Lucid CEO Says The Company Didn't Know Where Its Own Cars Were

Lucid CEO Silvio Napoli said gaps in the EV maker’s logistics system left it unable to reliably locate its own vehicles, causing delivery delays of up to two weeks and lost orders in the third quarter. The California company built 2,954 vehicles and delivered 3,806 in the quarter, a 7% year-over-year decline, while carrying $1.22 billion in inventory at the end of September. Napoli said recent shipping fixes should let the commercial team sell cars it knows are available same-day for waiting customers. The disclosure matters because Lucid is trying to scale deliveries of its Air and Gravity models against Tesla with far fewer vehicles to track, and execution missteps are costly for a company still burning through inventory. Investors will watch whether the logistics changes lift fourth-quarter deliveries and whether Lucid can convert its inventory backlog into sales as U.S. EV demand firms on high gas prices.