Saudi Arabia Buys 100,000 Lucid Electric Cars And Holds 60 Percent of The Shares
Saudi Arabia holds more than 60 percent of the company’s shares and wants to reduce its emissions.
Electric car maker Lucid has announced that the Saudi Arabian government will buy up to 100,000 vehicles over the next ten years as part of an agreement. The company has committed to initially purchasing 50,000 vehicles with an option to buy an additional 50,000 units within the same period.
The deal includes the Lucid Air luxury sedan, named Car of the Year by MotorTrend magazine last year, and future models. The vehicles will be manufactured at the Lucid factory in Arizona and a future international manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia.
The order quantity is expected to be between 1,000 and 2,000 vehicles per year and will increase to 4,000 to 7,000 vehicles per year from 2025. Deliveries should start in the second quarter of 2023 at the latest.
How much Saudi Arabia will pay for the vehicles has not been announced. TechCrunch reckons the Kingdom will get a bargain price as Lucid hasn’t set an MSRP yet.
The Largest Shareholder
The deal is part of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 plan, with which the country wants to decouple its economy from fossil fuels.
As the largest shareholder with 61 percent through the Public Investment Fund, one is probably also interested in the company’s success. The public investment fund currently holds 1,015,252,523 shares of Lucid.
In 2018, $1 billion was invested in Lucid Motors when the company was still privately held. According to TechCrunch, the investment came at a crucial time for the manufacturer, struggling to raise the funds needed to produce the Lucid Air.
