Riyadh hedges its bets with EV ambitions

The Saudi government is leaving little to chance in plans to create an EV-manufacturing cluster on the Red Sea coast

Saudi Arabia is hedging its bets with plans to develop a domestic automotive industry by investing heavily in electric vehicles (EVs), despite the risks posed by the sector to the business of state oil giant Saudi Aramco identified in the firm’s annual report last year. Riyadh’s enormous financial resources—bolstered by soaring revenues from selling Aramco-pumped crude—are ultimately behind what it portrayed as a major international vote of confidence in the country’s EV potential. In February, California-based Lucid formalised plans to set up a manufacturing plant at King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC), on the Red Sea coast north of Jeddah. The deal was said to be a condition of a $1bn inves