Lucid unveils its paint shop at new factory to produce its Air electric sedan

[Joe]

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Lucid Motors is preparing to start production soon of the Air, its first electric car, and it is showing the progress at its factory in Arizona.

Today, the automaker is unveiling its paint shop.

Lucid AMP-1 factory
The electric car startup impressed many earlier this year with the unveiling of the Air electric sedan, the company’s first car with a range of up to 517 miles on a single charge.

But the vehicle has been delayed twice before, and now the market is looking for Lucid to deliver this time with serious production capacity being deployed.

The Air is going to be built at Lucid’s factory, called “Lucid AMP-1 factory,” in Casa Grande, Arizona.

After delays due to lack of financing, Lucid finally broke ground on the project in 2019, and last month, they announced that they completed construction of the first phase of the factory.

However, it doesn’t mean that Lucid is ready to start production. The company is working to deploy the production capacity inside the factory.

Lucid’s paint shop
Now Lucid is keeping us updated on the progress and unveiled their paint shop today.

They released a video showing the shop in operation:

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Mike Boike, director of manufacturing, commented on the importance of the paint shop:

When you build a paint shop, you have to build with the final volume in mind. The first year we’re only planning for 30,000 cars, but at full capacity, the paint shop will support 400,000 cars per year. It also needs to be big enough for any size vehicle that comes through. We’re competing against the best in the world, and we know it. So the processes and the materials that we use are nothing but the best in the world. We’ve got the latest and greatest paint process. We have the latest and greatest materials, and we have a high-powered team of engineers and manufacturing professionals.

Here are the main steps of the paint process, according to Lucid:

• Pretreatment and Electrocoat: As each Lucid Air comes out of the body shop, it gets rigorously cleaned. Then we apply both a thin film coating and electrodeposition coating, which protect the entire body structure from corrosion.
• Sealer: Next we thoroughly seal the vehicle to prevent any type of air or water intrusion that could create road noise or water leakage into the car.
• Paint: Once the unit is sealed and sanded, it is sent into the paint booth. Here we have integrated the latest innovative process and materials technologies that results in a flawless, luxurious finish.
• Finesse: Finally, post-bake, the car is brought to the finesse deck where a team inspects and polishes it to perfection before approving to ship to the customer.

Lucid plans to start official production of the Air in the spring.

Source: https://electrek.co/2021/01/27/lucid-paint-shop-factory-produce-air-electric-sedan/