Description
Lucid Motors, Inc. is an American electric vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Newark, California. Lucid's other divisions include energy storage, and original equipment manufacturing. The company was founded in 2007. As of 2021, its first car, Lucid Air, is in development.
History
Lucid was founded in 2007 under the name Atieva and originally focused on building electric vehicle batteries and powertrains for other vehicle manufacturers.
Lucid's Chief Executive Officer Peter Rawlinson, formerly served as VP of Engineering at Tesla,[3] and Vice President Derek Jenkins previously worked as Head of Design at Mazda North America Operations. The company has seen investments from Tsing Capital, Mitsui, Venrock, JAFCO, and others.
The company rebranded to Lucid Motors in October 2016 and officially announced its intent to develop an all-electric, high-performance luxury vehicle.
On November 29, 2016, state and company officials announced the planned construction of Lucid's US$700 million manufacturing plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, which was projected to employ up to 2,000 workers by the mid-2020s, initially building 20,000 cars and expanding up to 130,000 cars per year. The factory was then to be designed to support a maximum capacity of 380,000 cars per year. As of November 2016, the company had planned to break ground in 2017, and have cars in production by early 2019.
On September 17, 2018, Lucid Motors announced that they were in talks with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia for a funding valued at over $1 billion. The investment was completed in April 2019. The investment will fund: the final engineering and testing of the Lucid Air model; the first-phase construction of its manufacturing plant in Casa Grande, Arizona; the commercial production of the Lucid Air; and Lucid's worldwide retail strategy, beginning in North America. Construction of the plant began in late 2019, the first-phase was completed in December 2020. The second-phase construction is ongoing and will increase production capacity from 34,000 to 90,000 vehicles a year. The completed factory (4 phases) will have a combined manufacturing capacity of about 400,000 cars per year.
In February 2021, Lucid Motors announced a deal valued at $11.75 billion to merge with Churchill Capital Corp IV, a publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company. CEO Rawlinson announced Lucid's intention to produce its Project Gravity SUV by 2023, then offer a competitor to Tesla's Model 3 by 2024 or 2025.
In July 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Public Investment Find of Saudi Arabia will own over 60 percent of Lucid when the company goes public. The fund will record a profit of nearly 20 billion dollars on its investment in Lucid from 2018.
