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Marc Winteroff out

NoseyReporter said:
At every company I've ever worked at, when a new "boss" starts, heads roll. It always happens. Soon, you'll see new hires, people he trusts.

I will admit, the new CEO is particularly quick.
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True and he has to be because cosmos should be coming pretty soon, drone strikes and chip shortage notwithstanding.

Do these measures cut costs, yes. However, with the caper buildout cost of a new manufacturing plant (and whatever the nikola facilty will become) it is noise. It may alter the quarterly financial pictures in a way some analysts may like, but this is more about control and alignment. Hopefully not penny wise and pound foolish, cosmos ramp will be the barometer that matters.
 
socktucker said:
The stock is still basically unaffected. Anybody buying some??
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Historically, when a publicly traded company announces layoffs the stock value increases about 3%. This trend was stronger but is waning in recent years.
 
illopp00 said:
I think this was kind of known, the sales were trending to single digit growth for this year...
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I do think that people need to be prepared for less than stellar growth on the Lucid front on the next earnings call through no fault of their own. In this market, when you start seeing 0% offers and x number of months free to encourage people to buy a car across all brands its clear car sales are suffering as a whole.
 
HC_79 said:
I do think that people need to be prepared for less than stellar growth on the Lucid front on the next earnings call through no fault of their own. In this market, when you start seeing 0% offers and x number of months free to encourage people to buy a car across all brands its clear car sales are suffering as a whole.
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Yeah, I've been on the perspective to expect Q2 to be more of a "recovery" period and we'll probably start seeing the first fruits of Napoli's direction towards Q3/Q4. I'll take the opportunity to re-state that here
 
HC_79 said:
I do think that people need to be prepared for less than stellar growth on the Lucid front on the next earnings call through no fault of their own. In this market, when you start seeing 0% offers and x number of months free to encourage people to buy a car across all brands its clear car sales are suffering as a whole.
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EV demand in the US is pretty weak right now, in general. Last numbers I saw show EV market share has fallen to around 6%, after peaking above 8% in prior years.
 
The powers of observation of this group are not always impressive.

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funnynardo said:
new management should really consolidate the options available on gravity and air to make manufacturing simpler and make it easier for customers to find a car they want in the inventory.

number of possible combinations of options excluding exterior color/trim appearance, wheels, and interior color:
gravity touring: 192
gravity grand touring: 32
air touring: 32

rivian r1s dual standard, tri, quad: 1
rivian r1s dual: 2 (4 if counting battery size)

cybertruck: 2

sure one can argue that with lucid you can customize the vehicle exactly to your liking, like in the german cars, but with this many variants especially for a new company trying to ramp up a lower volume product, i think it may be wiser to consolidate all options and include hardware into the vehicle and software lock some (like ddpro, similar to tesla fsd and rivian autonomy+). that way you dont build up inventory with randomly generated configurations that no one wants to buy. if an inventory car includes all the hardware already from factory, customer can just pay to activate what they want. doesnt have to be a subscription, but can be a one time purchase. also why is lucid charging for options in a 100k luxury suv that 45k model y includes for free like heated seats and steering wheel? while existing mb, porsche, and bmw customers are probably used to stuff like this, i think it is worth trying to capture some of the massive tesla and rivian customer base. there are reasons why model y and model 3 are by far the best selling evs, and i wouldnt be surprised if r2 is up there also.
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They did that in 2022 with their original launches of Touring GT & Touring. That was the right approach. A handful of options.

With the $7,500 Federal tax incentive expiring at the time, and the ridiculous new incentive structure, they needed to deliver an SUV for $80k. Result? Make every feature an option, and charge more for each. Result of that? Inventory management complexity and delivery delays due to having to change the assembly line for various options. Bad Operational decision to approve that idea.
 
HC_79 said:
Looking at elevators as just 'dumb boxes' misses what that industry actually is today. It’s actually a massive tech, logistics, and hardware-software integration ecosystem, which is exactly where Lucid needs to scale right now.

Over the last decade, the major elevator players have shifted entirely to AI and cloud connected platforms. They manage millions of connected units globally, utilizing real time sensor telemetry, predictive maintenance algorithms, and massive cloud infrastructure. It’s heavy software defined engineering, just vertical.

Furthermore, the industry is fiercely competitive on hardware efficiency and software integration-handling advanced robotics, magnetic levitation (maglev) linear motors, and destination dispatch algorithms that optimize traffic flow using complex data modeling.

Lucid has already proven it has world class foundational EV engineering. What it needs now isn't just another visionary startup inventor; it needs a CEO who understands complex global supply chains, heavy industrial scaling, high-uptime software networks, and razor-thin margin execution in an ultra-competitive global market. If this new CEO can bring that level of rigorous corporate scaling and tech integration to Lucid's manufacturing and OTA pipelines, it might be exactly the operational pivot the company needs to survive and scale.
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This is one of the most informative and interesting post I've read on this site. Well done.
 
socktucker said:
That makes this layoff make sense then doesn't it? I don't see the alarm here.
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Yes, as long as Air and Gravity demand stays modest, which is no surprise given that (a) they're high price luxury vehicles, and (b) EV demand has not only grown slower than many predicted but actually shrank in the US (from ~8% to ~6% market share).

After what we've experienced with Lucid so far, I wouldn't expect Cosmos to be on time either. Add 3-6 months of delays to the 6-12 month lag between AMP-2 (SA) and AMP-1 (US) production for Cosmos, and it seems like we're talking 2028 for US production. Way too long to keep paying a 2nd shift.
 
dbsb3233 said:
Yes, as long as Air and Gravity demand stays modest, which is no surprise given that (a) they're high price luxury vehicles, and (b) EV demand has not only grown slower than many predicted but actually shrank in the US (from ~8% to ~6% market share).

After what we've experienced with Lucid so far, I wouldn't expect Cosmos to be on time either. Add 3-6 months of delays to the 6-12 month lag between AMP-2 (SA) and AMP-1 (US) production for Cosmos, and it seems like we're talking 2028 for US production. Way too long to keep paying a 2nd shift.
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And a very strange war in the Middle East.
 
HC_79 said:
Looking at elevators as just 'dumb boxes' misses what that industry actually is today. It’s actually a massive tech, logistics, and hardware-software integration ecosystem, which is exactly where Lucid needs to scale right now.
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I never gave much thought to elevators being more than dumb appliances, until we took a couple of cruises on the Sun Princess over the last year. It's no longer just pressing UP or DOWN. There's a screen in front of each elevator bank where you touch the floor number you want and it tells you which elevator (A-F) to get on when it arrives. All those requests are managed live (AI?) to spread demand across all the elevators in the bank to dispatch elevators in a way that's most efficient for all. When you get on your assigned elevator, there's no inside buttons to press. You just get off on the floor it's already queued up to stop on.

Saves quite a bit of time on the whole.
 
socktucker said:
And a very strange war in the Middle East.
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That created a 3-mo (so far) spike in gas prices which would normally boost EV market share. Instead it fell. That's gotta be another concern for EV-only automakers (i.e. what will demand be if/when gas prices fall below $3 again?).

Another reason why ending the 2nd (US) shift seems pretty obvious. And makes me wonder if servicing Eastern Hemisphere demand out of AMP-2 and delaying AMP-1 longer could end up being the play for them.
 
Need4Sleep said:
yeah, say what you want about Silvio Napoli, but a CEO who's willing to roll up his sleeves, dives head-on, and get his hands dirty is worth earning respect. Way too many higher ups get too comfortable and are way too scared to work the trenches and fight with their backs against the wall.
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In the absence of a public vision statement from him -> This action I view positivelyfor the same reason you do.

Talk is cheap.

Look at people's actions to see what's really going on.

He's obviously not afraid to own the role and make some quick / needed decisions quickly.

Will there be collateral damage? Almost certainly.

Is it better than dying slowly? I think it's really the only choice going forward.
 
dbsb3233 said:
That created a 3-mo (so far) spike in gas prices which would normally boost EV market share. Instead it fell. That's gotta be another concern for EV-only automakers (i.e. what will demand be if/when gas prices fall below $3 again?).

Another reason why ending the 2nd (US) shift seems pretty obvious. And makes me wonder if servicing Eastern Hemisphere demand out of AMP-2 and delaying AMP-1 longer could end up being the play for them.
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I mean from the Saudi point of view, their whole neighborhood just got weird.
 
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