An EV Exodus: Lucid Has Lost Six Top Executives In the Past Year

Gain insight as to why Lucid lost six of their top executives over the past year, and how production delays likely had much to do with company leaders ditching their roles.
Written by Jason Crosby
Reviewed by Kathleen Flear
It’s becoming somewhat of a trope for
EV
companies to go through a struggle, whether it’s related to production woes or financial fiascos. But for Lucid, the coast has appeared clear for quite some time—at least until recently. 
Over the past year, Lucid has lost a handful of crucial executives, and the automotive industry is paying close attention. For a company with so much potential, why is Lucid struggling to retain high-level employees? 
Whatever Lucid’s employees reasons for leaving are, getting overcharged for your
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Lucid’s top business professionals bid them adieu

InsideEVs
explains that Lucid’s loss of six executives is most likely due to frustration and pressure to ramp up production at the EV startup, or so they speculate. Though Lucid had plans to produce 20,000 EVs in 2022, it's now looking at only 6,000 to 7,000 total. 
This surely must be disappointing for employees, considering it’s less than 50% of what the company had originally planned for. InsideEVs quotes Lucid’s CEO Peter Rawlinson as stating, “We’re overhauling our logistics processes and introducing a series of improvements to simplify the system and yet make it more efficient and robust.” 
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Which Lucid executives have quit their jobs? 

So far, Peter Hochholdinger (VP of Global Manufacturing), Ralph Jakobs (VP of Programs), Mike Boike (Head of Arizona Operations), David Peel (Head of New Production Introduction and Program Management), Chris Barber (Senior Manager of Logistics Engineering), and Keith Champion (Director of Operational Excellence) have all left Lucid high and dry. 
These are crucial roles that the company will need to fill, likely before the end of 2023. The good news is, the company is an up-and-coming EV startup with an estimated value of $24 billion. According to
Investor’s Business Daily
, Lucid will quickly find replacement executives to fill the positions that are currently vacant. 
MORE: Is Lucid a Luxury Car? 

Is there anything besides production issues holding Lucid back? 

The Lucid Air might be one of the EV industry’s frontrunners in terms of quality and battery range, but it’s suffered two
recalls
already, the most recent affecting the instrument panel on the EV. 
The recall only affected 1,100 Lucid Airs in the spring of 2022, but considering that the company only plans to produce up to 7,000 models total for 2022, that’s a sizable recall. Lucid needs to not only speed up production to keep investors and customers happy, but also dial in their production quality so that costly recalls don’t affect their reputation and cost them sales. 
MORE: The Evolution of the Lucid Air from 2021-2022

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