Emad Dlala out

[drb3333]

a boeing guy turned around boeing and then went on to save fords bacon.jobs were lost..egos hurt.. not a car guy he made a plan and stuck to it.Focus. focus. the cars are done and dusted... Time to give the new guys plan a shot

Hire this lady:

 

[HC_79]

I too have spent some time in automotive business, mostly with suppliers. I hope you’re right. At the moment the stock price isn’t reflecting the CEO decision as a good one (and it’s obviously reflecting other things, too). Time will tell.

Can people stop trying to tie the stock price to every event that happens at the company and making out it's just Lucid stock that is down. Rivian is down 15% over the last 5 days and that's with all the hoopla of the R2 launching. Lucid is down 12% over the same period. Even Tesla is down 6% over the last 5 days.

As much as I liked Emad and think Lucid lost an extremely valuable Exec the stock price going down has nothing to do with Emad's departure.

 

[dbsb3233]

Here's one guy's take. Gotta read it on X to get all 8 pieces.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2065083832714625356

 

[billy]

judging from these posts is it possible Emad was just too nice a guy to be in the coming attack squadron

 

[martinjlm]

Along with Alan Mulally there was Jim Rowan CEO of Volvo from Dyson. Keith Barr CarMax from hospitality sector. Carlos Ghosn worked for Michelin Fim Farley was in Marketing Mary Barra was in HR.... (Chat GPT)

According to Chat GPT most of these guys made major Management changes after becoming CEO of their respective companies.

They were hired for a reason and more importantly the changes they made were also for that reason.

Don't be fooled by this one. Mary Barra went to General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) and graduated with a BSEE. She was in the class two years behind me. She worked in manufacturing and got her MBA at Stanford and worked in a number of positions at GM before becoming the head of Product Development...basically the position Mark Reuss has now as GM President. For some reason people love to stress that she worked in HR. HR was an obligatory stop on her path to the C-Suite.

 

[Macrocosmcwh]

Don't be fooled by this one. Mary Barra went to General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) and graduated with a BSEE. She was in the class two years behind me. She worked in manufacturing and got her MBA at Stanford and worked in a number of positions at GM before becoming the head of Product Development...basically the position Mark Reuss has now as GM President. For some reason people love to stress that she worked in HR. HR was an obligatory stop on her path to the C-Suite.

Chat GPT strikes again... =)

 

[borski]

Here's one guy's take. Gotta read it on X to get all 8 pieces.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2065083832714625356

The gist of this theory is that Emad’s work was done and Lucid no longer need to innovate on powertrain because Atlas is complete, therefore Emad was no longer useful (as he had no motors to build) and didn’t want to manage.

All of which is nonsense; there is zero chance Lucid doesn’t need to continue innovating on powertrain, because vehicles and motors take many years to produce, not to mention iterative improvements.

That Emad’s “work was done” at Lucid is not a good take, imho.

 

[fadooly]

A company will never stop working because of one person leaving , that is the honest truth

His departure could be of many reasons could be work, family, personal goals and etc

People come and go and that is just life

Let’s move on and hope the next person will do even better innovations

Not to underestimate Mr Emad , huge appreciations for him and wishing him the best

 

[BS8899]

The gist of this theory is that Emad’s work was done and Lucid no longer need to innovate on powertrain because Atlas is complete, therefore Emad was no longer useful (as he had no motors to build) and didn’t want to manage.

All of which is nonsense; there is zero chance Lucid doesn’t need to continue innovating on powertrain, because vehicles and motors take many years to produce, not to mention iterative improvements.

That Emad’s “work was done” at Lucid is not a good take, imho.

Don't disagree with you about your take on "no further need for Emad's new motors".

But that posture ("theirs", not yours") basically says the CEO/Executive Team don't look to Emad as the SVP of Powertrain and Digital.

Going forward, perhaps there is less need for major de novo motors as in the Air/Gravity days. Letting Emad go sends the message that his SVP technical team leadership was not appreciated. Unless Emad himself felt that if he isn't going to invent/refine motors, he doesn't want to stay at Lucid.

Neither scenario make any sense!

 

[hmp10]

I am going to wholeheartedly disagree here. Background...I spent 38 years at an OEM, I am a car guy, and I've spent many years shoulder-to-shoulder with recognized name car guys. I will briefly name drop...

Sat behind Bob Lutz and Gary Cowger at a weekly Product Development decision meeting for two years. Worked directly for Bob Purcell, one of the key project leaders for EV1 (this was after EV1, but before / during Volt development). Worked closely with and still have friendship relationship with Tony Posawatz, Volt Chief Engineer / Vehicle Line Exec who went on to serve as CEO for an EV startup. Know Mark Reuss on a " hey how's it going" basis and worked in his dad's (Lloyd) organization for a while and also interacted with Lloyd at a non-profit he supported after he retired. Know Tadge Juechter (Corvette), Al Oppenheiser (Camaro, Hummer EV) John McElroy (Autoline) on a "hey how's it going" basis,. I really could go on.

Most of those people would be redundant wrt Lucid's current strengths. They aren't NEEDED. They would not be a detriment, although I would question whether John McElroy would even have an interest in running a car company. What all of these people have in common is that they are all outstanding PRODUCT experts.

What Lucid needs is someone who understands and can master the ability to make strategic decisions that grow the company. Would there be a benefit to that person being someone who understands the product? Definitely. But if the CEO is supposed to have company sustainability skills and product skills, but you can only fill one of those buckets, which bucket do you fill first? I say it needs to be the company sustainability bucket. What does Lucid need more than someone expert at sustaining the venture?

Let's look at the problem from a different perspective. Ever hear of Carlos Tavares? Consummate car guy. Worked at several different OEMs and helped lead the product development out of the doldrums and into relevancy. Then he became CEO of PSA and did a decent enough job that he was named CEO of Stellantis when that merger came to play. Even though he understood the European market and maybe even the Chinese market well enough to help PSA and then Stellantis thrive in those areas, his total lack of understanding of the US market led to Stellantis getting absolutely obliterated in the US market, wide scale senior leadership exodus, and eventually his removal as CEO. Shortly after his removal, several of the senior leaders who left eased their way back to the company after their retirements.

There are times when "get a car guy" is the best move for a company. For Lucid, this is not one of those times. The product is fine.

You make many good points. Speaking for myself, I have not argued that Dlala should have become CEO. The question I have regarding his departure is why?

The best automotive companies do not view their products as static. Even continuing models undergo constant changes. Tesla is known for this. And take a look at any parts catalog for almost any carmaker, and you will see numerous part numbers for what seems superficially to be the same item because of this constant evolution. Even within the Air model run there have been several significant modifications to the powertrain to increase efficiency and reliability further.

This notion I have seen on this thread that, with the main engineering now done on the Cosmos and its next-generation brethren models, Emad's departure is less consequential ignore the reality of continuing product evolution. If Lucid were ever to reach the point that they do not view engineers of Emad's caliber as critical, it's a signal they have moved into another direction than building cutting-edge vehicles.

If Emad left because he didn't get the CEO job, that's on him.

If Emad left because he was burned out, that's sad but understandable.

If Emad left because he got recruited to a more stable environment, then congratulations to him.

If Emad left because he saw the collapse of prospects for stock and option grants, then he joins the parade of senior players who do that year in and year out.

If Emad left because Lucid was trying to put him back into the powertrain wheelhouse only, I can understand both his and Lucid's viewpoints.

If Emad was shown the door because Lucid thinks his level of engineering talent is no longer worth paying for, then things are getting dark there, indeed.

if Emad was shown the door because he was fighting the release of another product before it was ready for market, then God bless him and damn Lucid -- which the market will do soon enough if they pull that stunt again. (We talk a lot on this forum about software misfires. Less talked about is the warranty costs that are probably soaring for the Gravity as they did for the Air and the increasing strain on the service network from so much work that should have been done in the factory being transferred to the Service Centers.)

So the fact that Emad is gone is what it is. The reason that he is gone is where the answers to Lucid's fate might lie . . . and we outsiders may never know that for sure.

 

[ClearlyLucid]

Can people stop trying to tie the stock price to every event that happens at the company and making out it's just Lucid stock that is down. Rivian is down 15% over the last 5 days and that's with all the hoopla of the R2 launching. Lucid is down 12% over the same period. Even Tesla is down 6% over the last 5 days.

As much as I liked Emad and think Lucid lost an extremely valuable Exec the stock price going down has nothing to do with Emad's departure.

I was referring to the CEO choice, not Emad.

 

[Need4Sleep]

The gist of this theory is that Emad’s work was done and Lucid no longer need to innovate on powertrain because Atlas is complete, therefore Emad was no longer useful (as he had no motors to build) and didn’t want to manage.

All of which is nonsense; there is zero chance Lucid doesn’t need to continue innovating on powertrain, because vehicles and motors take many years to produce, not to mention iterative improvements.

That Emad’s “work was done” at Lucid is not a good take, imho.

Agreed, even if a project ships, there's always a feedback loop that comes in to inform you where to improve. And with the competition heating up across different companies, engineering teams are never gonna settle with sitting around and twiddling their thumbs

 

[borski]

Agreed, even if a project ships, there's always a feedback loop that comes in to inform you where to improve. And with the competition heating up across different companies, engineering teams are never gonna settle with sitting around and twiddling their thumbs

Precisely. I look forward to Silvio righting the path of the company. If he can do that a year from now, we’ll all think this decision was either the right one or uneventful.

If he can’t, I’m certain people will point to this and other decisions (which I’m certain will be made in the future) as where it went wrong.

And either way, we will all have missed a ton of context and are working with imperfect information.

But given that imperfect information, all we have to hope for is that the results speak for themselves eventually, and that what seems like a bad choice today will seem like a good choice in hindsight.

Time will tell.

 

[socktucker]

Precisely. I look forward to Silvio righting the path of the company. If he can do that a year from now, we’ll all think this decision was either the right one or uneventful.

If he can’t, I’m certain people will point to this and other decisions (which I’m certain will be made in the future) as where it went wrong.

And either way, we will all have missed a ton of context and are working with imperfect information.

But given that imperfect information, all we have to hope for is that the results speak for themselves eventually, and that what seems like a bad choice today will seem like a good choice in hindsight.

Time will tell.

Hoping for a turn around and not a post mortem.

 

[gaskiller]

Instead celebrating the successful rollout of 3.6.0 for gravity; here we are mourning Emad. Not sure why Lucid can't have good news without adjacent bad news.

I hope Silvio knows what he is doing or whoever is advising him know what they are doing.

In any case; I have come to believe Lucid board of directors doesn't have shareholders interest at heart. They have a secret agenda we don't know about.

They have one goal- establish a successful automobile manufacturing hub in Saudi Arabia!

 

[gaskiller]

I agree. They should’ve hired a car guy as CEO. Taking 14 months to get the new CEO in place was a colossal mistake. Now there’s the learning curve of getting up to speed on the automotive business in addition to learning Lucid. It would’ve been better to hire a Mark Fields or José Muñoz type of executive. The stock price would’ve reacted better IMO.

Tesla and Rivian still have their founders. Emad wasn’t the founder, but he was close being the godfather of the powertrain, the heart of the vehicles.

I’m just sick over Emad leaving. I’m now very seriously questioning Lucid’s long-term viability. I leased my Dream Edition with the intention of buying it out, but now I’m having real anxiety over whether Lucid will still be around if I do.

Nope, they don’t need a car guy who only knows ICE. They don’t need a tech guy. They need a CEO who can cut their cash burn and establish an international company

 

[socktucker]

They have one goal- establish a successful automobile manufacturing hub in Saudi Arabia!

and they've been consistent about this too

 

[Pwmac]

Precisely. I look forward to Silvio righting the path of the company. If he can do that a year from now, we’ll all think this decision was either the right one or uneventful.

RemindMe! 1 year

 

[martinjlm]

You make many good points. Speaking for myself, I have not argued that Dlala should have become CEO. The question I have regarding his departure is why?

Just for the sake of clarity, my post was not written from the perspective of Emad Dlala leaving because of not be considered for CEO. I don't know if that was the case, or if he was even interested in the idea. It was simply to address an idea stated that Lucid should have considered a "car guy" for CEO instead of Silvio.

I agree wholeheartedly with each of the points made regarding why Emad may no longer be with the company, but until he or someone in a position to know is willing to discuss we may never know. I can only hope that he is comfortable with the terms of separation and that he is engaged in mapping his next move.

I also hope that he has passed on his vision and legacy to those still at Lucid so that the company may consider to produce excite vehicles and continue to improve the product.

 

[Ktw13]

Silvio did say its more important to decide what we don't do than do.
What he didn't say was its more important to let go someone than hiring someone.

Although he just stepped into the position, he has been studying Lucid for a few months.
I love watching interview with Emad, without him there would be no Zeus and Altlas, without Peter there would be no Air and Gravity.

Emad specialty is computer simulation, it is good for proof of theory and optimisation. At this stage the work is pretty much done, for HR Emad title is too big
and near future contribution would be too little.

Silvio did this for a reason that he believe will be good for the company.

Human/Staff is temporary, but company goes on, Lucid is not a cult group, we don't make untouchable God.