Lucid is a word that means clear-headed, which is why it’s downright hilarious that there’s a serially money-losing car company that calls itself that.
Word is that Lucid has had to delay the launch of its latest money-loser, the Cosmos – which is for (I am not making this up) upscale nurturers – until sometime next year after counting its losses so far this year. These amount to another $1 billion net loss for the second quarter of 2026. That’s on top of the $3.8 billion losses last year. Lucid stock has lost 96 percent of its value over the past five years.
More losses are surely coming, given there probably aren’t all that many upscale nurturers out there wanting to spend $50,000 – to start – on the Cosmos. Which, by the way, Lucid considers its first “mass market” vehicle.
This is a kind of barometer of what’s become of the “market” in this country. In a twisted way, the Cosmos – if it ever actually becomes available – would be “mass market” in that in we now have a “market” in which the average price paid for a new vehicle is $52,000. The Cosmos would thus be something of a bargain. If, that is, you don’t count the time cost or the depreciation cost (much higher with EVs, regardless of the brand) or the potential cost of being stuck with an orphaned car. That being a car without a parent company, the latter having gone out of business. More specifically, an orphaned car whose parent was never especially popular. I own a 50-year-old Pontiac and Pontiac hasn’t been around for 16 years (it went out of business back in 2010) but I haven’t had any problems finding necessary mechanical parts for it. It can sometimes be a challenge finding trim pieces – in my case, the center console for models with the manual transmission – but I can still go to AutoZone or O’Reilly’s and get oil filters, fan belts, gaskets and so on. In other words, the parts needed to keep it operational. Because Pontiac had a huge following, once – and so still does.
In 1979 alone, Pontiac sold 211,454 Firebirds. That was one of the brand’s available models that year. Add in the sales of models such as the Grand Prix and Bonneville, Grand Prix and Grand Am, Catalina and and Sunbird and the total comes to 907,423 Pontiacs that year. Over the past three years, Lucid has “sold” about 35,000 EVs – and lost money on each “sale.” (The words are placed within air-fingers quote marks to reflect the fact that Lucid lost money on each “sale.”)
What does Lucid have to offer that other device makers do not offer already? Lucid is just another Tesla in a different brown paper bag. Its chief “technology officer” (it has the same mouth feel as upscale nurturer) is Peter Rawlinson, who used to be the chief engineer over at Tesla. So he flocked on over to Lucid to engineer slightly different Teslas shaped like slightly different crossovers for trendsetting achievers and active explorers – as well as upscale nurturers.
Someone really ought to hit the marketing genius who came up with that with a ball peen hammer. Then again, maybe I – a GenX’er from another time – am unable to appreciate the genius of it. Perhaps there are tens of thousands of upscale nurturers and trendsetting achievers and active explorers out there who will want to buy a Lucid marketed on that basis. We do, after all, live in Buckle Up late-terminal stage America, where everyone under 40 grew up in strapped in “safety” seat. Perhaps people who grew up that way do see themselves as upscale nurturers.
I suppose we’ll have to wait and see – if there is anything to see.
Next year is still almost two quarters away. How many more billions will Lucid lose between now and then? Perhaps a better way to put it is: How many more rich idiots will bankroll these losses? Speaking of which. Did you know Lucid is majority owned by the Saudis – Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – and that the car for upscale nurturers – the Cosmos – is to be built in Saudi Arabia?
If it does get built, upscale nurturers will probably end paying more than the $50,000 projected base price on account of Trump’s tariff-taxes on vehicles not made here in the Homeland. Also thanks to Trump, inflation is ramping up bigly again – and by 2027, the projected base price of $50,000 is likely to be . . . revised.
How much are upscale nurturers willing to pay $55k – or more – for a Tesla in a different brown paper bag? How many upscale nurturers are there?
And they ask me why I drink.
. . .
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