CASA GRANDE, Ariz. — Casa Grande's mayor was trying to shut down the rumors.
"People call in and say, 'Well, you know, can you tell me about the plant closing?'" four-term Mayor Craig McFarland said over the phone.
"And I go, 'Well, the plant's not closing.'"
"The plant" is the biggest economic prize in Pinal County's modern history: Lucid Motors' electric-vehicle factory on a vast patch of desert.
Two years after its luxury EV sedans started rolling off the assembly line, California-based Lucid says it plans to lay off almost 1,000 workers there by July - an estimated one-third of all employees.
The Casa Grande plant is absorbing the brunt of Lucid's 1,300 layoffs - an 18 percent cut company-wide.
Lucid said it's reducing expenses as part of a "restructuring plan," after a disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report.
The company has also trimmed its vehicle production targets for this year to 10,000 to 14,000, about half of what analysts were expecting.
Analysts said Lucid's sedans, priced at up to $170,000, might have a limited consumer market.
"It's an unfortunate bump in the road that they're going through right now," said McFarland, who took office in 2017, just two months after the Lucid announcement.
EV hub could help laid-off workers
Lucid's arrival in Arizona helped spawn a hub for the electric-vehicle industry - suppliers, manufacturers and workers.
That could bode well for Lucid employees looking for work.
"There's a lot of opportunities," McFarland said. "I'm not overly concerned... I believe they will find a job."
Some of Lucid's labor needs have been filled by Drive48, a job-training center for high-tech workers at Central Arizona College in Coolidge.
One sign of the demand for high-tech manufacturing workers: Nearly 2,200 students have been trained at Drive48 since it opened two years ago, according to Angela Askey, executive director of public relations at CAC.
Support services for laid-off workers
Lucid Motors says laid-off employees will be offered a severance package that includes paid-health care coverage.
Affected employees can access services by calling or visiting the Pinal County Business and Career Center in Casa Grande, at 820 East Cottonwood Lane Building E. The phone number is (520) 509-3555.
What about Lucid's incentives?
When Lucid Motors arrived in Arizona in late 2016, without a driveable prototype or a fully funded business, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey welcomed the company's executives with a $47 million incentive package.
Lucid has applied for and received just a sliver of those incentives - job-training grants totaling $560,013.81 for creating 674 jobs, according to Patrick Ptak, senior vice president at the Arizona Commerce Authority, which administers the incentives.
Ptak said the roughly $46.5 million incentive balance was still available to Lucid.
All the incentives are performance-based, he said, so Lucid would have to meet certain goals on hiring or investment before applying for reimbursement.
"They would put in an application and say, 'We did it, here's the proof," Ptak said.
In its layoff announcement, Lucid said it was still planning an expansion in Casa Grande to support the 2024 rollout of its first SUV.
Lucid's key investor: Saudi Arabia
Ironically enough, Lucid's staying power in the electric vehicle race is backstopped by one of the world's largest oil producers. The company's largest investor is the government of Saudi Arabia.
The country's sovereign wealth fund made an initial $1 billion investment that allowed Lucid to start the assembly lines.
According to securities filings, Saudi Arabia has also pledged to purchase up to 100,000 Lucid vehicles made in Arizona or at a future plant in the Middle Eastern kingdom.
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