"We definitely need everything to work like a watch," one current employee said of how workers felt amid pressure to build 5,000 cars in six months. Lucid management has been upping pressure to the point that CEO Peter Rawlinson is going "shoulder to shoulder" with factory workers, Rawlinson said in a second-quarter earnings call. "I was hoping to be the next generation, you know, to get in there and start to make a difference," said a recently let-go Lucid employee whose father inspired them to work in auto. At the same time, they're trying to reassure employees their companies are on the right track - but those moves have made morale worse, insiders said. To weather the storm, some startup EV executives are resorting to layoffs, diluting shares to get their hands on cash, and dialing back production goals. Plans are sinking morale, and executives aren't helping That means the firms that manage to keep workers from fleeing could determine which companies survive and which go bust. But, he told Insider, one point is clear: "They need people to build cars." ![]() "Is the party over? I don't know," Martin French, a managing director at the automotive consultancy Berylls, said. As their balance sheets turn red, they've pushed many employees to work long hours - and have laid off others. Barely a year after most of these startups went public, most of them are drowning under production delays, a supply-chain crisis, and increasingly robust competition from the likes of Ford and General Motors. Worse, it's grim news that comes during troubled times. That's grim news for the likes of Rivian, Lucid, Canoo, Xos Trucks, Fisker, and Faraday Future, which are built on the faith of not just investors but also the thousands of workers who chose them over legacy automakers or established tech giants. "Morale sucks," the former supervisor said. All were granted anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak publicly about their companies. ![]() Some said their unhappiness had driven them to leave the business entirely. Over the past six months, more than three dozen workers in the EV-startup space told Insider they're not as optimistic as they once were. That sort of skepticism is becoming more common. "Do I have faith in it?" he said when asked about the EV space. He went to a rival electric-vehicle startup, was laid off amid that company's own troubles, and is now back to interviewing. He quit Lucid after just a few months, driven out by what he called a challenging and exclusionary manufacturing environment. ![]() The job did change everything, but not how the former supervisor hoped. With grand plans to build 20,000 cars in 2022, Lucid's stock price hit $55 and Wall Street was in love. It was headed for the public market via a deal with a special-purpose acquisition company that would value it at $57 billion. This was early 2021, and Lucid was a strong contender to be the next Tesla. He moved, he told Insider, "because of the potential to make a lot of money on these damn shares." ![]() He left a solid job in the auto industry and moved his family to Phoenix, nearby Lucid's manufacturing hub. "They kept saying, 'Tesla, Tesla, the next Tesla,'" a now former supervisor at the electric-vehicle startup said. Landing the Lucid job was supposed to change everything.
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