and so far the company has not reported third-quarter numbers. It’s estimated that the company delivered 1,601 cars in September, but that’s only a guess.

It all sort of makes sense, doesn’t it? The Lucid Air is a big-money car. Even the cheapest version, the Air Pure, starts at $77,400. Prices quickly jump with the Touring at $95,000 and the Grand Touring at $125,600. That’s not even mentioning the Air Sapphire, which starts at a quarter-million bucks. The market for something like that is never going to be huge. That being said, the cheapest way to get an Air right now is a lease — as I’m sure you’ve seen on this here website. Lucid is pushing its $749/month 36-month lease with $8,069 due at signing deal pretty hard at the moment. It’s not a terrible deal, and it’s probably being done to drum up some interest in the cars.

While 478 cars registered does not sound like a lot for the entire month of August (because it isn’t), it does reportedly represent a 40 percent increase versus the same time in 2022. On top of that, January through August registrations were nearly triple where they were last year.

AutoNews reports that among EV makers, Lucid was number 19 in registrations out of 27 brands for the first eight months of 2023. It fell behind rivals like Porsche with 4,505 Taycan registrations and Genesis with 3,525 registrations between the electric G80 and two EV crossovers.

The outlet says Lucid has boosted its marketing efforts because of a rough first quarter. A 42-city marketing campaign with pop-up events was launched so that potential buyers could test-drive various Air models.

With all that being said, Lucid is still in a pretty solid spot. Back in August, the company said it had started sending vehicles to Saudi Arabia. In September it opened a small assembly plant there, and the company is majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, so it’s never going to run out of money.