Pulse News

**The Electric: After Peter Rawlinson's Sudden Exit, Investors Doubt Lucid's Plans**

By Steve LeVine

Feb 27, 2025, 4:30am PST

Peter Rawlinson, who resigned Tuesday as CEO of Lucid Motors. Photo: Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg/Getty

Lucid Motors sold just over 10,000 electric vehicles last year, but on Feb. 5, CEO Peter Rawlinson boasted that that was only the beginning: Lucid, he said, was on the cusp of producing a midsize crossover SUV that would finally challenge Tesla head-on. In the 2030s, he predicted, Lucid would be selling a million EVs a year.

On Tuesday, though—just three weeks after he made those remarks at a conference organized by BloombergNEF—Lucid said Rawlinson had resigned, effective immediately. The signs of an abrupt exit were palpable: The company had no successor in place and said it was only now starting a CEO search. Rawlinson himself was not on a scheduled quarterly revenue call with analysts to offer at least the appearance of a smooth handover to interim CEO Marc Winterhoff, who until then had been chief operating officer.

The chain of events mystified Bank of America analyst John Murphy. "I'm just curious why Peter isn't present," Murphy told company management in Tuesday's call, "and why you would make an announcement like this without a successor or why he wouldn't stick around until a successor was chosen."

Winterhoff had no real response, simply repeating that Rawlinson had decided to leave. On Wednesday, Wall Street's response was brutal: Investors dumped the stock, pushing down Lucid's share price 13.6% to $2.26. Murphy lowered his price target for Lucid shares to $1 from $3 previously.

Lucid had reported a $3.1 billion loss for 2024, more than the $2.8 billion it lost in 2023, and it ended the year with $1.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents. But investors were also skeptical about Lucid's path forward: In the call, Winterhoff said the company would double vehicle sales this year and proceed with Rawlinson's plans to produce a $50,000 midsize crossover SUV in late 2026.

Investors appeared to be responding to the void Rawlinson left as the brains, vision, and inspiration behind Lucid's technology and style. Because of Rawlinson, the company's two models stand out from the crowd—shoulder to shoulder with Tesla technologically and arguably more elegant in design than Tesla's models.

Rawlinson joined the company in 2013 when it was a battery producer called Atieva. He had just left Tesla under a cloud after leading the engineering of the Model S, and with hard feelings toward CEO Elon Musk, who he felt had mistreated him.

In two conversations with Rawlinson last year for a long profile, he told me he had joined Atieva on the condition that the company would challenge Tesla—and change its name. Thus was born Lucid. After that, Rawlinson always looked like a man on a mission of vengeance: Claiming that Musk had led the Model S team to produce a very good but still imperfect EV, Rawlinson set out to make the car he said the Model S could have been.

In 2021, Lucid released the Air sedan, which Rawlinson said was the more perfect EV. But at well over $100,000, it was too expensive for most wallets to make a big sales splash. Tesla sold more than 1.7 million EVs last year, including 48,000 of the Models S and X combined, according to Troy Teslike, the X handle of a widely followed Tesla analyst. Lucid sold 10,200 Airs.

In the Feb. 5 interview, Rawlinson said the coming midsize crossover—Lucid hasn't publicly released its name, but in my conversations with Rawlinson, he called it the Earth—would challenge Tesla's most lucrative franchise: the Models Y and 3. Last year, Tesla sold 1.2 million and 523,000 of these two models, respectively, according to Teslike.

Why Rawlinson left is a matter of conjecture. Neither Lucid nor Rawlinson responded to messages. Nick Sampson, a close decades-long friend and former colleague of Rawlinson at multiple companies, told me that Rawlinson had spoken recently to him about the possibility of "perhaps other things to start spending time on. He's achieved a lot and he just wants to, you know, do some personal stuff."

Rawlinson didn't say anything concrete to Sampson, however, and showed no signs of slowing down. "I mean, he's a workaholic, so I don't know," Sampson said.

It's possible he was pushed aside. A former employee told me Rawlinson is "technically brilliant" but controlling—unwilling to delegate real authority—and slow to make decisions. As possible evidence of discontent, a parade of senior executives has left the company, including eight vice presidents last year. If he got a nudge, it had to come with the support of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which owns a 60% share in the company. The fund did not immediately respond to an email.

One might call the two years before the Earth's launch an interregnum—a time in which Lucid could improve its marketing and sales plans so that the midsize car sells well; unless it does, it's hard to see how the company will survive.

Lucid might have been best served by Rawlinson staying on as chief technology officer, a second title he held in addition to that of CEO. In my conversations with him, he spoke of his vision of reducing the cost of a battery to $2,000, thus enabling the design of a really nice EV costing roughly $25,000. Perhaps that will be his next venture.

Steve LeVine is editor of The Electric. Previously, he worked at Axios, Quartz and Medium, and before that The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He is the author of *The Powerhouse: America, China and the Great Battery War*, and is on Twitter @stevelevine.