Lucid's Cars Are Great, but Lucid Stock Is Still an Easy "No" as 2026 Begins

Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID) makes some of the most impressive electric vehicles (EVs) we've seen to date. The Lucid Air shines for its industry-leading range and terrific handling, and the new Gravity SUV finally puts the company into the high-volume part of the luxury-car market. Yet Lucid stock still isn't a good investment for most people.

That isn't a knock on the engineering. It's a reality check about three things that should matter a lot more to shareholders than horsepower and EPA range estimates:

1. Ongoing management turnover
2. A cash position that looks big until you compare it to the burn rate
3. An unprofitable business model that is nowhere near the volume it needs to break even

Let's walk through why those three issues are hard to ignore right now.

Lucid's new Gravity SUV helped the company double its production in 2025. But despite the increase, the company is still a long way away from breaking even. Image source: Lucid Group.

Leadership turnover is a red flag when execution is everything

Startups can survive a lot of mistakes. What they can't survive is slow execution -- because slow execution burns cash.

That's why Lucid's leadership changes over the last couple of years are concerning. Since the fall of 2023, Lucid's executive departures have included its chief financial officer and general counsel; heads of marketing, operations, and investor relations; and -- most worryingly -- its longtime CEO and Chief Technology Officer Peter Rawlinson.

Rawlinson departed in February of this year and was replaced on an interim basis by Mark Winterhoff, who had been hired as chief operating officer just a few months earlier. A search for a permanent CEO has been ongoing since.

Winterhoff hasn't done a bad job, considering the hand he was dealt. But if nothing else, all the turnover has made things harder for a company that was already facing a steep uphill battle.

Lucid is burning a lot of cash -- and depends on one big investor

Lucid's cash and equivalents were $4.32 billion at the end of 2023, $5.04 billion at the end of 2024, and $2.99 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2025. That doesn't sound too bad -- until you consider how much money the company raised over the last two years:

• $1 billion in March 2024
• $750 million in August 2024
• $1.67 billion in October 2024
• $1.1 billion in April 2025
• $300 million from Uber Technologies in September 2025
• $975 million in November 2025

That's almost $5.8 billion! (Some of you will say that about $2 billion of that went to repurchase convertible notes that Lucid had previously issued, and you'd be right. But so what? It's still money Lucid felt it had to spend.)

A lot of that money came from a single investor -- a unit of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), which owns about 60% of Lucid. You can see why it wants to keep the company going.

While it's likely that PIF will put more cash into Lucid in 2026, it could decide to pull the plug at any moment. That's probably the biggest single risk to Lucid's stock.

Unprofitability plus low volume is the real deal-breaker

Here's the key number I can't get past: Lucid will probably need to sell on the order of 72,000 vehicles per year to have a realistic shot of breaking even (depending on pricing, margins, and fixed costs).

Now compare that to what Lucid is actually doing. Lucid's guidance called for production of about 18,000 vehicles in 2025, and they hit it: Earlier this week, the company said it produced 18,378 vehicles in 2025. That's an increase of 104% year over year, thanks to the ramp up of production of the Gravity.

That's important progress, but it's not "fixed-cost leverage" progress. It's the kind of progress that still loses a lot of money -- $2.5 billion through the first three quarters of 2025, and almost certainly more in the fourth quarter.

The bottom line: Great cars, iffy stock (for now, at least)

Lucid's vehicles are legitimately impressive. But as an investment, Lucid stock continues to be weighed down by core problems:

• Leadership churn at a critical phase
• Cash burn that has been offset by frequent infusions from a single investor
• A business that's still far from the volume needed to break even

Could it work out someday? If Lucid's upcoming midsize model (due in a year) is a big hit and if PIF keeps pumping cash into the company, sure. But the company will need to keep raising capital just to stay afloat, and that's likely to hold the stock back for a while.

I won't object if you understand the (big) risks and decide to hold a small position because you really like Lucid's cars and technology. However, for most investors, Lucid remains a stock to avoid.

John Rosevear has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.