Lucid Motors, the Electric car manufacturing company, is having a hard time arranging funds to make the Luicd Air electric car, which is touted to directly rival the Tesla Model S Electric Vehicle. Currently, the startup is looking at several acquisition offers to raise the money to build the vehicle. A source familiar with the situation states that car manufacturing company Ford is keen on buying the electric car making startup.
Ford interested in buying Lucid Motors?
According to the same source, Ford’s new CEO Jim Hackett has paid a visit to Lucid on June 28th, accompanied with a number of executives.
After the visit, the carmaker presented Lucid with a draft contract named term sheet. According to the contract, even if Lucid agreed to a deal with Ford, the acquisition will be preceded by careful research before the acquisition is closed.
However, contrary to reports, publication Recode claims that Ford is not the only company interested in buying the electric car making start-up. According to Recode, at least two other companies have also made their interest known in Lucid. The report also states that the funding process for the Lucid Air is taking place parallel to the talks of the acquisition. A report claims that currently offers of more than $200 million have been made to Lucid for the funding of the Series D electric vehicles.
Development of Lucid Air proceeding well?
In the meantime, the development of the Lucid Air electric vehicle is progressing well. The electric car was recently seen running at 235 mph on a trail test track run. However, despite such progress, the company has been facing its own setbacks. The company was forced ro give up on trying to develop its own self-driving technology and had to make do with a third-party semi-autonomous system from Mobileye, which is now a part of Intel.
The Lucid Air has been priced at $60,000 and is directly competing with Tesla Model S electric car, which is the cheapest Tesla model to date.
In future, the Silicon Valley startup plans to construct an assembly plant in China. This plant is supposed to be run entirely on local and regional government incentives. Apart from that, Lucid also plans to build a factory in the United States in Casa Grande, Arizona.
However, the funding for this stateside project has become an issue. Although Lucid managed to collect $1.5 million as job-training grant for the Arizona plant, it is still $5 million short from the total amount required to built the project.
