Asian Tech Press (Jan 13) -- Electric car startup Lucid Motors plans to build an electric vehicle factory in Saudi Arabia by 2025 or 2026 and is in talks with Saudi government authorities about the details.

At a mining conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, Lucid Chairman Andrew Liveris said the company has successfully produced and sold electric vehicles in the United States and is now gradually turning its focus to the Saudi plant, and is negotiating with local partners to finalize details such as shareholdings.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Lucid is in talks with Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF to build an electric car factory near the Red Sea city of Jeddah. The two sides have also exchanged views on the plant's construction in the planned new future city (Neom) in northwest Saudi Arabia.

The main focus of Lucid is to increase production capacity to 20,000 units of the Lucid Air model by 2022 and to expand sales in Europe. And it will launch the Gravity project - a luxury, all-electric large-scale SUV.