A warning notice has a subtle unnerving quality. It is a bureaucratic document, typically one page long, that is submitted to the state labor department and details the number of people who will lose their jobs along with the date of the layoffs. That notice arrived this past week for 705 employees at Lucid Motors’ Casa Grande facility in Arizona. In late August, the company’s headquarters in Newark, California will host an additional 136. Together, they make up about 18% of Lucid’s U.S. workforce; this figure may seem clinical, but keep in mind that it is based on real people leaving their jobs for the last time.
In four months, Lucid has undergone two rounds of cuts. The company reduced its workforce by 12% in February. It’s cutting deeper now, just past the second quarter of 2026. This pattern—two layoffs in quick succession rather than just one—tells you something that the press release doesn’t explicitly state: this isn’t a one-time correction. The business is still figuring out how big it is.
The company’s chief operating officer, Marc Winterhoff, has also left, and Lucid has completely eliminated the COO position. After Peter Rawlinson, a former Tesla engineer who contributed to the creation of the Model S, resigned in early 2025, Winterhoff took over as interim CEO for more than a year. In April, Silvio Napoli, a former CEO of Schindler, a Swiss elevator company, took over. The fact that an elevator executive is now leading a luxury EV manufacturer through its most difficult period to date is worth pondering for a moment. It remains to be seen if this background translates into automotive turnaround instincts.
The cuts’ numbers are alarming. In 2025, Lucid reported an operating loss of roughly $3 billion. It delivered just 3,093 cars in the first quarter of this year, which seems low for a business that was once compared to Tesla in its early, hype-filled days. It is anticipated that the restructuring will save about $158 million a year but cost about $32 million in severance. That math works on paper. In actuality, this means that a smaller, leaner Lucid is wagering its remaining cash—roughly $4.6 billion in liquidity, which the company estimates will last until mid-2027—on fewer people doing more.
The way the business is framing this is noteworthy. According to a Lucid representative, the cuts were made in an attempt to “simplify the company, sharpen execution, and position Lucid to become more competitive over time.” On a slide deck, this type of language makes sense. It’s a different matter entirely whether it makes sense to someone holding a layoff notice while standing in a Casa Grande parking lot.
Additionally, Lucid has eliminated the second shift at its AMP-1 factory, which is the main facility where cars are manufactured. This is a significant operational detail because fewer shifts typically result in lower output, which begs the question of whether demand has just not kept up with the company’s goals. Lucid relied heavily on the Gravity SUV for growth in 2026, but earlier this year, supplier problems caused delivery delays. Since then, production guidelines have been put on hold while an internal review is conducted.
However, Lucid is no longer placing all of its bets on selling cars to private consumers. With Uber now pledging to buy at least 35,000 EVs and invest a total of $500 million in Lucid, their partnership has grown significantly. Once a futuristic side project, robotaxis is beginning to take center stage in the company’s strategy. A two-seater concept was introduced in March after a prototype made its debut at CES in January.
It’s difficult to ignore the contrast in this situation—a company cutting production workers while simultaneously growing a robotaxi partnership that aims to increase the number of its vehicles on the road without the involvement of traditional buyers. It makes sense, but there’s also a tension that Lucid hasn’t quite worked out. Shares only slightly declined on the news, about 4%, indicating that Wall Street has somewhat priced in the EV industry’s wider cooling. Investors appear to be interpreting this as a sign of discipline.
In this, Lucid is not alone. Businesses in the EV industry are having to deal with the discrepancy between their aggressive initial projections and the messier, slower reality of consumer demand. The speed of Lucid’s layoffs—two layoffs in a single year is uncommon even by EV industry standards—is what sets its situation apart. To be honest, it’s still unclear if this is the end of Lucid’s reorganization or just another phase of continuous change.
