Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has disclosed a 5% stake in Lucid Group, and the market read it as a fresh vote of Saudi confidence in the cash-strapped EV maker.

Lucid (LCID) shares jumped as much as 25% on Tuesday after the filing surfaced, even though the disclosure itself is passive and mostly a technical formality.

Today’s episode of Quick Charge means business – the business of buying up power stations to power up the pet AI that says it would have picked you over Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA draft and the business of fleecing well-heeled car collectors out of an extra $100,000 on a (mostly) new Tesla Model S Signature sedan.

Lucid (LCID) stock was hit with multiple volatility halts and crashed more than 40% on Tuesday after a report claimed the EV maker was weighing Chapter 11 bankruptcy or going private.

Lucid quickly denied the report, calling the speculation “completely false” and pointing to its cash position as evidence it can keep operating well into next year.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 today, creating a new “MyFirstEV” program that gives first-time electric vehicle buyers a $3,500 instant rebate at the dealership starting later this summer.

The point-of-sale discount is backed by $135.5 million in state funding, matched dollar-for-dollar by participating automakers — and a California-headquarters rule makes Rivian and Lucid the biggest winners, while Tesla qualifies only on its cheapest models.

Lucid Motors is laying off 18% of its workforce, roughly 1,500 employees, just four months after the EV maker cut 12% of its staff. The company also confirmed Monday that it has eliminated the second production shift at its Casa Grande, Arizona factory.

It’s the second mass layoff under a new leadership regime that is barely three weeks old, and it lands as the US EV market cools and automakers retreat from their electric plans.

Lucid has registered the design of its upcoming Cosmos with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, giving us the clearest look yet at the sub-$50,000 crossover the automaker is betting its future on.

The filing, published last week, shows the production design of Lucid’s first mass-market EV from every angle, inside and out, months before its expected reveal this summer.

Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID) announced it has begun rolling out an over-the-air software update that brings hands-free highway driving to the Gravity SUV in North America.

Lucid first promised hands-free driving for its vehicles well over a year ago, but the feature’s actual rollout has been notoriously slow. The Gravity update arrives at a critical time for the EV startup, which is dealing with shareholder lawsuits, a new CEO, and a stock trading near all-time lows.