Lucid Motors sets a record when gravity sales pick up and tax credits expire

Lucid Motors recorded 4,078 vehicles in the third quarter. This could have been supported by a combination of more gravity SUVs crashing into the roads and a rush of customers taking advantage of expired federal EV tax credits.

Saudi Arabia's luxury EV startup is moving away from forecasts released in 2021. This is a deal that won $4 billion. However, Lucid Motors has seen a steady rise in delivery over the past two years. The third quarter delivery figures released Monday marked the seventh consecutive quarter in which Lucid Motors increased sales.

Lucid Motors wasn't just looking at the big third quarter bumps in EV sales. Tesla recorded the highest quarter in the history of the company, with legacy automakers like Ford and General Motors also rising significantly. Even Libian, which forecasts a totally worse year with total EV delivery than 2024 or 2023, rose in the third quarter.

Just like Libian, only customers who leased Lucid Motors vehicles were eligible for the federal EV tax credit. In other words, it is difficult to quantify the effect of its expiration date. It is also unclear how many gravity SUVs were offered compared to the company's first model, the Air Sedan. Lucid Motors reveals the full financial results for the November 5th quarter.

Lucid Motors has been struggling to generate interest in luxury electric vehicles since its launch in 2021, and former CEO Peter Rawlinson has openly acknowledged the company that needs to step up its marketing operations. Earlier this year, the company announced that actor Timote Chalamet had signed his first “global ambassador.” As TechCrunch previously reported, the company also benefits from several quarterly rental sales and company leases.

Lucid Motors is also increasingly turning its attention to Saudi Arabia, which owns roughly 60% of publicly available companies through the Sovereign Wealth Fund as a vehicle market. On Monday, Lucid Motors said it had built more than 1,000 vehicles for the Saudi Arabian market. (The company currently operates meeting facilities in the Kingdom, and plans to open a full-scale factory there.)

Lucid is also locked from Uber, which is the future demand from unlikely customers.

Last month, Uber announced plans to purchase at least 20,000 gravity SUVs over the next six years and use them as Robotaxis on the network. For that contract, Lucid Motors will work to integrate technology from self-driving car company Nuro into the vehicle.