Lucid Motors drops the price of its cheapest EV by more than $8,000

Lucid Motors is lopping thousands of dollars off the price of its most affordable electric sedans as it looks to boost demand after a disappointing year of sales.

The rear-wheel drive version of the base model Lucid Air Pure will now start a $69,900, down from the previous price of $77,400. The more powerful Lucid Air Touring model — which offers all-wheel drive performance and roughly 50% more horsepower — will now start at $77,900, down from $85,900. (An all-wheel drive version of the Pure is being discontinued.)

Even the Lucid Air Grand Touring, which offers more than 500 miles of range, is getting a slight price haircut to $109,900, down from $110,900. Lucid announced it is additionally offering $1,000 toward the purchase of a home charging solution, and including free scheduled maintenance for two years or up to 24,000 miles, with every new purchase.

The price cuts come just a few weeks after Lucid announced it delivered just 6,001 cars across all of 2023. The company is scheduled to reveal its financial results for the year on February 21.

Lucid already reduced prices on most of the Air variations last year as it — and others — tried to keep pace with Tesla’s aggressive cuts. The company’s cars are also not eligible for the $7,500 point-of-sale federal EV tax credit, though they do qualify for the leasing credit of that same amount. Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson has spoken bluntly about the company’s struggles with marketing. “Too few people are aware of not just the car, but even the company,” he said last year.

The Air Pure is still relatively new, as Lucid only launched it late last year, so making it more affordable could help boost sales. Lucid is working on an electric SUV that could appeal to more buyers, though that won’t ship until the end of this year at least. The company recently started shipping the first few hundred Air sedans to its financial backer Saudi Arabia, which has promised to buy up to 100,000 of Lucid’s EVs over the next 10 years. But that effort will be limited in the near-term as Lucid has not yet built a full production facility in the Kingdom.