Given the new production guidance - when do we think Touring orders begin production? I understand the stores may be saying Q4, but I would imagine the amount of GT reservations would more than cover this year's production at the adjusted rate?
I wouldn't be totally sure on that. Obviously I'm speculating here. But I figure they have about 5 or 6k GTs total to build, including those already delivered. And if a number of those folks go for the stealth package, Lucid will push them out to next year. Also, anyone ordering a GT in the last month or so might not be prioritized over a Touring or Pure ordered in 2020.
My guess is they will start building Touring sometime in October or November, if they want any hope of delivering any before year's end. (Probably will only deliver a few at most before year's end, but I still think they will want to make that happen. And they'll want to PRODUCE a bunch of them before then, regardless.) Glass roof, Surround Sound Pro, and probably even Dream Drive Pro will be built first, so regardless of order date, if you don't want those options, you will likely not be in the first few batches. Stealth, of course, also automatically pushes your production start date into 2023. (Though, from the looks of it, stealth will be available before the solid roof will be.)
Assuming start of production in October, they would likely start confirming in September. If we don't hear of anyone here getting confirmed by late September, we'll know I'm wrong.
In order to get Pure going before the end of the year, I'm assuming a second shift will be producing them separately. They could have a third shift so they can build all three trims simultaneously, but I still guess it more likely they will temporarily halt GT production and have that line building Touring. They still have bottlenecks between the factory and the delivery centers, so they probably don't want to be churning out three times the output just yet. Although they may have the space at Casa Grande, each car built but not delivered is unrealized revenue.
It probably won't take them more than a few months to get the bulk of Touring (with the above mentioned options) built. We don't have the breakdown on how many reservations are for each trim, but we know the vast majority are Pure, and Touring is, by a wide margin, the smallest group. Maybe 2 or 3k altogether? Subtract the solid roofs, the non-upgraded sound, the stealth, and how many are left?
The real question is how many people who don't want those first-run options on their Touring will be convinced to pay the extra to get their cars a bit sooner? Or conversely, how many will be convinced to pay less and keep the platinum look, even if they want the stealth? Hard to know. Touring is going to be an interesting challenge for Lucid, as they are going to have to batch options way more than they had to for GT, or will have to for Pure. I think order date still matters, obviously, but it's going to be less of a factor than with the other trims as a result.
If it proves to be a real pain in the butt managing all these options, they may just discontinue Touring after the current run of reservations is finished. Who knows?
