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Lucid Group (NASDAQ:LCID), the company that is targeting the luxury EV segment via the Lucid Air electric vehicle, just afforded investors substantial clarity vis-à-vis its international production expansion plans.
To wit, the Al Arabiya publication has now quoted the Kingdom’s Standards and Metrology Authority to indicate that Lucid Group would likely commence its EV production line in Saudi Arabia by 2024:
#نشرة_الرابعة | هيئة المواصفات والمقاييس تكشف لـ #العربية تفاصيل اعتماد شركة LUCID لتنفيذ خط إنتاج السيارات الكهربائية في السعودية بحلول 2024 pic.twitter.com/Deb1DoLZkv
— العربية السعودية (@AlArabiya_KSA) September 6, 2021
A translation of this tweet via Google reads:
"The Standards and Metrology Authority reveals to #العربية Details of LUCID’s approval to implement an electric vehicle production line in Saudi Arabia by 2024."
As a refresher, the Saudi PIF invested $1.3 billion in Lucid Group back in 2019. Even after the company’s public flotation, the fund retains a substantial chunk of ownership in the company. We had noted in a previous post that Lucid Group stands to benefit handsomely from the Saudi Green Initiative. In addition to planting 50 billion trees, the plan seeks to curtail the Kingdom’s carbon emissions by 60 percent through mammoth investments in renewables and green technology. We believe that Lucid Air’s Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology – that leverages the EV’s high-volt battery architecture and combines it with bidirectional charging – stands a fair chance of being deployed in renewable energy storage arena under the ambit of the Saudi Green Initiative.
Bear in mind that Lucid Group currently has over 10K reservations for the Air EV and expects to deliver at least 20K units to the North American and EMEA markets in 2022, with deliveries to China commencing only in 2023. Moreover, the Lucid Gravity SUV is now slated to launch in H2 2023.
Of course, Lucid Group is about to achieve another milestone as well, one related to the initiation of deliveries of the Lucid Air Dream Edition. The company is already sending emails to customers who have booked the Lucid Air Dream Edition to confirm their reservations and vehicle configuration. Moreover, as per an Instagram post by Mr. Jonny Lieberman at MotorTrend, who was invited by Lucid Group to test drive the Air EV, the deliveries are slated to begin in Q3 2021, which ends in September. Nonetheless, Lieberman seems to believe that any meaningful deliveries of the Air EV would take place in October 2021.
