Lucid's home state got quieter in the third quarter. The company sold 1,011 new vehicles in California from July through September 2026, down 11.6% from a year earlier and 10.8% below the second quarter's 1,133, according to California Energy Commission (CEC) registration data analysed by the EV news site eletric-vehicles.com. It was Lucid's lowest quarter in the state since the first quarter of 2025 (964 units).

The numbers

  • Gravity SUV: 692 sales, or 68.4% of Lucid's California total. That is up 165.1% from 261 a year earlier but down 11.2% from 779 in the second quarter, and the second straight quarterly decline since a 989-unit peak in the first quarter of 2026.
  • Air sedan: 319 sales, down 63.9% year on year and 9.9% from 354 in the second quarter, the Air's lowest quarterly total in the CEC data since the second quarter of 2023.
  • Market share: Lucid was the 15th-largest brand by zero-emission vehicle sales in California, with 1.3% of the state's ZEV sales, up from 0.9% a year earlier.
  • Year to date: 3,693 California sales from January through September, up 15.3% from 3,203, as Gravity sales rose to 2,460 from 319.

Los Angeles County accounted for 180 of Lucid's third-quarter sales, followed by Santa Clara (121), Orange (104) and San Diego (94) counties, the analysis found. The CEC treats current-year figures as preliminary and revises them later.

Against Lucid's global deliveries

Lucid said on Oct. 5 that it delivered 3,806 vehicles and produced 2,954 worldwide in the third quarter, with deliveries above production as it worked down inventory under its operating reset. "Demand for the Lucid Gravity continued to regain momentum," the company said, without giving figures by model. The California total equals 26.6% of those global deliveries, though the CEC counts registrations, not deliveries.

The CEC said Californians bought 80,392 new zero-emission vehicles in the third quarter.

What it means for Tesla

California is a tough market for every EV maker right now: Tesla's own Q3 registrations in the state fell 15.4% to 43,994 in a separate dataset from the California New Car Dealers Association, though the Model Y stayed the state's best-selling vehicle (see our Tesla California Q3 story). The CEC and CNCDA numbers are counted differently, so they shouldn't be compared one for one. Lucid's next push is robotaxis: its Gravity vehicles are also the base for Bolt's planned Madrid service (see Bolt picks Nvidia Alpamayo for 25,000 Lucid robotaxis).