Lucid Investor Day - March 12, 2026

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At the end of the day, it's the same story: they have the best hard product in the EV realm but Americans largely have a limited appetite for EVs, and Lucid's marketing continues to be bad.
Is Lucid's marketing actually bad? Or just disappointing to you personally? The Air is selling extremely well for its category, beating the volume of EV competitors, and also faring well against ICE competitors. The Gravity is harder to assess given the quality problems and the production ramp up make it harder to judge how much demand Lucid's marketing is generating, but the sales of Gravity seem to be fairly robust so far, and limited more by supply than demand.
 
I'm confused about the autonomy roadmap. The presenter mentioned hands free highway and city driving specifically for Gravity and Cosmos in 2027. L3 eyes off driving in 2028, and L4 hands off, eyes off and mind off by 2029. Does this mean that Air owners WON'T get hands off city driving, L3 or L4? Was our DDPro purchase with 32 sensors, integrating cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors, and LiDAR a waste?
No one really knows. Autonomous driving continues to be a research problem, even for leaders like Waymo. At this point, it's wise to assume that any vehicle you buy today or in the past will not be capable of autonomous driving. As the technology matures, I imagine most vehicle manufacturers will offer it on whichever older vehicles prove capable of it, since they'll want to get as many customers as possible paying them the subscription fee for autonomy. But the engineering team at Lucid won't know which vehicles are actually capable of running the software until they're farther along in their R&D.
 
Cost for hardware, sure but its probably marginal to have a modem that is quad band or tri band or however many band there are these days.

The bigger issue is negotiating a contract for each of these carriers. Its incredibly redundant to have each car have a cellular contract with three carriers. That's 3x the cost for something you are only going to be using one at a time.
I use Google Fi for cell service. It is a virtual provider that multiplexes traffic across the available underlying cell networks. I find it works great, but I imagine that maintaining the business relationships with all the underlying cell providers has a lot of complexity to it. These days, most cell phones are built with antennae that can cover most if not all of the cell phone frequencies in use.
 
No one really knows. Autonomous driving continues to be a research problem, even for leaders like Waymo
My friend literally has a doctorate in neural networks for autonomous driving. He has said that Tesla is the best, but still not good, and that the whole industry is lying it’s ass off, and that we are ten years out minimum, if something like L3 or L4 even happens at all.
 
The best seller of the worst segment doesn’t pay the bills
Perhaps not, but it does indicate some degree of marketing competence.

Rawlinson once said in an interview that Lucid didn't want to make a sedan as its first vehicle, but a big investor insisted. I'd be fascinated to know who that investor was. It's not clear that it was the Saudis.
 
My friend literally has a doctorate in neural networks for autonomous driving. He has said that Tesla is the best, but still not good, and that the whole industry is lying it’s ass off, and that we are ten years out minimum, if something like L3 or L4 even happens at all.
I work in a related field doing AI. The timeline depends a lot on what you really mean by "autonomous driving", which is a surprisingly vague term. If you mean drive anywhere at anytime, and without any kind of remote operations center to assist, than your friend is correct. But if you mean driving on commonly travelled paved roads, and only needing an remote operations center to occasionally assist, than we're closer than 10 years. Similarly if you mean "getting into an accident 10% as frequently as a sober, experienced human driver" versus 25% as frequently versus equally frequently then you'll get quite different timelines.
 
I work in a related field doing AI. The timeline depends a lot on what you really mean by "autonomous driving", which is a surprisingly vague term. If you mean drive anywhere at anytime, and without any kind of remote operations center to assist, than your friend is correct. But if you mean driving on commonly travelled paved roads, and only needing a remote operations center to occasionally assist, than we're closer than 10 years. Similarly if you mean "getting into an accident 10% as frequently as a sober, experienced human driver" versus 25% as frequently versus equally frequently then you'll get quite different timelines.
This was in reference to a “Full Self Driving” discussion before Tesla put so many disclaimers on it that the terms had become meaningless.

Beyond that point I got mostly lost.
 
I use Google Fi for cell service. It is a virtual provider that multiplexes traffic across the available underlying cell networks. I find it works great, but I imagine that maintaining the business relationships with all the underlying cell providers has a lot of complexity to it. These days, most cell phones are built with antennae that can cover most if not all of the cell phone frequencies in use.
I think Fi just uses the Tmobile network. It used to be Tmobile and Sprint, but they merged.
 
Is Lucid's marketing actually bad? Or just disappointing to you personally? The Air is selling extremely well for its category, beating the volume of EV competitors, and also faring well against ICE competitors. The Gravity is harder to assess given the quality problems and the production ramp up make it harder to judge how much demand Lucid's marketing is generating, but the sales of Gravity seem to be fairly robust so far, and limited more by supply than demand.
I get a fair number of compliments on my Air from random people but most have never heard of Lucid.
 
I think that's more a function of Air having a small addressable market. Most people hear about these things via word of mouth or by seeing them in person. Air had few sales and Gravity only just started ramping. I'd expect brand awareness to increase significantly over the next two years.
 
FWIW, investors don't seem too impressed with Investor Day. Stock is down 7% today so far. (Overall market down 1%.) 😞
Sell the news for both Rivian and Lucid, not a big deal….if they execute, sky is the limit for those who buy at these levels.
 
One can only hope that, in the interest of simplicity, they did not outline the Air roadmap to satisfy the lesser, but clear PROMISES made to those of us who paid for more of the L2 and at least basic L3 functionality than we have today. That, or they will be facing one heckuva lot of unhappy early adopters. And please, you revisionists out there... their promises were clear. They can be watered down in subsequent presentations all they want, but that does not make them go away.
That’s the nature of EVs….software improvements will be exponential, and a big reason they depreciate a lot. A regular ICE vehicle won’t show such improvements from on model year to the next. But if you want robotaxis or level 4/5, EV is the way to get there
 
Good morning from Germany,
since yesterday, i am glad to be a member in this great community. May be i will switch from Tesla to Lucid. Lets see. Acutally i cant enrole to todays investors day. Could you or somebody help me? I did follow the link and already confirmed my eMail. Greetings, Markus

Though the presentation slides and recording are both published, I will still share my summaries and notes to deliver on my promise. Feel free to inform me of corrections that need to be made.

Erwin Raphael (SVP of Revenue)
-> With Model S and X discontinuing, Lucid intends to introduce this segment of customers to the Lucid line up.
-> Lucid Air was the top-selling luxury sedan in the US, outselling the Tesla Model S, BMW i5, and Porsche Taycan.
-> Even across traditional gasoline vehicles, the Lucid Air was the third best-selling luxury sedan in the US behind the BMW 5-Series and Mercedes E-Class. It even out-sold the BMW 7-series and Mercedes S-Class.
-> As midsize scales up, we can expect Gravity costs to go down as well.
-> November and December ramp-up demonstrate that the 25k-27k production target is possible.
-> Lucid is bullish on Europe because Europe sees a 20% increase in adoption, with Germany being of particular interest to Lucid.

Derek Jenkins (SVP of Design)
-> Acknowledges that midsize is a price-sensitive segment.
-> Midsize customers separated into 3 distinct customer segments: on-road performance/dynamics (Lucid Cosmos), any-road adventure-focus (yet to be announced), and a middle ground between the two (Lucid Earth).
-> The three vehicles from the midsize platform intend to tackle each segment.
-> Identified customer segments plus Air and Gravity market account for 60% of the total EV market.
-> Cosmos drag coefficient to be below 0.22, will focus on sportiness and movement, yet will still target being a leader in terms of space in its category
-> Interior layout will have just one large screen (but with a few tactile buttons) with mechanical analogue door handles, both inside and outside (one personaudibly cheered in the crowd at this lol).
-> AI assistant to be integrated to perform both edge and cloud computing, plus will be LLM agnostic.

Emad Dlala (SVP Engineering and Software)
-> Focus on efficiency, as it will dictate battery size and mileage driven.
-> Midsize will have 800V battery and zonal architecture.
-> Atlas drive unit officially revealed, with goal of lower cost, higher volume, lower weight, and fewer parts.

Zach Walker (Chief Engineerg)
-> Even relative to Gravity, midsize has multiple components merged into one, then assembled directly onto the battery as a single part along the vehicle line.
-> Note that the 69kwh on the slide is not the official battery size, instead it is a reference point to show what is needed for midsize to reach 300 miles compared to the competition.
-> Factory footprint has also improved on the midsize (Saudi Arabia plant) when compared to factory footprint of Air and Gravity (Arizona plant), leading to 40% better footprint efficiency and 50% better labor and overhead.
-> Midsize ECU count reduced to 3 ECUs, with 40% fewer wiring harnesses compared to competition, even claiming that Lucid's team took only 4 minutes to install the harness.
-> Though midsize will not be using gigacastings, it will still use large megacastings with spot-focus use of steel and aluminum (such as extrusions)/
-> Use of steel and aluminum extrusions will allow for cheaper insurance costs and customer repairability/
-> Midsize still features reduced part count for manufacturing cost.

Marc Winterhoff (Interim CEO)
-> Lucid Earth and Cosmos will share 95% of parts
-> Third model will have as much commonality as possible.

Kai Stepper (VP of Autonomy and ADAS)
-> Personal autonomy for consumers, robotaxis to be focused for business-to-business
-> L4 readiness for midsize will be available directly from the factory. (A prior conference discussion with Marc and Taoufiq mentioned that Air and Gravity will require further investment to reach L4 capability)
-> Uber partnership still on track for deployment later in the year.
-> L2++ to L4 autonomy for Dream Drive Pro will have a subscription model.

Marc Winterhoff + Andrew McDonald (Uber President and COO)
-> Uber partnership extends beyond midsize.
-> "Lunar" is a robotaxi concept an design study based on the midsize platform.

Taoufiq Boussaid (Chief Financial Officer)
-> Lucid will be turning from the capital-intensive development stage to focus on the scale stage.
-> Expect 2028 onwards to be when midsize will take the significant portion of production.
-> CapEx was front-loaded for manufacturing infrastructure, expected to shrink in 2027 and drastically reduce by 2028.


My own personal notes
-> Maybe I'm reading too deep into this, but Derek, Emad, and Zach all were wearing Lucid Sapphire pins on their jackets. Given the goal of parts sharing across the midsize line up and the reduction in part count and decreased costs of the Atlas motors, I think a Sapphire trim for the Lucid Cosmos is very much still possible. Previously, Lucid's marketing material mentioned how the Air Sapphire's learnings helped inform the Gravity's development. I think we can expect the same process with midsize, where a Sapphire Cosmos could be released, and the learnings from that can help guide the development direction of Earth and the unannounced adventure vehicle.
-> Happy to see Lucid emphasize repairability with midsize. This is especially important because this will affect insurance rates, and this segment of the market is more sensitive to changes in insurance premiums.
-> Excited to see Lucid expand more into Europe, where it can further prove its credentials in driving dynamics. I think the Cosmos in particular will sell well in Europe, given it's on-road focus.
-> I'm not surprised that 2026 and 2027 will still see a sizeable amount of CapEx, as there is still the need for investment to scale up production.
-> I think the three models across midsize's lineup give Lucid the flexibility and breathing room it needs to take on the adventure-focused Rivian buyer and also the on-road focused performance buyer (such as the BMW Neue Klasse ix3). The reduced costs and focus on parts sharing/commonality could help with creating specialized trims for each of the midsize vehicles (such as a Sapphire trim mentioned previously or even an off-road focus trim like the Lucid Gravity X concept).
 
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Perhaps not, but it does indicate some degree of marketing competence.

Rawlinson once said in an interview that Lucid didn't want to make a sedan as its first vehicle, but a big investor insisted. I'd be fascinated to know who that investor was. It's not clear that it was the Saudis.
I’m guessing the Saudis, they like their Mercedes S classes……
 
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