Lucid Group Inc.’s chairman Andrew Liveris said this week that the EV car-marker intends to build a factory in Saudi Arabia by 2025 or 2026, and is currently in the process of negotiating details with ministries in the Kingdom.
The comments were made on the sidelines of a major mining and minerals forum being held this week in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh.
The Lucid Air.
Plans to manufacture Lucid cars in Saudi Arabia have been rumored to be in the works for months. Lucid, the newcomer rival to market-preponderant Tesla Motors, is majority owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).
Lucid was founded in 2007 as a battery technology company. The PIF invested into the company in 2018.
A recent review of the Lucid Air, the company’s first car, by Chris Taylor from Mashable, called the it “the future of cars.”
“Experience has taught us to be wary of any ‘car of the future,’” Taylor writes in his review after seeing the Lucid Air Dream edition, the highest-end model of Lucid that will start shipping to 13,000 pre-orders in October. “[F]inally, after years of waiting, a small group of media folks got to actually drive the Dream Edition. Smiles spread across once-skeptical faces. Because of the GT-like handling and torque, yes, but also because so much thought has gone into the interior experience. Sitting in the roomy back seat (which we also did) seems like something you could happily do for hundreds of miles at a time — and even when all occupants are over 6 feet tall, everyone has plenty of legroom.”
Lucid went public in 2021 with a Special Purposes Acquisition Company merger. That move valued the company at more than $20 billion. In December, the company revealed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating SPAC merger.
