Even Lucid Doesn’t Know How Many EVs It Will Make In 2026

The company suspended its full-year production guidance after reporting a $1 billion net loss in the first quarter.

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

By: Iulian Dnistran

May 6, at 4:15am ET

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Lucid Motors is no longer sure how many electric cars it will build this year.
The company suspended its full-year guidance after reporting a $1 billion first-quarter net loss.
Sales of the Gravity SUV were halted for nearly a month because of a seat defect that also prompted a recall.

Lucid Motors, the maker of the Air sedan and Gravity crossover, said it is no longer confident in the number of electric cars it will build or sell this year. The company suspended its full-year guidance, reporting a $1 billion net loss in the first quarter after pausing Gravity sales over a seating defect that prompted a recall.

The decision to pull the production guidance for the year was a “governance decision,” said Taoufiq Boussaid, the startup’s chief financial officer, during yesterday’s first-quarter earnings call. “We are not constrained by capacity. We are constrained by our own discipline not to build inventory ahead of demand. As market conditions develop, we will scale production accordingly,” Boussaid added.

Gallery: 2026 Lucid Gravity Touring

Source: Lucid Motors

In April, Lucid reaffirmed its production estimate of 25,000 to 27,000 vehicles in 2026. That would have been a nice bump from last year’s 18,000 sales, but still lightyears away from the hundreds of thousands of cars that were estimated to be built this year when Lucid went public back in 2021, as TechCrunch noted.

Ever since it debuted in 2023, the Gravity has been touted as the company’s silver bullet, promising to bring the high-end EV manufacturer into the high-volume game. Now, though, a seat defect that affected Gravity sales for 29 days is the main reason behind Lucid’s worse-than-expected first quarter.

In April, the company recalled nearly 4,500 SUVs because an improperly positioned weld on the second-row lap seatbelt anchor may rupture during a collision. The automaker blamed its seat supplier for the problem, saying that unapproved design changes were made to the lap belt anchor weld, and that Gravity SUVs built after February 14 are not affected.

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The recall boosted Lucid’s inventory, and the company now has to carefully manage production volume to try to reduce the number of cars that are sitting in lots.

It’s not a great time for bad things to happen at Lucid, as the startup is aiming to start building its first true high-volume cars this year, priced under $50,000. The Lucid Cosmos mid-size crossover is scheduled to go into production by the end of this year at the firm’s plant in Saudi Arabia. On yesterday’s earnings call, the company said it’s “on track for production ramp-up of the mid-size [model] in 2027.”