This luxury EV with Tesla-beating range is just weeks away from arriving with owners

This year has proven to be a great time to be a startup automaker. This month, the first Rivian electric pickup trucks rolled off the production line and headed to customers’ driveways. 

Now, we’re hearing that deliveries of Lucid’s long-awaited Air electric luxury sedan will begin in late October. 

The automaker just announced that production of the cars began on Tuesday at its Arizona factory. Lucid says it plans to increase production capacity to 90,000 units annually over the next two years.

The most expensive Lucid Air Dream Edition will be the first out of the gate and will be followed by other versions of the car. The Touring, Grand Touring, and Air Pure models will come later. 

Big range potential

Following the EPA’s confirmation that the Dream Edition Range could achieve a range of 520 miles per charge, the automaker extended its initial production run to 520 units to celebrate. That’s a drop in the bucket to the car’s 13,000 overall reservations.

The Lucid’s range numbers put even the best Tesla to shame, though it’s worth noting that the Air’s triple-digit price tag far exceeds that of a Model S, which starts around $90,000. 

Still, it’s clear that there’s strong demand for the cars, regardless of the price, and the automaker’s more affordable cars will start at $77,400.

Lucid’s CEO, Peter Rawlinson, acknowledged the issue of price at the production announcement event, stating that “the next big obstacle is cost effectiveness of electric cars. We’ve got to get the cost down.” 

While there are affordable EVs on sale, the number of high-end, high-cost vehicles is growing. 

The price of electric cars should come back to earth as automakers sell more and can spread their costs over a larger number of units sold, but there’s no telling how long that will take.