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Dive Brief:

• Lucid Group opened U.S. orders for its long-awaited Gravity SUV on Nov. 7 with production expected to start in the coming weeks, the company announced as a part of its Q3 earnings.
• The luxury electric vehicle maker will begin with the Grand Touring trim, priced at $94,900, according to an Oct. 29 press release. The model offers more than 800 horsepower and a projected range of over 440 miles.
• “I believe this innovation has the potential to reshape the market for SUVs with meaningful opportunity to scale in a significantly larger addressable market,” Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said during the company’s earnings call on Nov. 7.

Dive Insight:

Lucid sees the Gravity as a “key driver” of its future growth, Gagan Dhingra, interim CFO and prinicpal accounting officer, said in the earnings call.

The company expects to increase production during Q4 with the launch of the Gravity, as it targets a full-year output of 9,000 vehicles. Rawlinson noted the Gravity adds an SUV to Lucid’s lineup, allowing the company to enter a market that’s six times larger than that of the Lucid Air sedan.

“Lucid Gravity provides the interior space and practicality of full-size SUV within the exterior footprint of just a mid-size SUV,” he said, adding later that it’s a “super value proposition.”

Delivering that value proposition will take a significant amount of capital, though. So in October, Lucid raised about $1.75 billion through a $719 million public offering of common stock and a $1.03 billion investment from an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the company’s largest shareholder.

“This additional capital gives us sufficient financial runway into the ramp of Lucid Gravity and indeed well into 2026,” Rawlinson said.

In the long-term, Lucid has plans for more affordable vehicles.

The lower-priced Gravity Touring model is expected in late 2025. It starts at $79,900.

Then, in late 2026, the EV maker plans to start production of a mid-sized vehicle priced between $48,000 and $50,000.

“We're not here to be just a niche player,” Rawlinson said. “Lucid exists to have a meaningful impact upon the planet. And to do that, we need scale. And to get that scale, we need to bring our price down.”