
CEO Silvio Napoli admits the EV maker lost sales and orders because it sometimes didn't know where its cars were.
AI-generated summary
Lucid builds luxury EVs like the Air and Gravity, facing logistics challenges similar to Tesla's early production scale-up.
Lucid, the California-based Tesla rival that makes luxury EVs like the Air and Gravity, has an interesting excuse for its third quarter earnings underperformance. The company said it lost sales due to inventory control issues, with CEO Silvio Napoli admitting in an earnings call that sometimes "we did not even know where cars were." That chaos resulted in slow delivery times up to two weeks that caused Lucid to lose orders from impatient buyers.
The company doesn't have millions of cars to keep track of like Tesla, either. Lucid built just 2,954 vehicles last quarter and delivered 3,806, down seven percent from the year before. Building fewer cars than it sold helped it reduce inventory, but it still had $1.22 billion worth on the books at the end of September.
With its logistics issues, Lucid's sales suffered like Tesla's did when the latter started ramping up the Model 3. Elon Musk's company had to take drastic measures to solve supply issues (like building its own car carriers and buying trucking companies), but once it did, sales took off.
Lucid's Napoli suggested that its latest fixes to shipping problems will have a similar effect by allowing the commercial team to "sell the cars that we know can be available on the day for the customers who require it." With that, along with a growing US EV market due to high gas prices (plus a deal it recently cut with robotaxi company Bolt), the company has positive expectations for the latter half of 2026.
AI outlook — possibilities, not facts
Lucid shipping fixes will improve vehicle availability for customers
Possible · Within months

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