Lucid Motors is finally starting construction at its electric vehicle factory in Arizona after years of delays due to difficulties raising capital.
In 2017, Lucid Motors announced an aggressive $60,000 base price for its luxury all-electric sedan, the Lucid Air, with a range of 240 miles and some other interesting specs.
At the time, Lucid also unveiled its plan for a $700 million factory in Arizona to produce the Air in 2018.
However, they had difficulties raising the capital needed to start construction on the plant.
Late last year, Lucid secured over $1 billion in investments from Saudi Arabia, which put them back on track for their 2017 plans.
Now a year after they announced the new funding, they have announced that construction is on at the Casa Grande, Arizona, site and they believe they are now on track for production to start in “late 2020.”
Lucid says that they have now started work on the foundations for the facility:
“Last month, the local Planning and Zoning Commission gave final approval of our multi-year master site plan. Land grading began in September, and crews are drilling and forming the caissons that will help form the structural foundation of the facility.”
They released some images of the process:
Construction is underway on Lucid’s Arizona factory. Learn more about our progress towards production in our latest post: https://t.co/t1GvqFyOlJ pic.twitter.com/C4pQwt46tg
— Lucid Motors (@LucidMotors) November 6, 2019
It’s unclear what the production capacity will be at the new factory, but it is expected to be in the six figures per year.
Electrek’s Take
I am excited about this.
Lucid always seemed to have a great EV product, but the road to production was never clear because the auto industry is so capital extensive.
But now they have Saudi money and they have Peter Hochholdinger, Tesla’s former head of production, to bring the Air electric sedan to production.
The problem is that the Air would have been an incredible product in 2018 that would have convinced plenty of people to go with an unproven brand, but it’s a little less the case in “late 2020” – unless they have significantly improved on the product.
I think it will be interesting to follow them over the next 12 months. We will update you guys on the progress and if you hear anything, don’t hesitate to reach out.
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