Lucid Group has reportedly started customer deliveries of the Air luxury electric sedan in Saudi Arabia, the home of its largest shareholder.
The announcement was made by Faisal Sultan, Vice President and Managing Director of Lucid Middle East, in an interview with Argaam (via Teslarati).
The Lucid Air starts at $117,300 (440,000 Saudi Riyals) in Saudi Arabia for the base Pure trim, but prices can go as high as $256,000 (960,000 Saudi Riyals) for the limited-run Dream Edition range-topper.
Sultan said he expects many Lucid Air EVs to hit the Kingdom's roads as the EV startup has thousands of reservations. He noted that Lucid is on track to deliver hundreds vehicles to customers over the coming months.
The executive added that Lucid is sending hundreds of cars to Saudi Arabia from its factory in Casa Grande, Arizona on a weekly basis. The automaker's goal is to deliver thousands of vehicles, but this is limited by the number of cars it can ship at a time.
As you probably know, Lucid is building its second assembly plant – dubbed AMP-2 (Advanced Manufacturing Plant #2) – in King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) in Saudi Arabia, with the new facility expected to be ready to launch operations in the third or fourth quarter this year, according to Sultan.
He noted that the factory will have a capacity of thousands of units – a rather vague target – and will initially re-assemble Lucid Air vehicle kits that are pre-manufactured at the US plant in order to accelerate the delivery pace and boost supply by year-end.
Sultan also said the AMP-2 plant will start producing complete vehicles by 2025 or 2026, at an annual production capacity of 150,000 EVs. The new factory will primarily cater to the needs of customers in Saudi Arabia – the government ordered 100,000 vehicles last year – and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.
Speaking of Gulf countries, Lucid plans to open its first showrooms in the United Arab Emirates by the end of the year.
When Lucid opened its first studio in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital, in October 2022, it said the first deliveries were to follow before the end of the year. Obviously, that didn't happen, but it's better late than never, right?
The news about the start of deliveries in Saudi Arabia follows last week's announcement that Lucid plans to raise about $3 billion through a stock offering, with nearly two-thirds of the money expected to come from its largest shareholder, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF).
