Whoa, got my gulp on for this one when I read it.

We’ve had really good discussions about the realignment in the EV market. How the truck segment looks really shaky, how Elon has been shaking up the sedan side of the house with his price reductions, and how Ford is all shook up losing fistfuls of cash with every EV it sells.

…The most striking figure is that of the net loss per electric vehicle sale. As calculated by Carscoops, Ford loses $32,000 USD on every EV it sells. Model e, Ford’s new electric division, lost $1.8 billion in the second quarter of 2023, on sales of just 34,000 electric and plug-in hybrid models. It had forecast that it would lose $3 billion this year, but now believes losses will hit $4.5 billion.

Clearly, the price war with Tesla hasn’t helped matters. The unusual aspect to this battle royale is that the traditional roles are reversed. Here we have the smaller company hurting a giant firm like Ford in a price war.

You look at those numbers and think. “How is this sustainable?” And it’s not, even with Uncle Sam plugging buttloads of bucks into the industry.

But the struggling D-3 operations, and the EV automakers that have gone under this year like Lordstown Motors, look like absolute pikers in the losing money business compared to an American luxury EV maker called “Lucid.” They reported their Q-3 results last week, and how I missed numbers like these, I’ll never know. I guess it’s because I don’t move in that rarified air.

One of their models – the Lucid Air Sapphire – retails for $250,000 and sent the Car & Driver road test crew into raptures.

2024 Lucid Air Sapphire Delivers Face-Punching Performance
There’s no way to prepare yourself for the mind-blowing and nose-crunching acceleration of a 1234-hp electric supersedan.

Lucid’s lead chassis engineer punched me in the face. It wasn’t on purpose. I’d asked David Lickfold to video the speedometer while I tried the launch control in the 2024 Air Sapphire, and even knowing what to expect, he couldn’t fight the forces of physics. The phone hit my cheekbone with a hard crack, and the rest of the video is just me laughing and Lickfold apologizing. It earned me an afternoon with an ice pack, but it’s a heck of a way to demonstrate the acceleration of Lucid Motors’ supersedan.

The Air Max
From the get-go, Lucid knew it wanted to offer an all-out version of the Air. The Air Sapphire aims to establish Sapphire as a performance subbrand, like AMG or SVR, that could find its way to future models, such as the upcoming Lucid Gravity SUV. This was quite an engineering ask. Even one of the most laid-back of Lucid’s cars, the dual-motor Air Pure, will get to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds, which is already high-performance territory for most machines. The Lucid team had to not only make Sapphire stand out with unheard-of performance numbers but also give it daily drivability. They didn’t hold back. The three-motor Air Sapphire has 1234 peak horsepower, which is unleashed in its Track mode, and 1430 lb-ft of torque. It also has bragworthy claims of a top speed of 205 mph and a 0-to-60 time of 1.9 seconds, quick enough to knock the wind out of your chest and imprint your face on a phone screen.

I think I need this. VERY ZAXY, no?

Unpopular opinion, if money was no object I would buy a Lucid Air Sapphire, 1234hp & 427 miles range (among other vehicles) #Lucid #Tesla pic.twitter.com/wCuIdOgEwJ

— Gerard A. Malone (@GerardAlba) November 8, 2023

I’m gonna have a long-overdue talk with Ed about a bump in the old paycheck.

In the meantime, though, Lucid just proves the rich are different. Because while you and I think paying $250K for a really schweet ride is astronomical as far as cash outlay goes, how about LOSING $430,000 ON EVERY SALE.

Wait, whut?

I’m telling you, that’s the math. And that number is a big improvement from how much they lost per car the quarter prior.

Lucid, the California-based electric vehicle company that makes the Air Sedan, lost over $430,000 for every car it sold in the third quarter of this year, according to the firm’s latest financial report.

In Q3, Lucid reported a revenue of $137.8 million, down from $195.5 million in the same period last year. But here’s where things get a bit messy because net losses amounted to almost $630.9 million, $100 million more than last year, all while delivering 1,456 vehicles.

That’s roughly $433,000 lost on every car sold. Granted, it’s better than the $544,000 loss reported on every vehicle sold in Q2, but it’s still a massive amount of money considering the most expensive vehicle sold by the marque costs about $250,000.

Holy smokes.

These guys aren’t new, like a start-up, either. They’ve been around since 2007. The cars are designed in CA and manufactured in AZ.

And they were so hot two years ago with all that big Green push that they decided to take the company public. In 2021 the Saudis scooped up a huge chunk of it. Probably because they heard Cramer thought it was a great buy.

Yeah, About that investment…

Saudis Find a Bottomless Money Pit in Lucid

Saudi Arabia appeared to have found a winner when US luxury electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid Group Inc. went public in 2021 — a clean tech investment that would diversify and substantially add to the kingdom’s oil riches. Two years later, Lucid has instead delivered a grim lesson in automotive capital intensity, scale economies and the difficulty of building car brands from scratch.

The Public Investment Fund’s 60% Lucid stake was valued at more than $55 billion in the months after the EV manufacturer completed a US SPAC listing.

Lucid’s optimistic sales forecasts and vertically integrated strategy (it develops core technologies itself) helped persuade giddy retail investors it would become the next Tesla Inc. But the excitement didn’t last: The Saudis’ holding is now worth just $5.4 billion.

…Third-quarter results published this week revealed the scale of the problems. Lucid’s gross margin was negative 241% — in other words, it spends much more building vehicles than customers pay for them.

Kiss of death in that car right there.

This is incredible, Jim featured Lucid at the absolute top

Now -93% since https://t.co/aEZ9FNalNw pic.twitter.com/fs5RaTPdC8

— Not Jim Cramer (@CramerTracker) November 8, 2023

The Saudis are going to keep pumping money into the company – they’ve got a contract for 100,000 vehicles over the next decade or so. And analysts say the company’s market cap is still high, even though that hasn’t helped its retail investors. Some of those folks have experienced over 90% losses.

Saudi oil money will keep them afloat through 2025 according to Bloomberg. Maybe they can even get the losses down to break even. Quarter mil in, quarter mil out?

It’s just astonishing money – there’s green and then there’s GREEN.

Man. The rich are different.