Lucid Motors allowed to expand Casa Grande factory
Lucid Motors has received approval from the Casa Grande City Council to start expanding its electric car plant there. Among other things, the expansion is intended to create the capacity for the announced second series, an electric SUV.
Lucid had completed the first construction phase of the plant, with the capacity to produce up to 30,000 units of the Air electric sedan, in December 2020. However, it was planned from the beginning to expand the plant gradually. When completed, the factory’s production capacity is expected to be up to 400,000 units per year.
The expansion, which is expected to start this year, will enable Lucid Motors to produce the brand’s first electric SUV model under the name Project Gravity. The electric SUV was first announced by Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson in summer 2020. It will be based on the Air electric saloon and will help with scaling. “It’s really very important because we need economies of scale to grow the business,” Rawlinson said last August. However, the vehicle has not yet been unveiled.
Lucid does not currently specify what the capacity will be in Phase 2 or exactly by when it will be completed. So far, there has been talk of the electric SUV being built from 2023 onwards. As Teslarati reports, Phase 2 is to include a body-in-white plant, a stamping plant, vehicle assembly, drive assembly, as well as a warehouse and a customer experience centre.
A total of four phases are planned by 2028, increasing the factory’s footprint from the current 999,000 square feet to 5.1 million square feet. This means increasing from an area of about 93,000 square metres to 474,000 square metres. The council’s approval only indicates that the Phase 2 expansion will be to 2.4 million square feet (about 223,000 square metres). It is also planned to create around 3,000 parking spaces there.
As was revealed earlier this year, Lucid Motors is apparently also planning a second plant in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF invested in the start-up some time ago. In February, Lucid Motors also announced its intention to go public through a merger with SPAC Churchill Capital IV.
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