Saudi PIF-backed EV company Lucid Motors makes Nasdaq debut

Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF)-backed electric vehicle company Lucid Motors debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Monday.

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Lucid says the listing has brought in $4.4 billion, which it will use to accelerate growth and increase manufacturing capacity.

The company said it has more than 11,000 paid reservations for its Lucid Air electric car, which it says will be available at the end of 2021.

Launch was originally due for 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19 complications, CEO Peter Rawlinson said in a statement.

The Air will reportedly have a single-charge range of more than 500 miles – which means it would beat out the current leader available on the market, Tesla’s Model S, which has a range of around 400 miles.

Lucid Motors has gone public through a merger with Churchill Capital Corp IV, announced on July 23, and will now trade as Lucid Group, Inc. It will trade under the ticker ‘LCID’.

Saudi Arabia’s PIF owns more than 60 percent of Lucid, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The fund invested more than $1 billion in the company back in 2018 in order to help it set up its manufacturing center in Arizona, US.

A PIF statement at the time said that the “transaction … supports the efforts emphasized in Vision 2030 to build a sustainable future economy that is environmentally-friendly.”

Vision 2030 is Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify the Kingdom’s economy away from its oil base.

Discussions about building a Lucid factory in Saudi Arabia have taken place as part of a drive to bring more high-tech jobs to the Kingdom, according to sources cited by Bloomberg.

Read more:

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