Lucid cuts 18% of U.S. workforce as COO exits immediately

Lucid Group is cutting about 18% of its U.S. workforce and Chief Operating Officer Marc Winterhoff is leaving immediately, a stark sign that the luxury EV maker is shifting from expansion to defense. The company said the move will touch full-time employees, contractors and hourly production workers, as demand cools and competition across the electric-vehicle market intensifies.

The company expects to substantially complete the reduction by the end of the third quarter of 2026, subject to local law and consultation requirements. Lucid also said it eliminated the second shift at its AMP-1 factory in Arizona, a production cut that suggests management is aligning output more closely with sales.

Lucid said the plan should deliver about $158 million in annualized cost savings, while generating roughly $32 million in severance, employee-benefit and employee-transition charges. The latest cut is the company’s second major layoff round this year after a reduction of about 12% of its U.S. workforce in February, underscoring how aggressively Lucid is trying to preserve cash and reduce inventory.

The timing is especially telling because Lucid has recently suspended production guidance while reviewing the business under new Chief Executive Silvio Napoli, who took over on June 1 after being named incoming CEO on April 14. The leadership changes, combined with the workforce reduction, point to a company trying to simplify decision-making and narrow its focus as the EV market becomes less forgiving.

Lucid’s operating numbers show the scale of the challenge. In the first quarter of 2026, the company produced 5,500 vehicles and delivered 3,093. It produced 15,841 vehicles across all of 2025 and ended that year with about $4.6 billion in total liquidity, but those figures have not insulated it from the industrywide slowdown now hitting makers at every price point.

The company’s April financing package brought in about $1.05 billion through a $300 million common-stock offering and previously announced investments from Uber and Ayar Third Investment Company, an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Uber also increased its purchase commitment to at least 35,000 Lucid vehicles for a future global robotaxi service, giving Lucid a longer runway even as it remains dependent on outside capital and strategic deals.

That tension now defines the U.S. EV sector: customers are gravitating toward lower-priced models, established automakers and new entrants are fighting harder for share, and policy shifts have made the market less forgiving. For Lucid, the layoffs read less like a temporary reset than a warning that survival, not growth, is becoming the central job.