Dubai: Saudi Arabia will manufacture and export more than 150,000 electric cars in 2026, a senior official revealed yesterday.
Abdullah Al Swaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said that the US electric vehicle giant Lucid Motors Company aims to produce 150,000 electric cars annually in Saudi Arabia by 2026 to 2018.
Peter Rawlinson, CEO and Chief Technology Officer of Lucid, said earlier that the EV giant will shortly begin construction of a facility in Saudi Arabia. In 2025, he said, “we intend to begin producing automobiles, and in 2026 and 2027, we will boost production to reach 150,000 automobiles yearly.”
According to Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Investment Khalid Al Falih, Lucid Motors began building its first overseas facility for electric vehicles in May. The facility will be one of three production facilities for the California-based manufacturer of electric vehicles, which is owned 61 per cent by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF). In March, Lucid announced that it had reached a $30 million leasing agreement with King Abdullah Economic City developer Emaar Economic City for a piece of industrial land there.
In April, the Saudi government said that it has ordered from Lucid between 50,000 and 100,000 electric vehicles over the following ten years. Investment in the company is part of a wider drive to diversify the country’s economy away from oil as part of its Vision 2030 plans.
By the turn of the decade, the plan’s audacious goal is to have at least 30 per cent of the cars and trucks in the Saudi capital Riyadh run on electricity.
