Lucid Motors marked a significant milestone with the opening of its second manufacturing facility, AMP-2, in Saudi Arabia in September. In the over two months since its inauguration, the factory has successfully assembled nearly 800 cars, all of which were previously built at Lucid’s initial facility in Arizona.
Notably, Lucid’s AMP-2 adopts a unique approach, described as assembling “Lucid Air vehicle kits” in the press release. Contrary to traditional car manufacturing, these kits are comprised of fully built Lucid Air sedans. As clarified by Lucid’s Global Vice President and Middle East Managing Director Faisal Sultan in an interview with Reuters, the process involves disassembling fully built Air sedans in Arizona, shipping them to Saudi Arabia, and then reassembling the cars.
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While the current factory capacity is set at 5,000 cars per year, the actual production rate is deliberately limited, with workers reassembling approximately 16 to 20 Air sedans daily. According to Sultan, this intentional low volume is part of Lucid’s focus on providing comprehensive training for its employees.
Sultan stated, “It [the Saudi factory] is a small operation for us. The reason why we have kept it this way is that we want to take baby steps in our approach of training people. You are doing roughly 16, 17 to 20 vehicles a day, rather than an hour, you can spend time with them to really train them.”
See also: Lucid Motors Secures Operating License for EV Production in Saudi Arabia’s Economic Zone
Looking ahead, Lucid Motors envisions a transition for the Saudi Arabian facility, aiming to evolve from assembling kits to building complete cars from the ground up by the middle of the decade. The long-term goal is to increase the factory’s capacity to 155,000 vehicles annually.
