Chris Bryant, Columnist

Saudis Find a Bottomless Money Pit in Lucid

Lucid provides a grim lesson in auto industry capital intensity, scale economies and brand building.

November 9, 2023 at 8:24 AM UTC

Chris Bryant is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies in Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for the Financial Times.

A Lucid Motors Air Grand Touring electric vehicle (EV) at the company's showroom in New York in 2022.
Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg

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Saudi Arabia appeared to have found a winner when US luxury electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid Group Inc. went public in 2021 — a clean tech investment that would diversify and substantially add to the kingdom’s oil riches. Two years later, Lucid has instead delivered a grim lesson in automotive capital intensity, scale economies and the difficulty of building car brands from scratch.

The Public Investment Fund’s 60% Lucid stake was valued at more than $55 billion in the months after the EV manufacturer completed a US SPAC listing.