Luxury Electric Automaker Lucid Motors Opens Up Reservations for its Air Sedan

author: FutureCar Staff    

The Lucid Air Sedan

California electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors has been showing off a prototype of its Lucid Air sedan since the New York Auto Show in 2017. Now with a fresh round of funding and a factory under construction in Arizona, the automaker is inching closer to bringing its ultra-luxurious Air sedan to market.

Reservation holders will have the first opportunity to own a Lucid Air. Lucid plans to invite reservation holders to special events with exclusive opportunities to experience the Air sedan leading up to its launch.

The company announced that beta prototypes of the Air are now undergoing testing.

The $1,000 reservation payment will be applied towards the purchase price of the Lucid Air and is fully refundable. Lucid has not disclosed the price of the Air, buts it's expected to start around the same price as the Tesla Model S, which starts at $75,000.

The state-of-the-art Air sedan features a what Lucid calls a "California-inspired design" combined with cutting-edge technology. The Air will offer around 400 miles range and can hit 0-60 mph in under 2.5 seconds, producing over 1,000 horsepower from its electric powertrain.

Lucid Motors is headquartered in Newark,California and is among a handful of new luxury-focused EV startups looking follow in Tesla's footsteps. The company's CEO, Peter Rawlinson, who also serves as the company's CTO, worked at Tesla under Elon Musk serving as chief engineer on the Model S. Rawlinson joined Lucid in 2013 and set out to build an electric car to rival the Tesla Model S, with a much more advanced electric powertrain.

In July, Lucid Motors announced that it hired former Tesla vice president of manufacturing Peter Hochholdinger to serve as its vice president of vehicle manufacturing.

Prior to working at Tesla, Hochholdinger spent 24 years at Audi, where he rose to senior director of production for the Audi A4, A5, and Q5. Hochholdinger will lead Lucid's global manufacturing operations at the Arizona factory.

Lucid is one of the few electric vehicle startups with its own factory, which is currently under construction in Casa Grande, Arizona. The first phase of construction began in November and includes an investment of over $300 million. The factory is scheduled for completion in late 2020.

The company expects that the Arizona factory will create approximately 4,800 direct and indirect jobs over the next decade. Lucid plans to make $700 million more in capital investments by the mid-2020s.

Lucid Motors is backed by a $1 billion investment from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, one of the world's largest wealth funds with over $320 billion in assets.

FutureCar Staff