Lucid Group cut roughly 18% of its U.S. workforce on Monday, its second mass layoff in four months, and eliminated the chief operating officer position. The move removes Marc Winterhoff, who ran Lucid as interim chief executive for more than a year. It is the first major operational decision from Silvio Napoli, the former Schindler Group chairman who formally took over as CEO on June 1.

The cuts cover full-time employees, contractors, and hourly production workers, ending the second shift at Lucid’s AMP-1 factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. Lucid expects roughly $158 million in annualized savings against about $32 million in severance and benefit charges, with the plan substantially complete by the end of the third quarter of 2026.

This is the third year running that EVXL has logged layoff filings at Lucid, a cadence we have tracked since the November production cut and February’s WARN notice.

Lucid eliminated the COO position and removed Marc Winterhoff

Lucid eliminated the chief operating officer role on June 22 and Winterhoff left effective immediately, according to the company’s Form 8-K filing. He had been set to stay on as COO under Napoli, an arrangement that Lucid, Winterhoff, and Napoli all described publicly just weeks earlier.

Winterhoff qualifies for severance under Lucid’s Executive Severance Plan. The filing adds two details that rarely show up in a restructuring notice: Lucid agreed to provide continued security support and to let him keep his company vehicle.

His exit caps a run of senior departures. Senior vice president of powertrain and engineering Emad Dlala left in early June, and midsize chief engineer Zach Walker departed last month, per InsideEVs. Founder and longtime CEO Peter Rawlinson stepped down in February 2025, the move that handed Winterhoff the interim seat in the first place.

The second shift at Lucid’s Arizona plant is gone

Lucid ended the second production shift at AMP-1 in Casa Grande, the plant that builds the Lucid Air sedan and Lucid Gravity SUV, to align output with demand the company now calls weaker. It is the same shift Lucid added in late 2025 to hit a fourth-quarter build target.

The reversal fits a wider retreat. Lucid suspended its full-year guidance after Napoli’s arrival and said it needs to work down elevated vehicle inventory, language that for automakers usually means slowing or idling lines, according to CNBC. A second shift the company stood up only last autumn is now the first thing to go.

Lucid’s second cut in four months follows a 12% reduction in February

Lucid announced a 12% workforce reduction on February 20, a separate plan projected to save about $500 million over three years, and disclosed 319 job cuts at its Newark headquarters days later. The June round lands directly on top of that one.

In February, Winterhoff told CNBC the cuts were “nothing that will continue in the future.” Four months later there is a larger round, and his own job is the one being cut. Lucid framed the latest moves as a way to “simplify the company, sharpen execution,” in a statement reported by TechCrunch.

The savings are modest against the losses they target. Lucid lost $2.7 billion on $1.35 billion of revenue in 2025 and burned $3.8 billion in free cash flow, roughly 31% more than the year before. The $158 million in annualized savings covers a sliver of that gap.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Lucid’s majority owner, has repeatedly expanded the company’s credit lines and shows no sign of walking away from its Vision 2030 showcase. That backing is the reason Lucid can absorb two mass layoffs in a single year without an immediate cash crisis.

EVXL’s Take

The pattern here is bigger than Lucid. U.S. EV demand cooled hard after the $7,500 federal tax credit expired on September 30, and legacy automakers have been pulling electric models from their own plans. A company that loses money on nearly every car it builds feels that first, and feels it worst.

I have covered Lucid’s contraction all year: the November forecast cut, then February’s WARN filing that I wrote up the day after it landed. The throughline is consistency of message and inconsistency of result. Every round gets framed as the final lean-in toward profitability. Then the next one shows up.

Napoli’s problem is not the engineering. The Air and Gravity are genuinely good cars, and the Lucid Cosmos midsize SUV due this summer is the volume product the company actually needs. The problem is demand and cost, and you do not fix demand by cutting headcount.

Lucid will reinstate 2026 delivery guidance at its Q2 earnings report in early August, and the new figure will come in below the 25,000 to 27,000 vehicles it just suspended.

Sources: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Form 8-K, CNBC, TechCrunch.

EVXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.