When I visited Lucid’s Silicon Valley facility in September I was told that Casa Grande, Ariz. The facility is almost on and on. I am cautiously optimistic that such a large facility could be built and the electric car could be started in less than a year from scratch, but the company broke down in December 2019 and even with a coronavirus related delay in construction. It is a compliment to the crime and overdeliver lifestyle that the miniature is delivering at every step it has managed to achieve so far in late November 2020.
In protest of the bold and brisk way Tesla has taken over the past decade, Lucid is speaking softly and carrying a huge fucking stick, screaming from the company’s high altitude on the Twitter soapbox. If the air doesn’t deliver exactly what they say, I would be a little surprised at the moment. The company is not built on the foundation of the Braggadosio and it looks a bit refreshed from the electric car startup.
On Tuesday, Lucid announced the completion of one phase of its first full-fledged manufacturing facility, and it should still be on track to deliver the first consumer air luxury electric sedan by next spring. Expansion of the site will begin in early 2021 to allow the company to begin production of its SUV, which is due for a 2023 delivery date.
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In my time at the Silicon Valley location, I noticed that dozens of beta and prototype Lucid Ars have already been completed and are very much ready for prime time. In addition to being a really beautiful car, it seems to fit very well together. Of course, most of these are hand-built prototypes, so only time will tell if the product version can stack up this far. Lucid says it is preparing to build a final series of “product-representative” versions of the car to complete testing before a full-scale launch.
The plan for the facility, just south of Phoenix, is to cut the red ribbon with an initial capacity of 30,000 units per year. The launch will of course start with the most expensive and most powerful Lucid Air Dream Edition models, making 1,080 horsepower and retail at 9 169,000. It will take a year to deliver the Lucid Air Pure, the least expensive model planned, starting. 69,900.
Lucid is already looking at two more extensions besides adding a second production line for the SUV. The company says construction will continue on the factory from its current 999,000 square feet to 5 million square feet by 2028. Production will reportedly increase from the current plan of 40,000,000 units to 400,000,000 units a year.
The Arizona site was chosen for a number of reasons – including infrastructure, talent, geographic location, and a pre-existing automotive supply chain – but it also offers space for a larger step and planned expansion, as the main areas of the factory were deliberately built with it. . With this in mind, it includes a state-of-the-art, water-based paint shop designed to be future-proof with the necessary footprints and special infrastructural features so that it can be expanded to meet the needs of the factory’s future phases. A total of four phases are planned to be built by 2028, which will take 5.1 million square feet of footage from the factory’s existing 999,000 square feet. In its final form, the production capacity of AMP-1 will be up to 400,000 units per year.
I have also been promised a visit to this facility, hoping that almost the first production trains will roll out of the assembly line and wait to take it all in first hand. Of course, I will report back with any concrete findings. In the meantime, this seems quite promising for Lucid. I wonder if this means that the company’s share price will rise to half a trillion dollars.
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