Former Lucid Motors chief engineer Eric Bach is suing the company for wrongful termination, discrimination and retaliation and claims one of the automaker’s top HR executives referred to him as a “German Nazi.”
The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in the Northern District of California, alleges that Bach was removed from his responsibilities overseeing the powertrain division in early 2025 as a result of a human resources investigation into the company’s workplace culture. Bach claims he was targeted because of his German heritage.
Bach first learned of the disparaging comment in mid-2025 — months after the workplace culture investigation began and after he lost some responsibilities at the company, according to the complaint. He encouraged a colleague to report the incident.
TechCrunch has reached out to Lucid and will update the article if the company comments on the lawsuit.
Bach claims that Lucid Motors “confirmed” that the HR executive made the remark. Bach filed an internal complaint against another Lucid vice president for similar racist behavior.
He claims Lucid Motors retaliated by trying to force him to resign in October 2025. Lucid fired Bach on Nov. 5, 2025, according to the lawsuit. Lucid Motors’ press release from that day said only that he was “gone.”
The lawsuit comes at a difficult time for Lucid Motors. The company is burning through cash as it works to ramp up production of its second vehicle, the Gravity SUV. It is developing more affordable mass-market vehicles on a mid-size platform expected to debut sometime in late 2026.
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Lucid has also broken out through executives. The company’s VP of Engineering left the same day Bach claims he was fired, as TechCrunch previously reported. Former CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson abruptly resigned in February, and the company has yet to name a permanent replacement. Lucid’s Head of Investor Relations, Senior Vice President of Operations, Managing Director for Europe, and Vice Presidents of Software Quality and Marketing have also left in the last year.
Bach, in the complaint, claims he was top before the internal investigation. An engineer who spent a decade with the company, Bach says he oversaw “all hardware engineering,” “product management and corporate planning.”
Bach states that Lucid Turqi president Alnowaiser “praised Bach’s loyalty and dedication to the Company and expressed a desire to continue working with Bach.” It also alleges that board member Andrew Liveris “signaled that Bach would become Chief Technology Officer (a “yours to lose” position) and that Bach could one day become CEO,” according to the complaint.
The workplace culture investigation launched in late 2024, which claims Bach was “tainted by HR’s racist beliefs”, “initially led to Bach losing significant responsibilities”. The human resources department told Bach at the time that he contributed to a bad culture at the company, according to the complaint. In addition to losing oversight of the drivetrain group, Bach claims he has been barred from board meetings.
