Former Lucid Motors Chief Engineer Sues for Wrongful Termination and Discrimination | TechCrunch

Lucid Motors’ former chief engineer Eric Bach has sued the company for wrongful dismissal, discrimination and retaliation, claiming one of the automaker’s top HR executives called him a “German Nazi.”

The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in the Northern District of California, alleges that Bach was stripped of his responsibilities overseeing the powertrain division in early 2025 as a result of an HR investigation into the company’s workplace culture. Bach claims he was targeted because of his German heritage.

Bach first learned about the disparaging comment in mid-2025 — months after the investigation into workplace culture began and after he had lost some responsibilities at the company, the complaint said. He encouraged a colleague to report the incident.

TechCrunch has reached out to Lucid and will update the article if the company comments on the lawsuit.

Bach claims that Lucid Motors “confirmed” that the HR manager made the comment. Bach filed an internal complaint against another Lucid vice president for similar racist behavior.

He claims Lucid Motors retaliated by forcing him to resign in October 2025. According to the lawsuit, Lucid fired Bach on November 5, 2025. Lucid Motors’ press release that day only stated that he had “left.”

The lawsuit comes at a difficult time for Lucid Motors. The company is burning cash as it works to ramp up production of its second vehicle, the Gravity SUV. It is developing more affordable mass-market vehicles on a mid-range platform that will hit the market sometime in late 2026.

Lucid also searched executives. The company’s VP of Engineering left on the same day Bach claims he was fired, as TechCrunch previously reported. Former CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson suddenly resigned in February and the company has still not named a permanent replacement. Lucid’s head of Investor Relations, Senior Vice President of Operations, Managing Director for Europe and the Vice Presidents of Software Quality and Marketing all also left in the past year.

Bach claims in the complaint that he was already on the rise before the internal investigation. Bach, an engineer who spent 10 years at the company, says he oversaw “all hardware engineering,” “product management and business planning.”

Bach said Lucid’s chairman Turqi Alnowaiser “commended Bach’s loyalty and dedication to the company and expressed his desire to continue working with Bach.” He also claims that board member Andrew Liveris “indicated that Bach would become Chief Technology Officer (the position “is yours to lose”) and that Bach could one day become Chief Executive Officer,” according to the complaint.

The workplace culture investigation launched in late 2024, which Bach claims was “tainted by HR’s racist beliefs,” “initially led to Bach losing significant responsibilities.” The HR department told Bach at the time that he contributed to a bad culture at the company, according to the complaint. Bach not only loses oversight of the powertrain team, but also claims to have been banned from board meetings.