Deliveries of the US-made Lucid Air luxury electric sedan will begin next month, Lucid Group has revealed, after the first “customer quality” car rolled off the assembly line at the company’s Arizona plant this week.
In a statement on Tuesday (US time), Lucid said reservation holders of Lucid Air Dream Edition models would begin receiving their vehicles in late October, with customer deliveries ramping up thereafter.
The announcement coincided with the Saudi-backed company’s Production Preview Week, which has included an official commissioning ceremony at the Advanced Manufacturing Plant (AMP-1) in Casa Grande, as well as the first test drives of the Lucid Air, including for media and analysts.
Lucid Group has been billed as a direct competitor with Tesla in the US, and its luxury Lucid Air as a direct challenger to the supremacy of the Model S – a contest that got a bit more serious this month when it was officially confirmed that the Air Dream R all-wheel-drive edition beat the Model S Long Range by 115 miles (185km) – a new record driving range for a battery electric car.
That milestone was noted with some satisfaction by Lucid CEO/CTO and ex-Tesla engineer, Peter Rawlinson, who said in a statement he was delighted the Lucid Air Dream Edition Range had been officially accredited with a range of 520 miles (837km) by the EPA – “a number I believe to be a new record for any EV.”
Lucid Group’s first production car, the Lucid Air is described as a state-of-the-art luxury sedan with a California-inspired design, race-proven technology, and a full-size interior space in a mid-size exterior footprint.
The Air Dream Edition’s record long range comes courtesy of a 112kWh battery pack combined with the company’s proprietary in-house EV technology – the company also has a Powertrain Manufacturing (LPM-1) factory in Casa Grande.
“I’m delighted that production cars endowed with this level of efficiency are currently driving off our factory line,” said Rawlinson on Tuesday.
“Our technology will allow for increasingly lighter, more efficient, and less expensive EVs, and today represents a major step in our journey to expand the accessibility of more sustainable transportation.”
The company said this week that it had received more than 13,000 reservations for Lucid Air since its launch in September 2020 had and increased the planned total production quantity of the Dream Edition to 520 vehicles.
Lucid also confirmed that the Air meets all the applicable regulatory requirements from the EPA and US Department of Transportation.
The company went from being Lucid Motors, to Lucid Group, earlier this year after successfully listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market off the back of a merger with Churchill Capital Corp IV, that brought in $4.4 billion worth of new capital.
Following the launch of the Lucid Air to market, the company plans to expand its line-up of vehicles, all of which will be based on the company’s proprietary electric powertrain technology.
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and deputy editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.