Lucid expands Arizona footprint with Phoenix facility, Coolidge plant acquired from Nikola

“These new facilities provide Lucid with immediate and substantial capacity for advanced manufacturing activities, as well as developing product innovations and testing components and systems,” Adrian Price, Lucid’s senior vice president of operations, said. “This creates a powerful, integrated ecosystem with our existing manufacturing facility in Casa Grande.”

Lucid’s Phoenix hub – the former Nikola headquarters building – and the Coolidge facility will support the company’s primary manufacturing factory, known as AMP-1, in Casa Grande as it continues to ramp up production of its Lucid Gravity electric vehicles in the Pinal County factory. As part of Lucid’s expansion in Arizona, the company aims to create 500 new jobs in the Valley over three to five years.

Following the acquisition of Nikola’s assets, Lucid extended job offers to 300 former Nikola employees and 250 have already joined the company, Winterhoff said. Lucid employs more than 2,800 people in Arizona.

“We’re basically helping to continue employment for people that were previously here,” Mark Winterhoff, Lucid’s interim CEO, told the Business Journal. “Tapping into this pool is a win-win situation for us because their knowledge about electric vehicles and electric drive trains is something that we need anyway.”

Lucid to build midsize SUVs in Coolidge

Lucid acquired Nikola Corp.’s Coolidge manufacturing facility and its Phoenix headquarters for $17 million in cash plus assumption of the company’s two leases. During a May 6 earnings call, Winterhoff called the acquisition a “truly a great deal” that allowed the company to gain assets valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lucid’s new facilities include development equipment with extensive battery and environmental testing chambers, a full-size chassis dynamometer, machining equipment and more.

Lucid’s Phoenix Hub will be home to a research and development center, Winterhoff said.

“It’s mainly engineers in this facility taking advantage of things that are already installed,” Winterhoff said. “There’s a machine shop in here. There are dynos in here. Nikola also had electric drive trains and hydrogen, and we obviously focus completely on electric drive trains, so all this is going to be really focused on research and development.”

Lucid, meanwhile, will use its new Coolidge facility for warehousing and pre-delivery inspections.

“But there will also be a pilot line where we build the first vehicles for our midsized platform that’s currently still in development,” Winterhoff said. “They will be built in Coolidge.”

Lucid’s midsize SUVs are slated to debut in 2026 with a price tag of $50,000, rivaling Tesla’s Model Y and Rivian’s R2, according to media reports.

Lucid talks to automakers about AZ manufacturing, tech capabilities

Located about an hour south of downtown Phoenix, Lucid has been operating in Pinal County since it opened the first phase of its AMP-1 factory and kicked off vehicle production for the Lucid Air sedans in 2021.

Lucid started producing its Gravity SUV at its Arizona factory last year, with customer orders for the modified Grand Touring version starting last November.

Last month, Winterhoff told investors and analysts during the company’s Q1 earnings call that it’s engaging in a “number of new conversations” with other automakers looking to leverage the electric vehicle company’s Casa Grande plant amid uncertainty over tariffs and efforts to onshore auto manufacturing,

Lucid is well-positioned to navigate automotive-related tariffs as it produces its electric vehicles, drive units, battery modules and packs at its Casa Grande plant, he said during the call.

“Those conversations are still going on,” Winterhoff told the Business Journal. “I mean, you can imagine that with recent developments, there’s a lot of demand for production in the United States and now, we have two very strong opportunities to do that.”