CASA GRANDE, Ariz. 29 Sept Reuters - Luxury electric car maker Lucid Group is on track to meet its production targets for 2022 and 2023 and is pushing to achieve the goal of 577 vehicles this year, its chief executive said:
The California-based startup, which went public via a shell company this year, has secured $4.4 billion needed until the end of next year, but would not wait until then to raise more money, Peter Rawlinson told Reuters.
It is a capital intensive business, he said, adding that the company was on track to achieve its production target of 20,000 vehicles in 2022 and 50,000 in 2023.
He said that the latest funding sees us through until 2022. It doesn't see us right through to the project Gravity, a reference to the firm's electric utility vehicle planned for release in late 2023.
The balance sheet is okay till the end of 2017. So now is not the time to raise money until the end of next year. That would be pretty crazy, he said.
Lucid started production of its Lucid Air premium electric sedans at its Arizona factory on Tuesday aiming to deliver the cars to customers in late October.
He said it was a reasonable bet that in a year the industry's chip shortage would ease, echoing comments made by Tesla developer Elon Musk who said last week that new semiconductor plants would mean the shortage would take short term.
Rawlinson said the company was redesigning a printed circuit board to avoid any problems that could affect the supply of one chip in the medium term. We are now undertaking risk mitigation actions, he said.