- Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson is stepping down, the company announced on Tuesday.
- Marc Winterhoff, the EV startup’s COO, has been appointed interim CEO.
- Rawlinson will stay on as a “strategic technical advisor.”
Peter Rawlinson, Lucid Motors’ longtime CEO and CTO, is stepping down from his role. The EV startup announced the management shakeup on Tuesday, ahead of its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call.
“Now that we have successfully launched the Lucid Gravity, I have decided it is finally the right time for me to step aside from my roles at Lucid,” Rawlinson said in a statement. “I am incredibly proud of the accomplishments the Lucid team have achieved together through my tenure of these past twelve years. We grew from a tiny company with a big ambition, to a widely recognized technological world leader in sustainable mobility.”
Marc Winterhoff, Lucid’s COO, has been appointed interim CEO.
In a press release, Lucid said the decision was “part of the company’s regular succession planning process.” Rawlinson will stay on at Lucid as a strategic technical advisor to the chairman of the board, Turqi Alnowaiser, who is an executive at the Saudi Public Investment Fund, Lucid’s majority shareholder. Rawlinson previously served as a vice president and chief engineer at Tesla from 2009 to 2012.
Lucid will be searching for a new top executive during a pivotal time for the company. It hopes to double its vehicle sales this year, largely thanks to the launch of the Gravity SUV, which entered production in December. Lucid hopes the bigger vehicle will put it on the map and help it snag far more customers than Air sedan ever could. That means a big push into marketing, plus successfully scaling up production without too many issues.
Photo by: Tim Levin/InsideEVs
Plus, Lucid is deep into development of the true mass-market, $50,0000 EV it aims to launch in 2026. That’s the vehicle Lucid hopes will be its Tesla Model Y moment—when it crosses the “valley of death” that swallows so many startups.
That kind of scale and profitability needs to come sooner rather than later. Lucid said on Tuesday that it brought in $807 million in revenue on sales of 10,241 vehicles, while posting an annual loss of just over $3 billion. The firm’s new boss will have his or her work cut out.
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