Lucid (LCID) is gearing up for big growth this year. After launching its first electric SUV, the Gravity, the company plans to double production this year. According to Lucid’s interim CEO, Marc Winterhoff, the EV maker will enter new global markets this year, including parts of Europe and the Middle East.
Lucid is expanding into new global markets in 2025
With over 3,100 vehicles delivered in the first quarter, Lucid set its fifth straight quarterly record. Production is picking up at its Casa Grande manufacturing plant, with 2,213 units built from January to March.
Lucid said the record quarter was achieved despite “limited deliveries in Saudi Arabia” due to a system change that has since been fixed. The company had another 600 vehicles in transit to Saudi Arabia, which will be counted in its second quarter results.
During the Saudi-US Investment Forum on Tuesday, Winterhoff told Bloomberg that Lucid expects to accelerate its global expansion with plans to enter new parts of Europe and the Middle East this year.
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“We have started Abu Dhabi and we’re looking into Qatar and other additional markets coming very soon,” Winterhoff said.
Lucid Gravity and Air models (Source: Lucid)
Lucid opened its first international manufacturing plant (AMP-2) in Saudi Arabia and has been assembling its Air luxury electric sedan since September 2023. It’s also on track to finish construction on another plant in the region with 150,000 annual production capacity in 2026.
Last week, Lucid’s senior vice president, Adrian Price, announced on social media that the second batch of Gravity models was ready to ship to Saudi Arabia.
Lucid Gravity electric SUV (Source: Lucid)
Winterhoff told Bloomberg that the company will begin delivering Saudi-made EVs locally the following year while exporting to Europe and parts of Asia, outside of China. Although no details were confirmed, Lucid is considering producing EV batteries in Saudi Arabia through a collaboration.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is Lucid’s top shareholder, with a 60% stake in the company. The investment fund has invested billions in the EV startup as it aims to diversify its GDP beyond oil.
Lucid Gravity Grand Touring in Aurora Green (Source: Lucid)
Even with Trump’s auto tariffs, Lucid expects to produce 20,000 vehicles this year, more than double the 9,000 it made in 2024.
The Lucid Gravity Grand Touring model is available to order in the US, starting at $94,900 with up to 450 miles of range. For those looking for something a little cheaper, Lucid will launch the Gravity Touring trim later this year, starting at $79,900.
Lucid ended Q1 with $5.76 billion in liquidity, which it expects will be enough to fund it into the second half of 2026, when it plans to launch its more affordable midsize platform.
Lucid’s stock has risen over 15% since reporting first quarter earnings on May 6, but share prices are still down 12% over the past year at around $2.76.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
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To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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The OPEC logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of a computer screen displaying OPEC icons in Ankara, Turkey, on June 25, 2024.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Eight oil-producing nations of the OPEC+ alliance agreed on Saturday to increase their collective crude production by 548,000 barrels per day, as they continue to unwind a set of voluntary supply cuts.
This subset of the alliance — comprising heavyweight producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, alongside Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — met digitally earlier in the day. They had been expected to increase their output by a smaller 411,000 barrels per day.
In a statement, the OPEC Secretariat attributed the countries’ decision to raise August daily output by 548,000 barrels to “a steady global economic outlook and current healthy market fundamentals, as reflected in the low oil inventories.”
The eight producers have been implementing two sets of voluntary production cuts outside of the broader OPEC+ coalition’s formal policy.
One, totaling 1.66 million barrels per day, stays in effect until the end of next year.
Under the second strategy, the countries reduced their production by an additional 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of the first quarter.
They initially set out to boost their production by 137,000 barrels per day every month until September 2026, but only sustained that pace in April. The group then tripled the hike to 411,000 barrels per day in each of May, June, and July — and is further accelerating the pace of their increases in August.
Oil prices were briefly boosted in recent weeks by the seasonal summer spike in demand and the 12-day war between Israel and Iran, which threatened both Tehran’s supplies and raised concerns over potential disruptions of supplies transported through the key Strait of Hormuz.
At the end of the Friday session, oil futures settled at $68.30 per barrel for the September-expiration Ice Brent contract and at $66.50 per barrel for front month-August Nymex U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude.
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
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