It's been a mixed year for Lucid Group (LCID 1.84%). Shares of this electric vehicle (EV) stock have fallen alongside competitors including Tesla and Rivian Automotive, yet analyst expectations for Lucid's sales growth have surged. Right now, Wall Street experts expect the company to nearly double sales in 2025.

This could be your opportunity to buy into a high-growth stock at a discount. But if you're really looking for big growth potential, pay attention to Lucid's growth prospects starting in 2026.

This one thing will put Lucid's growth on steroids

Lucid stock is down 17% so far in 2025, and shares are trading at just 7.4 times trailing sales. That's a discount to competitors like Tesla, but a premium to other EV makers like Rivian. Lucid's relative premium to Rivian makes a lot of sense. The recent introduction of Lucid's Gravity SUV platform is expected to help sales nearly double this year. Rivian, meanwhile, isn't expected to release any new models this year.

Thanks to this expected sales growth, Lucid stock trades at just 5 times forward sales. But looking even further ahead, there's reason to believe that Lucid will hit another sales inflection point in 2026 due to one major event.

RIVN PS Ratio data by YCharts

Last year, it was revealed that Lucid expects to begin production on three new more affordable models, all of which should cost under $50,000. At the time, this timeline seemed aggressive, especially considering its Gravity SUV had yet to be released. Last week, however, Derek Jenkins, a senior vice president at Lucid, confirmed that the company is currently "on track" to begin production of an affordable SUV model in 2026, though he noted that there are "a lot of crazy things going on in the world that can affect that [timeline]."

This new Lucid model is expected to compete with Tesla's existing Model Y and Rivian's anticipated R2 midsize SUV. If the company's timeline remains intact, it could see another huge spike in sales growth next year.