Awkward: Saudi Arabia’s new EV brand takes on the U.S. rival it already controls
Rest of World Indranil Ghosh
Saudi Arabia just unveiled its own EV brand. Problem: the kingdom already owns most of the U.S. rival it’s now challenging.
Based on reporting by Rest of World, Indranil Ghosh — read the original for the full story.
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Saudi Arabia’s first homegrown EV maker has stepped onto a very awkward stage. Ceer Motors, majority-owned by the sovereign Public Investment Fund, showed off two electric models on September 21 and said deliveries should start in March 2027. The cars were designed and engineered in Saudi Arabia, and they’ll be built at Ceer’s plant in King Abdullah Economic City, north of Jeddah.
That makes Ceer PIF’s third EV wager, alongside Tesla and Lucid. The fund bought about 5% of Tesla in 2018 and had almost fully exited by the end of 2019. It has also put about $8 billion into Lucid, whose main factory is in Arizona and which has never made a profit. So while Ceer is trying to become a Saudi original equipment manufacturer, the same sovereign fund is backing a U.S. EV brand that now looks like a direct rival.
Ceer was launched in November 2022 as a joint venture between PIF and Foxconn. The company originally aimed for first cars in 2025, but CEO James DeLuca said last week that production should begin early next year. It also plans more models over the next five years, and wants nearly half of its components made locally by 2034. The Exobot sedan and SUV sit in the premium EV bracket, with the most powerful versions said to top 1,100 horsepower. That puts them close to Lucid’s Air and Gravity, not in BYD’s mass-market territory.
Lucid is already under pressure. PIF still owns about 58% of the company, but this year Lucid named a new CEO, Silvio Napoli, cut about a fifth of its U.S. workforce, ended a second production shift in Arizona and recalled 27,000 sedans over a fire risk. Its market value has fallen to about $1.6 billion. In Saudi Arabia, its sales dropped 57% in the first seven months of 2026, while BYD’s rose 369%, according to Focus2Move. And that gap matters because Saudi buyers take far fewer EVs than Ceer or Lucid can build.
The numbers point in one direction: export, export, export. Ceer’s factory can make as many as 240,000 vehicles a year, and Lucid already has a smaller plant in the kingdom. Even the people watching the market think that leaves the local market far too small to absorb full output. Ceer will be judged less by the fact that it exists than by whether it can sell outside Saudi Arabia, where Chinese brands already dominate much of the region.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is Saudi industrial policy with a built-in family argument. Ceer looks less like a clean break from Lucid than a hedge against a bet that isn’t paying off. The real test isn’t pride or branding; it’s whether a state-backed startup can beat Chinese incumbents on price, service, and execution without pretending licensing parts is the same thing as building a car company.
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