Lucid confirms factory in Saudi Arabia by 2025, ‘extreme performance’ Gravity SUV in 2024
Lucid Group announced Monday, shortly before a business update, that it has signed an agreement for a factory in Saudi Arabia.
The first international factory, already is considered as of early 2021, located in the King Abdullah Economic City outside Jeddah, is set to begin production of the Lucid EV in 2025, with a potential output of 150,000 vehicles per year.
Lucid did not confirm the expected level of financial involvement in the joint venture by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which was instrumental in providing Lucid with the capital needed to cross the finish line in development. car and set up an assembly plant in Arizona. The fund is said to own about 62% of Lucid’s shares.
Render Saudi Arabia Lucid
Lucid reports that as of February 28, 2022, its production has exceeded 400 vehicles. It made 125 deliveries to customers at the end of 2021, with more than 300 deliveries as of time of update, while ending the year with a balance sheet reporting more than $6.2 billion in cash.
Chief financial officer Sherry House, in an accompanying statement, said Lucid estimates the factory in Saudi Arabia could be worth up to $3.4 billion for Lucid over 15 years.
The California-based electric vehicle maker has so far only taken reservations in North America and the Middle East and only for Aviation, but has now surpassed 25,000 reservations — a more than 40% increase from the more than 17,000 booked. announced in mid-November . And by 2022, the automaker has revised its production outlook from 12,000 to 14,000 vehicles.
On the product side, Lucid has officially announced that they are delaying the upcoming product launch Gravity SUV a few months ahead — to the first half of 2024.
Lucid Project Gravity – from the video clip when it was released on Air
“I just wanted to make it a better product,” Rawlinson quickly replied during a Q&A session about Gravity’s delay. “I am super excited about how groundbreaking an SUV will be,” he later added.
“Some more twists and turns in development had to be done to make it better than we expected,” explains Rawlinson, who hinted that Gravity will be part of the feedback loop with Air, in which both products will be improved. “And we’re going to have an extremely high-performance SUV, something no one has done before,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, the company is still planning the appearance of $77,400 Lucid Air Pure later in 2022. And while Gravity has been pushed back several months, to early 2024, Lucid made it clear that its 2.85 million-square-foot phase 2 Casa Grande Manufacturing Facility, Arizona are going in the right direction.
Lucid Air
With the new engine, part of that expansion, the company will be able to add an annual rate of 53,000 Lucid Air sedans by the end of 2023 – bringing the total capacity to around 90,000 units annually.
Lucid also noted that they continue to explore other locations in China and possibly Europe.
The electric-vehicle maker hasn’t experienced severe core technology or semiconductor shortages that have resulted in production halts for several other automakers – although executives have noted problems with “commodity” items such as finishes, glass, and carpeting.
Lucid Thrust – Lucid Motors Investor Presentation filed with the SEC, July 2021
Rawlinson has excludes making vehicles for other automakers. Instead, Lucid is building a brand around interpreting luxury and finishing top efficient in-house propulsion units—All are aimed at scaling millions of vehicles, and an asset that executives hinted again Monday could potentially be licensed to other automakers in the future.
