Lucid Air bond holders can get a $7,500 discount if they choose the lease option through Lucid financing. Discount does not apply to other models. The manufacturer has emailed reservations about the details. The email said the offer would come in the form of a capital cost reduction, which would essentially mean their monthly payments would be lower.
It was not clear in Lucid’s email whether the price reduction will apply to all Air variants, including the recently launched Air Pure, the most affordable version of the electric sedan. At a discounted price, the Air Cleaner should be priced at $119,400, which is still a lot of money for the base trim, but it should help Lucid take more places and convert more orders.
It’s unclear why Lucid offers this discount if you rent an Air and not when you buy it outright. The company has struggled to ramp up production enough to deliver the cars to customers, although it could build 7,180 vehicles by 2022, of which it has delivered 4,369 examples.
One clue as to why Lucid is only doing this for leased Air is in the amount of the rebate, which corresponds to a federal tax credit for EVs. Perhaps the rental company can claim this discount and pass the savings on to the customer, not particularly clear, but it could be an explanation. And while this Lucid announcement was inspired by the massive Tesla price cut mentioned earlier, it’s not the same thing. Tesla is already a pretty big automaker, its volume and margins allow it to keep costs down, Lucid is nowhere near the same position, which is why it’s going with this lease discount.
A month ago, Lucid was able to call customers who had canceled their order 14 times to confirm the cancellation. Lucid produced a total of 3,687 vehicles in the first three quarters of this year, falling short of the pace needed to hit the plan for the year, when it delivered 6,000 to 7,000 vehicles. Meanwhile, Lucid’s bookings for its cars fell from 37,000 in Q2 to 34,000 in Q3. On the third-quarter earnings call, CFO Sherry House attributed the decline to a mix of inventory and customer cancellations.
