Lucid has forcefully denied speculation that it could file for bankruptcy, going so far as to send a cease-and-desist letter to the publication that claimed the automaker was weighing Chapter 11 protection or a take-private deal. The company’s response has been unusually aggressive for a matter it insists carries no substance, escalating from a public rebuttal to legal action and a regulatory filing in a matter of days.

Read: Lucid To Lay Off 18% Of Its US Workforce, Just Four Months After Cutting 12%

It all started earlier this week, when media outlet @EV_carba (Electric-Vehicles.com) reported that it had heard from unnamed sources that Lucid had been in talks with advisor AlixPartners, which reportedly urged it to restructure in the US and Europe and to prioritize the Gravity SUV. That could mean filing for bankruptcy protection or going private, prompted by the company’s struggling share price and pressure from Saudi Arabian investors.

The CEO Responds

Lucid quickly responded to the report. Writing on LinkedIn, chief executive Silvio Napoli labeled the reports “false,” although he did not deny that the EV maker is working with outside advisors to improve.

“Lucid is not considering bankruptcy or a transaction to take the company private,” he said. “Those reports are false. The Board did not explore either scenario. Period. As disclosed in our most recent quarterly filing, Lucid has sufficient liquidity to fund its operations well into next year.”

$LCID has delivered a cease-and-desist letter to @EV_carba regarding reporting that falsely claimed the company was considering bankruptcy or a take-private transaction. Those claims have been publicly and unequivocally denied, including in an SEC filing. pic.twitter.com/9P0PocFdCl

— Nick Twork (@ntwork) July 15, 2026

“We work with outside advisors to improve operational performance and execution. They are not advising Lucid on a take-private transaction or bankruptcy, and any suggestion that they have recommended either course of action to management or the Board is false.”

Screenshots have since emerged online showing the cease-and-desist letter that Lucid sent to electric-vehicles, the website that published the report. It said that “publication of inaccurate factual statements concerning a publicly traded company is extraordinarily serious,” noting it “undermines investor confidence, creates unnecessary uncertainty, and can materially distort the market’s assessment of the company.”

Shares Plummet, Then Rebound

Lucid also directly blamed the report for prompting a sell-off of its shares, noting prices fell from $5.51 to as low as $2.37, causing “serious injury to a number of investors.” The stock shed more than half its value at Tuesday’s intraday lows and was halted several times for volatility before the denial pared the damage, leaving it down about 16 percent at the close.

However, the recovery came fast. As The Motley Fool reported, shares rocketed 28.8 percent on Wednesday to close at $5.95, slightly above where they traded before the report broke, on volume of 55.6 million shares, roughly 169 percent above the three-month average. The rebound stretched into a second day, with the stock climbing another 12 percent on Thursday to trade around $6.69, back above its 50-day moving average for the first time since the rumors surfaced.

Regardless of where the truth lies, it’s obvious that things are not going that well for Lucid. In June, it said it was laying off 18 percent of its US employees, just four months after a separate round of layoffs cut its local workforce by 12 percent.

Eager to offload surplus supplies of 2026 Gravity models, Lucid has announced an aggressive financing deal for the all-electric SUV. Whether it’ll be enough to sell the leftover inventory remains to be seen, but it certainly brings the Gravity within reach of more prospective shoppers.

According to a report from EV, the offer was first sent via email to customers in the US earlier this week, before being added to Lucid’s website. It notes the Gravity Touring and Grand Touring are available with zero percent financing for 72 months, but notes buyers must take delivery by July 31.

Read: Lucid Is Blaming Someone Else For The Gravity’s Second Recall In Four Months

The Lucid Gravity is also available to finance over 84 months with a monthly fee of $681, plus a $20,000 down payment. Those interested in leasing are in luck, too, as the 2026 Gravity is available with a $10,000 discount. Currently, it’s available to lease for $699 a month for the Touring and $949 a month for the Grand Touring, both over 24 months.

It’s unclear how many examples of the 2026 Gravity Lucid still holds in its inventory. It unveiled the tweaked 2027 model at the start of April, increasing the vehicle’s price tag by $4,000 but adding features as standard that were previously options, such as the DreamDrive 2 Premium advanced driver-assistance system.

Is Now The Time To Buy?

This is far from the first time that Lucid has tried to match Gravity’s sales. As of March, the financing rate had been cut to zero percent for 60 months and was available alongside up to $12,500 in lease incentives. As part of the existing deals, existing Lucid customers will be offered an additional $3,000 loyalty credit. A $3,000 trade-in allowance is also available for non-Lucid vehicles, excluding those from Ineos.

The drive to sell remaining 2026 Gravity models comes after a disappointing quarter for the American brand. Across the April-June period, it delivered 3,953 vehicles, below analyst expectations. During the quarter, it built 4,774 vehicles, fewer than the 5,500 that it built in the first quarter of this year.

Lucid is doing all it can to get the Cosmos crossover to market quickly, but before that, it’s cutting more of its workforce and seemingly hitting the reset button… again. Four months after laying off 12% of its workforce, the EV startup is cutting another 18% of its U.S. employees while simultaneously shutting down a production shift at its Arizona factory.

The move affects full-time staff, contractors, and hourly workers alike. The automaker’s biggest issue might not be production or development, but rather, finding buyers.

The company announced the cuts Monday alongside the immediate departure of former interim CEO and chief operating officer Marc Winterhoff. Lucid is eliminating the COO position entirely as part of a broader restructuring effort under new CEO Silvio Napoli, who officially stepped into the top job on June 1.

Read: Lucid’s Sub-$50K Cosmos EV Revealed In Patent Drawings

According to Lucid, the layoffs should generate approximately $158 million in annualized savings while costing about $32 million in severance and related expenses. “These are difficult decisions taken to align production with demand, reduce inventory, and adapt to declining market conditions,” a Lucid spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. “They are part of a broader effort to simplify the company, sharpen execution, and position Lucid to become more competitive over time.” That mention of demand is the key detail here.

Lucid has pretty much already proven that it can build a world-class EV. The Air is a sincerely impressive electric sedan. The Gravity takes that formula and applies it to a three-row SUV praised for its range, luxury, and performance. Despite that, none of the brand’s efforts have resulted in the kind of sales volume needed to support a brand with thousands of employees and ambitions of becoming a major player in the industry.

The elimination of the second shift at Lucid’s AMP-1 factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, underscores the problem. Automakers don’t typically idle production capacity when demand is outpacing supply. Earlier this year, Lucid produced roughly 5,500 vehicles in the first quarter but delivered just over 3,000, leaving inventory levels higher than executives would like.

That’s what makes the brand’s upcoming Cosmos crossover such a big deal. Increasing overall demand is absolutely vital for Lucid right now. The Cosmos is supposed to start at under $50,000, which automatically opens up a whole new demographic of buyers. If Lucid can manage to take some sales away from Tesla and other rivals in the process, these layoffs could eventually look like very wise belt-tightening. If it doesn’t, they’ll just look like one more step away from the success Lucid once hoped for.

Image Credits: Lucid

Most modern EVs look like long-haul champions on the spec sheet, but the paper numbers and the real world don’t always shake hands. The Norwegian Automobile Federation (NAF) and its independent membership magazine Motor are back with the bi-annual “El Prix” range test, putting 24 electric models through their paces to see which ones live up to their official WLTP ratings, and which ones fall flat.

This round was run under the kindest conditions an EV could ask for. NAF conducted the test during the Norwegian summer, with dry roads and temperatures hovering between 12 and 18°C (53.6 to 64.4°F).

More: EV Range Claims Still Sound Great, Until Freezing Temps Hit

The standout was the new BMW iX3 50 xDrive, which covered 781 km (485 miles) on a single charge. That’s not just close to its claim, it’s 1.5 percent beyond its official WLTP figure and a hefty 11.7 percent more than its advertised EPA range.

Predictably, the new iX3 posted a much higher range figure than the model it replaces. Even so, NAF points out that the previous-gen iX3 tested back in 2021 still holds the all-time summer record for positive deviation, beating its rating by 23.5 percent with 556 km (345 miles) of range.

More: EV Speed Comes At A Price, So Where’s The Sweet Spot?

As for the ultimate record for the longest range, it belongs to the Lucid Air that achieved 832 km (517 miles) in the summer of 2025. This year Lucid showed up with the Gravity SUV instead, which ran for 720 km (447 miles) before the battery gave out, falling 3.7 percent short of its expected figure.

The BMW drove the furthest, but the most impressive result of the year came from the XPeng X9. The Chinese minivan posted a real-world range of 646 km (401 miles), beating its WLTP rating of 580 km (360 miles) by 11.4 percent. That kind of overachievement is nothing new for XPeng, as the G9 SUV topped its advertised range by 13 percent back in the 2023 test.

More: This EV’s Real Range Misses By 23% But That’s Not The Worst Part

At the opposite end sat another Chinese model, the MG IM6 sedan, which managed just 446 km (277 miles), falling 11.7 percent short of its WLTP figure. Nils Sødal, senior communications adviser at NAF, said the result caught the team off guard: “We were surprised to see such a large negative deviation for this MG, especially when the other MG model, the S6, achieved a positive deviation of 3.4 per cent.”

The rest of the field stayed within a tight band, deviating from their stated range by anywhere from -5.7 to +5.4 percent, helped along by the dry roads and mild summer temperatures.

Interestingly, the facelifted Toyota bZ4X perfectly matched its WLTP figure of 506 km (314 miles) on the real-world test. However, the driver stated that the Japanese model showed 0% remaining battery 18 km (11 miles) before it actually ran dry. Keep in mind that NAF pushes these EVs to their absolute limit, driving each one until it’s completely discharged.

Below you can see the results for the full batch of 24 EVs that took part in the summer 2026 edition of the “El Prix,” ranked from the longest to the shortest range on a single charge.

Test Results

Lucid has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in recent weeks. Not only has it been forced to buy back an Air from popular YouTuber Jason Fenske due to a dizzying array of faults, but it was also recently forced to recall vehicles with half-shaft bolts that may not have been properly secured. It’s now been prompted to issue yet another recall, once again for the Air.

As with April’s recall, this one is also limited to the Air Pure RWD models. The electric car manufacturer says these vehicles have its Gen 4 inverters, which may experience signal interruptions and module failures due to damage from friction between internal connectors.

Read: Lucid’s Fix For Losing Drive Power Is A Notification That You’re About To Lose Drive Power

If the connectors sustain damage, it could cause a complete loss of power, as it’ll prevent the inverter from converting DC power into the AC power needed to operate the motor. This is obviously a safety issue, particularly if the failure occurs while driving.

A total of 2,039 vehicles are involved in this recall. All of them were manufactured between September 13, 2023, and December 12, 2024.

OTA Update Before Replacements

Lucid first noticed inverter failures in March 2025, in cars run by a US fleet operator. The early assumption was that fleet use explained it, since those vehicles pile on miles far quicker than privately owned ones. That theory did not hold. Failures soon turned up in non-fleet Air Pure RWD cars too, and by March 2026, the company had logged 55 of them.

Rather than immediately replacing all inverters, Lucid will roll out an over-the-air software update that detects potential failures and triggers a warning on the instrument cluster, which must be cleared by a dealer. Vehicles that receive this warning will be eligible for inverter replacement. Owners of vehicles who don’t receive this warning won’t be eligible for a replacement.

On paper, the Lucid Air is one of the most accomplished electric sedans on sale, a technological tour de force wrapped in clean bodywork with class-leading efficiency. For one prominent YouTuber, the past eleven months of actually living with one have been a study in attrition.

Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained signed a three-year lease on a 2025 Lucid Air Touring last year. The problems started almost immediately. Door handles, phone-as-key functionality, the cupholder, the list grew quickly. Lucid reached out and promised to sort it.

Watch: Popular YouTuber Got Critical With Lucid, And Things Didn’t End With A Shrug

Fast forward a few months, and the YouTuber has reached his breaking point. During a recent four-day road trip, the Air kept suffering problems. For example, there was a time when the rear doors couldn’t be opened, even though they were unlocked. The HVAC system threw its own curveball.

As his dog sat in the rear, he noticed it was getting too hot. He checked the air vents and realized that while both were set to 65°F, one side was blowing much hotter than the other. He also experienced an issue where the reversing lines on the screen with the reversing camera would randomly disappear, and, most annoyingly, a number of Apple CarPlay issues, including it completely failing to load.

Then There’s A Big Safety Issue

His biggest issue is particularly concerning. Fenske also drives his Lucid Air with the vehicle’s Stop Mode set to hold. This essentially means that when it comes to a stop, it will automatically hold without applying the brake. It can also be set to roll, as a traditional automatic car would if you let off the brake while stopped. One time, when the YouTuber turned on the EV, put it into reverse, and lifted off the brake pedal, the car randomly started rolling forward. If this had happened on a steep hill, it could have caused an accident.

After contacting Lucid, the company first suggested it could take back Fenske’s Air and replace it with a like-for-like example, allowing him to continue his lease. That plan fell apart when Lucid couldn’t source a matching Air, so the automaker instead agreed to buy back the EV outright and reimburse him for every payment he’s made. It works out well for Fenske, though owners dealing with the same issue, minus the 4.2 million YouTube subscribers, probably shouldn’t expect identical treatment.

Lucid Motors should be doing great as they finally added a much-needed crossover to their lineup in the form of the Gravity. The model was recently named World Luxury Car, but it hasn’t reversed the company’s fortunes.

Given this, the automaker has announced a series of developments including the appointment of a new CEO. Silvio Napoli has been tapped for the top spot and he’ll replace interim CEO Marc Winterhoff, who will be transitioning to COO.

More: Uber And Lucid Partner For Thousands Of Robotaxis

While Napoli isn’t a household name, he was previously CEO of Switzerland’s Schindler Group, which makes elevators, escalators, and moving walks. That’s not exactly automotive experience, but Lucid praised his “deep operational expertise, financial discipline, and track record of leadership in innovation.”

In a Form 8-K filing, Lucid revealed Napoli will have a base salary of $1,500,000 and the potential to make $4,500,000 if certain performance targets are hit. He’s also getting up to $25,000 per month in temporary housing expenses for half a year as well as a “lump sum payment of $1,000,000 to cover any expenses in connection with moving to the US.”

Napoli will also get two company cars, security, as well as tax and financial planning support. If that wasn’t enough, the company also mentioned a “long-term incentive grant” with a target value of $9,500,000.

Bigger Uber Order And New Investments

Besides announcing a new CEO, Lucid revealed Uber is increasing their previously announced order of at least 20,000 Gravity SUVs to be used as robotaxis as part of a three-way tie up with Nuro. The service is scheduled to launch this year in the San Francisco Bay area and eventually spread to dozens of markets around the world.

The order has now been expanded to at least 35,000 vehicles and the ride-hailing giant has also promised to invest an additional $200 million into Lucid. This will raise their total investment into the firm to $500 million.

Uber isn’t the only one forking over the dough as the Ayar Third Investment Company is pumping $550 million into Lucid. They’re an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is a major backer of the automaker.

Winterhoff said “Today’s announcement demonstrates the growing strength of our relationship with Uber, our continued partnership with the PIF, and the benefits our software-defined EV platforms bring to next-generation mobility networks.” He added, “This is yet another milestone in our partnership with Uber and Nuro, and we look forward to building on our momentum together in the years to come.”