Observing the EV market right now is like watching one of those YouTube videos where someone drops a black widow spider into a glass tank with a praying mantis and waits to see who eats who. A cooling market resulting from factors like higher interest rates has led to Tesla cutting prices and most of its rivals having to follow suit.
The latest to slash thousands of dollars from the cost of its cars is Lucid, whose Air sedan is now up to $10,000 cheaper than it was last week, depending on trim. The Air Grand Touring now costs $115,600, rather than $125,600 and the price of the Air Touring falls from $95,000 to $87,500. There are also savings to made on the all-wheel drive Air Pure: that now costs $74,900, down from $82,400.
This information comes from Reuters, we should say; Lucid’s website still lists the same prices as it did in October. The news agency reports that the Air price reductions are only valid until the end of November to try and drum of some holiday season sales. Come December, they’ll allegedly return to their pre-reduction numbers.
Related: Lucid Built Just 1,550 Airs In Q3, Is Said To Be Losing $338,000 On Each EV Sold
Reuters also says that the price of the rear-wheel drive Air Pure, which was only introduced a few weeks ago, is unchanged at $77,400, which is a little confusing because that would make it $2,500 more expensive than its all-wheel drive brother, a car that previously commanded a $5k premium. One possibility is that the price cuts only refer to models the company holds in stock and that the RWD car isn’t yet available. We’ve asked Lucid for clarification on these prices and will update the story when we hear back. Lucid’s latest price cuts follow a decision by arch rival Tesla to reduce the price of its own Model S sedan by $3,500 to $74,990 in September, and a separate round of cuts made by Lucid in August.
Hopefully the savings will persuade a few more people to sign on the line because as it stands, Lucid looks likely to end the year having built far fewer than the 10,000 EVs it planned to produce during 2023. The startup only built 1,550 vehicles in Q3 and Bloomberg estimates that the firm is burning through $338,000 for every car it makes. In those spider versus praying mantis videos only one bug ever survives – we’d hate to see Lucid fail, but Tesla is a formidable opponent.
