Lucid Motors doesn’t know how many EVs it will build this year

Lucid Motors said Tuesday that it’s no longer sure how many EVs it will build or sell this year, as it navigates a transition to a new CEO and a companywide cost-cutting push. The company said in February that it planned to build between 25,000 and 27,000 vehicles this year. That’s far from the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that Lucid Motors estimated it would build and sell this year when it went public back in 2021. But it would have represented a significant bump from last year’s figure of around 18,000. The change to Lucid’s guidance was announced during the company’s first-quarter earnings call by chief financial officer Taoufiq Boussaid. It comes just a few months after the company laid off 12% of its workforce, which TechCrunch first reported in February . Lucid Motors said in a filing Tuesday that those layoffs will cost the company around $40 million in the near term, though it believes the cuts will ultimately save as much as $500 million over the next few years. Boussaid said the decision to pull Lucid Motors’ guidance for the year was a “governance decision,” and that incoming CEO Silvio Napoli is conducting a review of the business. Boussaid said Lucid Motors expects to provide a “full updated outlook” during the second-quarter earnings call in a few months. “It’s clear that realizing Lucid’s full potential will require sharper focus and consistent execution, particularly around simplification, prioritization, and speed,” Napoli said during the call. …