Saudi Arabia's Ceer launches flagship electric vehicles | Hacker News Reader

Saudi Arabia's Ceer launches flagship electric vehicles

agbi.com

> The EV producer signed 16 commercial deals totalling more than SAR3.7 billion in February, seeking to localise 45 percent of materials and parts by 2034.

> Ceer is a joint venture between PIF and Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn. German automaker BMW is the component technology provider for vehicle development.

> In June 2024 the company signed an SAR8.2 billion contract with South Korea’s Hyundai Transys for the supply of EV drive systems, which will reduce size and weight while enhancing power efficiency.

> Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff of [majority] PIF-backed US carmaker Lucid Group said in January that full-scale vehicle manufacturing is expected to begin in Saudi Arabia this year, transitioning from assembly only at its facility near Jeddah.

Nice renders. Cool prototypes. Then you click the careers section and see that they're hiring.....no one. A secretary and a few fluff jobs, not a car company getting off the ground.

No engineers. No designers. No NVH specialists. No surfacing modelers, no cnc machinists, nothing.

Hard to see this as anything other than hopium and vaporware, I would love for more nations to have real car companies that ship.

That was my reaction too. You start a likely-to-be-successful EV company with a group of dedicated engineers who work well together and want to do cool things and work your way up from there. You don't start it by carpetbagging a bunch of oil autocrats with so much money they don't know what to do with it. See: Any previous project the carpetbaggers have got the Saudis to fund.

Their product and engineering partners are real and great. That said - even fly by night electric car companies like FF, Byton, Mullen, Aptera, Baker, Canoo, Lordstown, Nikola, etc had staff of hundreds of people to drive those contractors and bring the product to life. This is pure vapor and handbuilt concept until they have an actual operation off the ground.

I want so bad for this to be real, the wedge design and triangle wheels are gorgeous!

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