Making Tech Headlines · Page 2
Lucid's Cars Were Ready for the Road, Once Lucid Found Them
· New York time
Lucid says inventory control problems slowed deliveries and cost it orders in the third quarter. CEO Silvio Napoli said on an earnings call that the electric vehicle maker sometimes did not know where its cars were. The California company makes luxury EVs including the Air and Gravity, but its difficulty was not a question of whether a car could perform a sophisticated maneuver. It was matching a finished vehicle to a customer and getting it delivered. Waits could reach two weeks, and the company said impatient buyers canceled orders. Lucid built 2,954 vehicles during the quarter and delivered 3,806, down 7 percent from a year earlier. Delivering more than it built helped reduce inventory. The figures also show why a stock count is not the whole job: a vehicle has to be located and connected to the right order before it can be handed over. The delivery experience matters especially when the purchase is marketed as premium. Buyers can admire advanced engineering and still prefer that the car be available for the part where they drive it home. Lucid's problem gives an old retail question a modern dashboard: the product may have impressive technology, but first the company needs to know which parking space contains the product.
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