Awkward: Saudi Arabia’s new EV brand takes on the U.S. rival it already controls

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Saudi Arabia’s first homegrown electric-vehicle maker is set to take on a U.S. rival the kingdom already controls.
Ceer Motors, majority-owned by the sovereign Public Investment Fund, revealed two electric car models on September 21, with deliveries promised for March 2027. The EVs were designed and engineered in Saudi Arabia, and will be built at Ceer’s plant in King Abdullah Economic City, north of Jeddah.
This is the PIF’s third EV bet. It bought about 5% of Tesla in 2018 and sold almost all of it by the end of 2019. It has also put about $8 billion into California-based Lucid, which has never turned a profit.
For the U.S., Ceer’s debut sets up an awkward rivalry: Saudi Arabia is building its own EV brand while its sovereign wealth fund owns a majority stake in Lucid, whose main factory is in Arizona. Ceer is PIF’s hedge against Lucid, whose shares have slumped more than 60% this year and whose Saudi sales are shrinking in a market dominated by China’s BYDBYDBYD Auto is a Chinese carmaker that became the world’s leading EV manufacturer in 2023, competing with Tesla for market share and global attention.READ MORE.
“Lucid is an existing global technology and luxury-EV company in which Saudi Arabia has invested heavily,” Bill Russo, founder and CEO of Shanghai-based consulting firm Automobility, told Rest of World. “Ceer has a different mandate, creating a Saudi automotive OEM [original equipment manufacturer] and, importantly, an indigenous industrial ecosystem.”
Saudi Arabia’s Ceer
Ceer, a venture between PIF and Taiwanese electronics maker Foxconn, was launched in November 2022. It had set 2025 as the target for its first cars.
Last week, the company’s CEO, James DeLuca, said Ceer will begin production early next year. Ceer has planned more models over the next five years, the company said at the launch. It also aims to make almost half the components of its cars locally by 2034.
Ceer’s Exobot sedan and an SUV are high-powered premium EVs — the segment where Lucid sells its Air luxury sedan and Gravity SUV. The most powerful Exobot versions promise more than 1,100 horsepower, DeLuca said, close to the 1,234 horsepower of Lucid’s fastest car, the Air Sapphire sedan. Ceer has yet to announce prices.
“That does put the initial products closer to Lucid’s premium territory than to BYD’s mass-market center of gravity,” Russo said.
BYD and Lucid serve very different segments, so comparing their volumes directly can be misleading.”Hashim AlFatayerji, CEO, Cararak
The real test of its strategy will come when that range broadens, Russo said. Lucid, in which PIF holds about 58%, is already badly weakened. This year, it named a new CEO, Silvio Napoli; cut about a fifth of its U.S. workforce; ended its second production shift in Arizona; and recalled 27,000 sedans over a fire risk. Its market value has shrunk to about $1.6 billion.
In Saudi Arabia, Lucid’s sales fell 57% in the first seven months of 2026, while BYD’s rose 369%, according to estimates from Focus2Move, a Rome-based firm that tracks car sales in more than 150 countries. The gap partly reflects price, Hashim AlFatayerji, CEO of the independent Saudi advisory firm Cararak, told Rest of World.
“BYD and Lucid serve very different segments, so comparing their volumes directly can be misleading,” AlFatayerji said.
PIF has kept faith with Lucid through the slump. The carmaker remains one of only five U.S. companies in the fund’s latest quarterly holdings filing, and the Saudi government has agreed to buy up to 100,000 Lucid vehicles over 10 years.
Saudi Arabia has no official count of EV sales. Saudis buy almost 1 million new vehicles a year, and 10,000 to 20,000 of them are electric, AlFatayerji estimated. Joseph Salem, a senior partner who heads travel, transport, and hospitality at consulting firm Arthur D. Little in the Middle East and North Africa, puts the figure at 35,000 to 40,000 EVs in 2025, not counting plug-in hybrids.
Ceer’s factory is designed for as many as 240,000 vehicles a year, and Lucid already runs a smaller plant in the kingdom. That is far more than Saudi buyers can take, Salem told Rest of World.
“Combined, their full-capacity targets are roughly 10 times what the domestic market can plausibly absorb near-term,” he said. “So the majority of output, I’d say 80% plus, has to be export-oriented almost by design.”
Saudi Arabia’s EV ambitions
Saudi Arabia is building a car industry sized for the Gulf, North Africa, and beyond, backed by PIF money and trade access across the region, Salem said. Exporting is the strategy, he said.
“The domestic market is the proving ground, not the end goal,” Salem said.
60% of the electric cars sold in the Middle East are from China’s BYD.
Abroad, Ceer will meet Chinese rivals that already lead the region. In the Middle East, BYD sells about 60% of electric cars and Tesla about 15%, according to the International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook.
Chinese carmakers pose a tougher test, Russo said. They have spent years building huge factories, close ties with suppliers, and the ability to sell cheaply, and are now expanding abroad because they can make more cars than China can absorb, he said.
Ceer relies on established suppliers for key parts. Its motors come from Croatia’s Rimac and South Korea’s Hyundai Transys, while its platform is from Taiwan’s Foxconn. It has licensed some component technology from BMW.
“A new entrant cannot simply license its way to that level of competitiveness,” Russo said.
To win buyers at home and abroad, Ceer must match BYD on price, using local parts and state-backed financing, Salem said. It also needs a dealer and service network as wide as BYD’s from the outset, and cars that stand out on their own merits beyond being made in Saudi Arabia, he said.
“It’s a high bar,” Salem said. “But Ceer has the capital and policy backing to close that gap faster than a typical new entrant would.”
Ceer has advantages few new carmakers get, including long-term funding, a powerful backer at home, and the freedom to build on proven technology from others, said Russo. What it still has to earn is a brand that wins customers on product, cost, quality, and execution, he said.
“Saudi Arabia gives Ceer the resources and runway to attempt that, but it doesn’t eliminate those competitive tests,” Russo said.

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