Here's why Lucid (LCID) stock is down

The political aftershocks of Elon Musk’s stint running DOGE for the Trump administration are still rippling through Washington and the EV market.

DOGE has moved on without him, but Tesla (TSLA) continues to carry the baggage of Musk’s high-profile embrace of right-wing politics, which has left it with the highest consumer disapproval rating of any EV brand.

That’s created an opening for rivals to poach disenchanted Tesla drivers and Lucid (LCID) interim CEO Marc Winterhoff is eager to exploit it.

Speaking with Fox Business in March, he said more than 75% of Lucid’s customers are new to the brand, and roughly half are former Tesla owners.

“We have seen a dramatic uptick in the last two months,” Winterhoff said. “They’re looking for an option to not continue having a Tesla.”

The comments came alongside Lucid’s launch of its 2026 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring SUV, a $95,000-and-up luxury EV that drew glowing reviews.

Fully loaded, the Gravity’s price can easily clear six figures, and it debuted just as President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement sowed economic fears.

Nowhere to go but up?

The luxury EV SUV segment may be even weaker than expected.

According to Market Intelligence data, Lucid sold zero units of the Gravity in July, the third consecutive month without a single U.S. sale after goose-egg reports in May and June.

Instead, all deliveries came from Lucid’s Air sedan, which starts at $70,900. The company moved 890 Airs in July, a 28% year-over-year increase.

Winterhoff pushed back hard on the Gravity sales data during Lucid’s second-quarter earnings call last week. When asked directly about a possible “hang-up” or “quality issue” with the delivery ramp, he called the report “unfortunate.”

“That number is false,” he said. “And that’s all I want to say about that — it’s totally false.”

Pressed on when “material volumes” of Gravity sales might appear, Winterhoff avoided specifics but insisted the SUV would be the bulk of deliveries in the back half of 2025.

“When it comes to numbers for the second half, we are not disclosing this, but we’re definitely in the process right now of ramping up Gravity in the second half of this year,” he said.

A lower-priced Gravity starting at $79,000 is set to arrive in 2026. Lucid’s stock is down 29.5% year-to-date.