Lucid

• Lucid Motors is preparing for a busy few years, including the launch of a Gravity robotaxi with Nuro and Uber, and its upcoming Midsize platform.
• Lucid’s interim CEO, Marc Winterhoff, confirmed to InsideEVs that three Midsize “bodies” are coming. 
• But one of them won’t be a four-door sedan, Winterhoff said. “I don’t want to be in the sedan segment.”

The Lucid Air is one of the most impressive electric vehicles that you can buy in this or any country, boasting class-leading range, efficiency and performance in a sleek four-door sedan package. In many ways, it feels like the best Model S that Tesla never made.

But Lucid Motors’ interim CEO, Marc Winterhoff, made clear that competing with the likes of the BMW 3 Series or Tesla Model 3 won’t be in the cards for its upcoming new platform. At a roundtable with reporters at CES 2026, Winterhoff said the upcoming Lucid Midsize platform will spawn three “bodies,” but that one of them will not be a four-door sedan, as many observers predicted. 

“I don’t want to be in the sedan segment,” Winterhoff said. “That’s not our focus.”

While Lucid’s Project Midsize platform is often referred to as a $50,000-ish Tesla Model Y competitor, it is in fact a new architecture that will underpin several vehicles. The first example, the Model Y-fighting crossover, will be revealed later this year. Production will ramp up in 2027, Winterhoff said. “That’s for the first body, and then, two more will come,” he said. At least one will be an off-road-focused SUV. 

“The first [of those] will be shortly thereafter, at maximum a year later, maybe even earlier,” meaning early 2028, he added. “The next one will be 18 months later.”  Winterhoff didn’t give any details about that last variant, but said it would mean “an even bigger change” than previous models, hence the longer development time. 

This means that, if all goes according to plan, Lucid could have a much fuller lineup of products by 2029. But a sedan won’t be among them. Lucid officials at CES pointed to the overall sluggish sales of the Air sedan, compared to the new Gravity SUV, which Winterhoff said now accounts “for the vast majority of our deliveries.” 

While the Air sedan launched the brand, it was the brainchild of former CEO Peter Rawlinson, himself the chief vehicle engineer for Tesla’s Model S. But while it was built to be a better EV than that, it also debuted at a time when the American market—and lately, even the global one—has moved past sedans and into crossovers and SUVs. While Air sedan sales were up in 2025, it has struggled to move in the kind of mass volumes that Lucid needs to successfully go mainstream. 

The Midsize vehicles are targeting at least 300 miles of range, with help from a new in-house drive unit called Atlas. Said to start under $50,000, it will compete with the Rivian R2, BMW iX3, Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class EV and others in this space. Rumors suggest it could be called the “Lucid Earth.” 

While the Gravity was dogged by software issues upon launch last year, Winterhoff said the company is working through those issues quickly and expects to have them resolved by the end of this month or “at the latest, the end of March.” Meanwhile, the company this week celebrated a deal with Uber and autonomous tech company Nuro to produce driverless Gravity taxis, which are already testing in San Francisco. 

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com