Tesla has a 1000 hp challenger; its supply chain will run down to Sonora

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Eager to challenge Tesla Motors’ dominance as the world’s leading producer of premium electric vehicles, Lucid Motors‘ has developed an all-aluminum, midsize sedan with up to 400 miles of battery range per charge that packs a 1,000-horsepower wallop from front and rear motors.

Company officials unveiled plans for a dedicated factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, that will eventually employ 2000 people. Parts and components to come from suppliers nearby in Mexico’s state of Sonora. By 2022, total investment in the plant will reach US$ 700 million, according to Lucid manufacturing chief Brian Barron.

“What we have is a new type of luxury car,” Peter Rawlinson, a former Tesla chief engineer who helped bring Model S to life and current Lucid’s chief technology officer, said in an interview with Forbes. “It’s the size of an Audi A6, it’s as cool as an A7, has the interior space of an Audi A8 longwheel-base, and the performance of a Bugatti Veyron. No one’s done that.”

While Lucid is making prototypes of its dream vehicle, packed with high-tech lighting technology and plans and the necessary ingredients for automated driving, production version cars won’t arrive for at least two years. And to build them requires raising hundreds of millions of dollars.

To that end the company plans to launch a fundraising on early 2017. “I know firsthand that this is a capital-intensive business, and we will require a future round of investment,” he said, without specifying a target amount. “We believe we are imminently investable, with a product as compelling as we have, our ability to deliver and our business model.”

MexicoNow