#LucidAir

A substantial car with a name that implies nothingness will soon have a home.

Lucid Motors, which positioned its vastly powerful Air sedan near the front doors of the 2017 New York International Auto Show, has broken ground on an assembly plant in Casa Grande, Arizona. With suppliers lined up and braintrust in place, all Lucid lacked was a plant — and, for a considerable time, the cash to pull it all off.

Thank the Saudis for riding to the rescue with a check.

The Saudi Arabian investment fund Tesla CEO Elon Musk hoped to tap has instead showered all over Silicon Valley startup Lucid Motors. On Monday, the California automaker announced a $1 billion deal with Saudi Arabia, with the investment going towards the final stages of development, and production, of the Air — an upscale electric five-door expected to come to market in 2020.

The cash should cover the construction of an Arizona production facility the fledgling automaker couldn’t afford to build. Suffice it to say, the domestic, independent car scene just became a little more interesting.

It’s not a done deal just yet, but a high-tech Tesla rival, headquartered just a few miles away from Elon Musk’s Palo Alto, California base of operations, might receive the Saudi funding the Tesla CEO so desperately craves.

According to sources who spoke to Reuters, PIF, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is ready to pour $1 billion into Newark, California-based Lucid Motors. The two entities have reportedly drawn up a term sheet for the deal, which would see the the Saudis become a majority owner of the private automaker.

What does Lucid have to offer the Saudis in return for the investment? A large, technologically advanced automobile.

It’s the dream of every startup to bring forth an exciting idea and then allow itself to be purchased by a much larger and less imaginative company to ensure the concept never reaches fruition. Lucid Motors, one of the few automotive startups attempting to temper hype with reasonable expectations, is approaching that dream as rumors of its attempt to sell itself to a larger automaker begin to proliferate.

While most of the talk surrounding the potential sale of the company is just that, Lucid has been desperately seeking funding for the production of its electric car in Arizona. Unnamed inside sources claim the company reached out to Ford Motor Company and even held preliminary takeover talks.

Lucid Motors’ production EV turned out to be a much more reasonable entry than anyone expected. The media buzz was that LM’s Air would be a super-sedan offering up to 1,000 horsepower and a 400 mile range — a real Tesla killer. With a 1,000 horses and instantaneous torque, it would actually shame just about everything else on the road, regardless of how it was powered. However, as is so often the case with EV startups, the reality is significantly more nuanced than the hype.

That doesn’t mean Lucid can’t be a massive thorn in Tesla’s side, though. Looking over the freshly released details of the Air reveals a highly competitive base model (on paper) and, since this is the base model, there remains room for that ludicrously powerful and extravagantly priced car we were promised.

In the interim, consumers will just have to be satisfied with a much more affordable unit, but it still outdoes the base model Tesla in terms of power, range, and price.

Wednesday night, in a nondescript warehouse southeast of San Francisco, Lucid Motors revealed its first car, and the almost-production ready Air has far more to offer than its name implies. This low slung sedan is a head turning, headline-grabbing car offering up to 1,000 horsepower and a 400 mile range.