Lucid’s record quarter got a lift from rental sales and company leases

Summary

Lucid Motors set a company record for deliveries in the first quarter of 2025, shipping 3,109 EVs to customers in North America, Europe, and Saudi Arabia. It appears that a new company car program and sales to rental fleets helped it get there. According to a footnote in Lucid Motors’ latest regulatory filing, it sold the equivalent of around 300 cars to what it refers to as “rental companies” in the quarter. Nick Twork, a spokesperson for Lucid Motors, said in an email that despite the use of the term, the “vast majority” of the vehicles referred to in the footnote were sold to leasing companies and leased back to the automaker as part of a revamped company car program. “As part of the normal course of business, we leverage fleet transactions whenever we see a good opportunity that is in the best interest of our business,” he said. The first-quarter sales to leasing and rental companies allowed Lucid Motors to beat the number of cars it delivered in the fourth quarter of 2024 by 100 vehicles, marking the fifth consecutive quarter that the company’s deliveries increased. This is despite the fact that the beginning of the calendar year is often a tough stretch for automotive sales; industry leaders Tesla and Rivian, for instance, each saw dramatic drops in deliveries to start the year. Lucid’s stretch of record quarters follows years of the company struggling to establish a market for its luxury sedan, the Air. The company has pinned high hopes on its first SUV, the Gravity, which it expects to ship in greater volumes in the second half of this year. Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff celebrated the milestone at the beginning of the company’s earnings call last week. “Many of our customers continue to tell us that once they experience a Lucid, it’s hard to go back,” he said. Parsing the numbers It’s difficult to say exactly how many cars Lucid has sold to leasing and rental companies. The company declined to break down the numbers made available in its regulatory filings. T...