Lucid Motors is laying off 18% of its workforce, roughly 1,500 employees, just four months after the EV maker cut 12% of its staff. The company also confirmed Monday that it has eliminated the second production shift at its Casa Grande, Arizona factory.
It’s the second mass layoff under a new leadership regime that is barely three weeks old, and it lands as the US EV market cools and automakers retreat from their electric plans.
A new CEO clearing the decks
The cuts are the first major move by Silvio Napoli, who took over as Lucid’s CEO earlier this year and only formally assumed the role on June 1. Lucid says the restructuring will “simplify the company, sharpen execution, and position Lucid to become more competitive over time.”
Napoli is an unusual pick to run an EV startup. He spent his career at Schindler Group, the Swiss maker of elevators and escalators, where he served as chairman and CEO. He now inherits a company that has churned through more than a dozen top executives in two years.
Marc Winterhoff, who ran Lucid as interim CEO for over a year, has also left. Winterhoff was supposed to stay on as chief operating officer after Napoli’s arrival, but in a regulatory filing Lucid said it has eliminated the COO position entirely. He will receive severance, “certain security support,” and gets to keep his company vehicle.
His exit follows a string of departures. Founder and longtime CEO Peter Rawlinson abruptly resigned in February 2025, chief engineer Eric Bach was let go in late 2025 and sued for wrongful termination, and another longtime executive, Emad Dlala, resigned earlier this month just months after a promotion.
The numbers behind the cuts
Lucid reported 9,000 employees globally at the end of 2025, before February’s 12% reduction. This round hits full-time staff, contractors, and hourly production workers.
The company says the moves will deliver roughly $158 million in annualized savings, with the restructuring complete by the third quarter. Lucid will pay about $32 million in severance.
Eliminating the second shift in Casa Grande is the most telling part. Lucid framed it as aligning “production plans with anticipated demand,” which is a polite way of saying it isn’t selling enough cars to justify the capacity it built.
The demand problem is not new. Lucid produced 5,500 vehicles in Q1 but delivered just 3,093, and we reported in May that its 25,000-unit production goal was already in limbo as it ended the quarter with bloated inventory.
Everything is riding on Cosmos
Lucid is counting on its first mass-market vehicle, the Cosmos SUV, to turn things around. The lower-cost EV is supposed to start under $50,000 and finally put the company on a path to profitability when it launches later this year.
We recently spotted the Cosmos testing near Lucid’s factory alongside a Tesla Model Y, the car it most needs to beat. The company is also pushing into autonomy through a robotaxi partnership with Uber and Nuro slated to launch in San Francisco later this year, on top of recently adding hands-free driving to the Gravity SUV. Lucid declined to say whether any of those programs are being scaled back.
Electrek’s Take
Lucid is majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which has poured billions into keeping the company alive. That backstop is the only reason Lucid can absorb two mass layoffs in a single year without an existential crisis. But the pattern here is hard to ignore.
A 12% cut in February, an 18% cut in June, a killed production shift, a revolving door of executives, and now a CEO from the elevator business trying to “simplify” a company that has never come close to its production targets. None of that says a turnaround is underway. It says a company resetting to a much smaller reality than the one it sold investors when it went public.
The engineering has rarely been the issue. The Air and Gravity are genuinely impressive cars, and the Atlas drive unit powering Cosmos is a real technical achievement. The problem has always been demand, cost, and execution, and you don’t fix demand by cutting headcount.
Cosmos is now the whole ballgame. If a sub-$50,000 Lucid can sell in volume against the Model Y, the cuts will look like discipline. If it can’t, this won’t be the last “simplification” we cover. Can a company that keeps shrinking still build the mass-market car it needs to grow?
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