Lucid's Engineering Chief Left Months Before Its Sub-$50,000 EV

Lucid keeps losing the people who build its cars. The latest is one of its longest-serving leaders.

Emad Dlala ran the EV maker's engineering. Now he's out, and the timing could hardly be worse.

A Decade-Long Leader, Gone

Dlala spent more than ten years at Lucid. He was one of the firm's longest-serving staff.

For five of those years, he led the powertrain team. That's the group that makes an electric car move.

Last fall, he was bumped up to run all engineering and digital work. Few people knew the cars better.

Now he's leaving "to pursue other opportunities," the company said. Two other leaders will now report straight to the new CEO.

Those two are Vivek Attaluri and Marc Solsona Palomar. One runs vehicle engineering, the other runs software. The new boss is Silvio Napoli.

Napoli came from Schindler, the elevator and escalator maker. He only took the top job last week.

The board brought him in to steady the ship. His first full week on the job included this exit.

The company says it's reshaping itself to move faster under him. Dlala is the first big name to leave on his watch.

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A Company In Constant Churn

Lucid has been a revolving door lately. It cut 12% of its staff back in February.

The cuts hit just as money got tight. Lucid still spends more than it earns.

Before that, it spent a full year hunting for a CEO. Longtime CEO Peter Rawlinson had left in a hurry in early 2025.

Dlala's promotion last fall came at a cost too. Lucid pushed out its long-time chief engineer, Eric Bach, at the same time.

Bach then sued for wrongful firing. That case is now paused for arbitration.

So the exits keep coming at the top. The old CEO, the chief engineer, and now Dlala are all gone.

Losing senior people is the kind of churn that's hard to hide. It's even harder when the cash is tight.

What To Watch

The real stakes sit a few months out. Lucid is about to launch the Cosmos.

It's the firm's first car built to start below $50,000. The Cosmos rides on a new, mid-size base.

The car is due out later this year. Lucid has staked its next chapter on it.

For now, Lucid only sells pricey, high-end cars. This is its bet on going mass-market.

The company is backed by Saudi money. Uber and those backers have put fresh cash behind the plan.

The same car also anchors a robotaxis deal with Uber. The self-driving work is being built with a firm called Nuro.

That work starts with Lucid's Gravity SUV. Those self-driving SUVs are due on San Francisco roads by year's end.

That is a hard deadline to hit. It takes a steady engineering team to pull off.

Lucid is heading into all of that without the man who ran its engineering.

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