Lucid Motors could be backed by Saudi Arabia for funds

ABU DHABI: According to recent reports by Reuters, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF) is planning to invest in Lucid Motors. This report has come following an earlier report of Tesla’s intentions to go private if it gets backing of the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund.

Reports also say that PIF and Lucid Motors have already made a term sheet for their investment plans. Herein, PIF would invest more than US$1 billion in Lucid Motors in exchange for a majority in ownership. The funds are to come in stages. The first investment being US$500 million and the rest of the money would come depending on the company’s performance.

This bold decision from the PIF to invest in tech companies isn’t that shocking. The company feels the need to diversify its investment portfolio and move a bit away from just oil-dependent industries. The PIF is assumed to have a cash reserve of approximately US$250 billion. A good chunk of this, well US$45 billion are already into Japan’s SoftBank Group.

But this isn’t just good news for the fund’s plans to expand. If this deal is done, Lucid Motors would be the happiest. For the American automaker would have gained the required funding to start production of its first model. The company introduced the Air, a luxury sedan EV in 2016. This car as the company claimed has a range of 640 km and produces 1,000hp of maximum power. The vehicle is set to be built at Lucid Motors’ new US$700 million facilities in Casa Grande, Arizona. However, the goal to achieve this has been pushed to 2020 for the company lacks funds.
Let us just hope that the deal gets done shall we? Will, that makes the company an even stronger rival of Tesla? What do you think?