- The Lucid Gravity is the car that this groundbreaking EV startup hopes will carry it into the future.
- Lucid's sales have struggled for only offering a sedan, the Air, for so long.
- The car's chief engineer says the Gravity's ramp-up will be focused on quality.
Sleek, futuristic Lucid Gravity SUVs started trickling off the production line at the startup automaker's Arizona factory last week after years of development and some delays. Lucid Motors hopes its second-ever model will ignite sales like never before and pave the way for long-term financial health. But it has a hill to climb before any of that can happen.
Soon, Lucid will have to start churning out more vehicles more quickly than it’s ever had to before. That ramp-up process has proven fraught for new automakers, like Tesla. And that’s only half the battle. There’s not even a guarantee that buyers will line up in droves, given Lucid’s prior challenges with brand awareness.
The launch of the Gravity is a make-or-break moment for Lucid, which has yet to turn a profit and has relied on billions in infusions from its majority shareholder, the Saudi Public Investment Fund. It’s the SUV that will drive revenue until Lucid’s true mainstream EV hits the road later this decade. The arrival of “Project Midsize,” a roughly $50,000 crossover, will mark Lucid’s Tesla Model Y moment—when it can hopefully hit the scale needed to reliably earn more than it spends.
Until then, the Gravity needs to be a hit. And that starts with ramping up production from a few units to thousands and then tens of thousands—no small feat.
“The key is to bring all the elements and areas together at the same time, at the right quality,” Eric Bach, Lucid’s chief engineer, told InsideEVs in a recent interview. “And that is what a ramp is about.”
Here are those elements, according to Bach. First off, you need a product that’s mature and durable and won’t result in endless warranty repairs once it starts going out to customers. You also need a supply base that’s dialed in and can ramp up production alongside the main assembly plant.
The third leg of the stool is a competent factory and logistics system. Bach says ramping up production is stressful for any car company, but he believes Lucid is ready for it.
“The second ramp is always better than and easier than the first ramp because we've built more capabilities. I'm not afraid of the ramp at all,” he said. “Surely, there will be some hiccups and pain, but that's normal.”
Lucid ran up against all manner of supply-chain and manufacturing issues when it started producing the Air sedan, its first and so far only model, at scale in 2022. But it’s far from alone there.
Famously, Tesla nearly went bankrupt during early Model 3 production in 2017 and 2018, a period Tesla CEO Elon Musk called "production hell." Even well-oiled automakers that have been doing this for a century have hit snags in manufacturing new electric models. General Motors spent months solving battery-production bottlenecks as it launched its new EVs like the Chevrolet Blazer EV and Cadillac Lyriq last year.
Lucid is focused on ramping up the Gravity with high quality, Bach said, echoing Lucid CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson’s comments on a recent earnings call. Although production has begun, Lucid hasn’t said when customer deliveries will start.
“I anticipate that we're going to be manufacturing-constrained next year in the buildup of Gravity,” he said in early November. “We need to get the quality right and take a judicious and very prudent approach to meeting customer expectations with the quality as we ramp up.”
As production gets underway, Bach’s team is hammering away on future over-the-air updates for the Gravity. And it’s working on homologating the SUV for global markets. It’s also been conducting testing with Tesla Superchargers, seeing as the Gravity will ship from the factory with Tesla’s previously exclusive charging port design. (It’s one of the first such models since the entire auto industry announced it would migrate to Tesla’s plug.)
Lucid hasn’t officially announced access to Tesla’s charging network for its owners, but Bach says that will happen in advance of the first Gravity deliveries.
The other big challenge facing Lucid here, and Rawlinson referred to it on that same earnings call, concerns demand and brand awareness. The startup sold just 6,001 Air sedans in 2023, and it’s projecting production of 9,000 vehicles this year. That’s a far cry from where it had expected to be by this point.
In 2021, Lucid predicted that it would make 90,000 vehicles in 2024, including 41,000 Airs and 49,000 Gravity SUVs. That was based on the Gravity starting production in 2023, which it didn’t. So that delay accounts for about half the shortfall. On top of that, lots of people simply don’t know what a Lucid is or that they should even consider buying one.
“I’ve stated before that we’re not manufacturing-constrained,” Rawlinson said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call. “We’ve been market-constrained.”
Rawlinson said that Lucid’s brand awareness has been improving and that the Gravity should benefit from that momentum. Plus, the brand is planning an advertising blitz and more brick-and-mortar locations as part of the Gravity’s launch.
Bach is convinced that the Gravity itself will do wonders for the Lucid brand.
Sedans like the Air don't sell in large numbers anymore, which has held Lucid back. It’s a shame, in a way, because the Air is one of the best—if not the best—electric vehicles you can buy in America today. The Gravity, a seven-seat SUV, should unlock six times the addressable market of the Air and get Lucid on a lot more radars, Bach said. Then word-of-mouth can take over.
“I'm very positive that a better product is always the key starting point” for building a brand, he said.
On paper, the Gravity is indeed a mind-blowing vehicle. The Grand Touring model, the first to launch, will offer a whopping 450 miles of EPA-rated range, over 800 horsepower and over 900 pound-feet of torque. It’s pretty extraordinary in person as well, as I learned during a test drive in Malibu, California this month.
The thing looks like nothing else on the road, drives better than any hulking SUV should, offers a dazzling digital interface and has as much room inside as your average New York City apartment.
It has the potential to be a slam dunk. But it’s yet to be seen whether people will embrace that oddball, minivan-like shape. And then there’s the price; the Gravity Grand Touring starts at $94,900, more than tried-and-true gas-powered rivals like the BMW X7 or Volvo XC90. A $79,900 Touring model should arrive sometime next year.
There’s a lot riding on the Gravity. But Lucid is also steaming toward its next project, a smaller, more affordable family of vehicles expected to start production in 2026. About half of Bach’s team is working on that, he said.
“It never stops in my role,” Bach said.
Got a tip about the EV world? Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
