Lucid finishes its factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, in just one year – Roadshow

Electric vehicle startup Lucid has been hard at work on its first factory for about a year now, and while we’d imagine it would be well along its way to completion, we wouldn’t have guessed that it’d be finished already. Except, according to an announcement made Tuesday by Lucid, it is.

The facility is located in Casa Grande, Arizona, and spans approximately 590 acres. Lucid says that it’s launching with a production capacity of 30,000 vehicles, but already has plans to scale that up to 400,000 vehicles through a series of expansions that go until 2028.

“We broke ground on the 590-acre Lucid AMP-1 site in Casa Grande, Arizona, on Dec. 2, 2019, and slightly less than a year later we have completed the first purpose-built EV factory in North America,” said Peter Rawlinson, CEO of Lucid Motors, in a statement. “The effort and agility demonstrated by this team is truly astounding, as we’re already commissioning equipment compatible with the Lucid manufacturing system to start production of the next-generation EV, the Lucid Air, in just a few months.”

The factory — dubbed AMP-1 — is the first factory in the US built from the ground up to make electric vehicles. Tesla’s Fremont facility was originally built as a joint venture between Toyota and GM, and Rivian’s factory used to belong to Mitsubishi.

The Lucid Air Dream Edition is currently on track to enter production in the spring of 2021, followed by the less-expensive trim levels and eventually the base Pure model. The electric SUV that Lucid has dubbed “Project Gravity” will enter the picture at some point too.

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