Following Tesla’s significant price cuts announced in early January, which saw the price of some models drop by 20 percent, it looks like Lucid is doing something similar. It’s not the same, though, since the Lucid price cut is not as significant, and for some reason it only applies to Air sedans leased through Lucid Financing Services, not ones that are purchased directly.
The manufacturer announced reservation holders via an email it sent on Friday, telling them that they would get a $7,500 discount if they leased their Air. The email explained that the discount would come in the form of a capital cost reduction, which basically means their monthly payment would be lower.
What was not made clear by Lucid in the email was whether or not the discount applied to all Air variants, including the recently released Air Pure, the most affordable version of the electric sedan. With the discount, the price of an Air Pure should be $119,400, which is still a lot of money for a base trim, but it should help Lucid keep more reservations and turn them into actual orders.
We don’t know why Lucid is only offering this discount if you lease an Air and not when you buy it outright, though. The company has been struggling to ramp up production sufficiently in order to get cars to customers, although it still managed to build 7,180 vehicles in 2022, of which it delivered 4,369 examples.
One clue as to why Lucid is only doing this for leased Airs lies in the amount being discounted, which corresponds to the federal tax credit for EVs. It could be that the leasing company can claim this discount and pass the savings along to the customer – it isn’t especially clear, but it could be an explanation.
And while this announcement by Lucid was surely prompted by the aforementioned massive Tesla price cut, it’s not really the same thing. Tesla is already a pretty big automaker whose volume and margins allow it to cut prices by as much as it did, while Lucid is nowhere near in the same position, which is why it is going with this lease discount.
