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Tesla rival Lucid Motors halved its 2022 production target on Wednesday, citing ‘extraordinary supply chain’ challenges as it tries to ramp up production and meet ‘strong demand’ .

The California-based group, backed by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, said 2022 production is now estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000 cars, down from an earlier projection of 12,000 to 14,000 – which itself was a reduction from a forecast at the start of the year of 20,000 vehicles.

The electric carmaker’s shares are already down 50% this year, reflecting numerous challenges in ramping up production of its Lucid Air – a luxury electric vehicle that starts at $89,000 and has been named Car of the Year. year by MotorTrend for 2022. Shares fell another 12. percent after hours on Wednesday.

“We have identified the main bottlenecks and are taking appropriate action: integrating our logistics operations, recruiting key personnel to the management team and restructuring our logistics and manufacturing organization,” said Managing Director Peter Rawlinson.

“We continue to see strong demand for our vehicles, with over 37,000 customer reservations, and I remain confident that we will overcome these challenges in the near term.”

The 37,000 bookings total $3.5 billion in potential sales, the company said, but Lucid only saw $97.3 million in revenue in the June quarter — well below estimates of $147 million. dollars, as it only delivered 679 cars during the three-month period.

Lucid’s chief financial officer, Sherry House, said the company has $4.6 billion in cash, “which we believe is enough to fund the company through 2023.”

Despite recent stock market woes, Lucid had a market valuation of $34 billion at the time of its earnings on Tuesday, compared to $54 billion at GM and $60.4 billion at Ford, companies that regularly sell millions of vehicles per month. year.