Photo by Andrew Hawkins / The Verge
Electric vehicle startup Lucid Motors is now a publicly traded company, following the completion of a merger where it fetched an eye-watering $4.5 billion in fresh capital. Shares of the Saudi-owned, California-based startup began trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange Monday morning.
Lucid Motors will now turn its full attention back to an even taller task: getting its first electric car on the road, where it will face stiff competition in the luxury market from Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, and others. The startup has said that it plans to start delivering its extremely powerful but serenely luxurious Air sedan later this year, and it has already built more than 100 near-final quality versions at its new factory in Arizona. It has an electric…