Lucid announced yesterday, along with its Q1 earnings and sales report, that it will be increasing Air prices come June 1. It cites the global geopolitical situation, the chip shortage and pretty much all the other things that established automakers have also faced recently, but it is allowing prospective buyers to order an Air at current prices until the end of the month.
After June 1, the cheapest Air Pure will cost $87,400 (around $10,000 more than before), the Air Touring goes up to $107,400 (about $12,000 more expensive), the Air Grand Touring jumps to $154,000 (up by $15,000) and the range-topping Air Grand Touring Performance stays at $179,000. The price for the latter was just announced two weeks back, so it already has the increase factored in.
It’s worth noting that even though the base Air Pure sees its price go up the least, it is the biggest difference of all versions, a 13 percent increase.
Gallery: Lucid Air Dream Edition
With 30,000 reservations for the Air, most of which are still cars it has yet to build, this means the manufacturer won’t actually reap the benefits of this increase until some time in the future when it starts delivering vehicles ordered after June 1. Lucid recently announced that it had delivered “well over 300 vehicles” just in April, and that it had built around 700 cars in the first quarter of 2022.
It therefore still needs to ramp up production if it is to meet its stated production target of between 12,000 and 14,000 vehicles this year. And at that rate it will take over two years for it to meet the orders it currently has, so it’s only after that point that it will be able to benefit from the announced price increase. The plan was to build 20,000 vehicles in 2022, but it was recently lowered.
Lucid also recently announced that it had received an order for 100,000 vehicles from the Government of Saudi Arabia, to be delivered over a period of 10 years. If you're wondering why, it's probably got something to do with the fact that 61 percent of Lucid is owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the country's national wealth fund, which injected $1-billion into the company back in 2018. Lucid also wants to build a production facility in the country and plans to break ground this year.
