Lucid Motors has finally found a new chief executive in longtime industry executive Silvio Napoli, marking the end of a search that lasted more than a year after the sudden resignation of its former chief, Peter Rawlinson.
The company announced Tuesday that Napoli, who has spent the past few decades in various leadership positions at elevator and escalator company Schindler Group, will also join its board of directors.
Along with the CEO appointment, Lucid said it has received another $200 million commitment from Uber, which has agreed to buy an additional 25,000 robotaxi-ready versions of Lucid’s upcoming midsize vehicle. This brings Uber’s total committed investment in Lucid Motors to $500 million and its minimum vehicle order to 35,000.
Finally, Lucid’s majority owner, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is buying another $550 million of its shares.
The announcements come during a very important year for Lucid Motors. The company is currently trying to ramp up production and sales of its second model, the Gravity SUV, as it struggles to find a large market for its Air sedan. Lucid also plans to release the first of three vehicles built on its midsize platform, which will allow it to target buyers looking to spend around $50,000 on a new car.
The company has taken drastic measures to ensure that it brings this vehicle to production. In February, it decided to lay off 12% of its workforce, TechCrunch reported. On Tuesday, Lucid Motors said in a regulatory filing that it recently “reduced the number of contractors” at its Arizona plant “to improve cost efficiency.”
Lucid Motors has been without a permanent CEO since February 2025, when longtime leader Rawlinson abruptly left the company. Its CEO Marc Winterhoff has served as interim CEO since then and had plans to step into the CEO role, as TechCrunch previously reported, while the company cast an extremely wide net for a replacement. However, Winterhoff’s oversight coincided with several quality issues during the launch of the Gravity SUV.
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Napoli will not start immediately as CEO. He has yet to obtain “the right to work in the US,” according to a regulatory filing. Until that happens, he will be an “executive director” of Lucid Motors’ board under a Swiss employment contract (where he lives). Lucid expects Napoli to be cleared to work in the US “in the coming weeks”, after which Winterhoff will resume his role as chief executive.
Napoli is set to make a lot of money as Lucid’s new CEO. He starts with a base salary of $1.5 million and is given $1 million to move to the U.S. He was also awarded a bonus package, a stock grant worth nearly $10 million, and a performance-based stock package that could be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Uber’s new commitment comes just a day after the ride-hailing giant and autonomous vehicle partner Nuro began testing modified Lucid Gravity SUVs for a luxury robotaxi service that will launch in San Francisco later this year. Uber first partnered with Lucid Motors and Nuro last July when it made a $300 million investment and agreed to buy at least 20,000 Gravity SUVs.
Lucid Motors revealed at an investor day event earlier this year that it was close to a deal with Uber to make a similar arrangement for its more affordable midsize vehicles. The definitive agreement revealed on Tuesday lowers the minimum number of orders for the Gravity SUV to 10,000.
The Saudi investment is the latest in a long line of cash infusions from the Kingdom into Lucid that began as a company savings investment in 2018.
