They are doing exactly what you would expect from a newly public Company with no real good news to announce and it is exactly the wrong thing to do. They are letting the press, their customers, their future customers, current investors and future investors control the narrative. They are hoping to be able to spin some good forward-looking news/optimism in with the bad results. This is a Company that did not make the deliveries they had hoped and communicated due to whatever factors they want to blame. This is a Company that appears to be having supply chain problems along with the rest of the world. This is a Company that is having software issues along with some scattered hardware issues that appear to be basic and challenging. The screen issues come to mind and those issues are a big deal. They are not something that can be overlooked when driving the car on a day-to-day basis. This is a Company that appears to have no real chance at making the production number guidance they have given.
With all of these issues, they have decided to remain in hiding as long as possible hoping to have something good to say by the time they absolutely have to make all of this bad news public. They will get questions from analysts about all of these issues along with how each of these issues impacts guidance, both operational and financial. They are still in an bit of a honeymoon period, but they will start getting hammered by the analysts if they can't make numbers and they keep giving vague answers.
I was not surprised at all by a lack of Lucid commercials. The last thing they really can afford to do is get a flood of orders they can't possibly keep up with. Peter's own reasoning behind the rollout delay to "get the car right" has proven to bite him in the "you know what" along with his claiming that Lucid would not be like XXX. The whole excuse of a "blackout period" does not hold water. That "blackout period" is theoretically the time between the period end and when you make the period end results public. It is a blackout period where no Company personnel or certain others are restricted from trading due to Insider trading. By waiting until the last possible time to release results, they have created to greatest possible risk for insider trading. I really hope all of this is just a bump in the road, so to speak.
IMO, they are actually somewhat lucky they have not been able to produce as many as they might otherwise like to at this point. The number of service centers currently active would, in no way, be able to keep up with the issues they are having. Remember, there are only a handful of operational service centers, 4 in CA, 1 in Seattle and only 3 east of the Mississippi and 1 in Houston.
