Raphael Stevens

Electric vehicle start-up Lucid on Tuesday said production of its first cars for customers has started, with deliveries scheduled to begin late next month.
Lucid, which went public through a SPAC deal in July, is viewed as a front-runner to rival EV leader Tesla.
Lucid’s first car is a $169,000 special edition of its flagship sedan called the Air Dream Edition. The entry-level model will start at $77,400.

Electric vehicle start-up Lucid on Tuesday said production of its first cars for customers is underway, with deliveries scheduled to begin late next month.
Lucid is the first EV start-up that went public through a SPAC deal to actually produce a saleable vehicle for consumers. The milestone is crucial for Lucid, which debuted on the Nasdaq in July and is viewed as a front-runner to rival EV leader Tesla.

“I’m delighted that production cars endowed with this level of efficiency are currently driving off our factory line,” Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson, a former chief engineer and vice president of engineering at Tesla, said in a statement.

Electric vehicle start-up Lucid on Sept. 28, 2021 said production of its first cars for customers has started at its factory in in Casa Grande, Arizona.

Lucid’s first car is a $169,000 special edition of its flagship sedan called the Air Dream Edition, with an industry-leading range of up to 520 miles, according to the EPA. The company plans to produce just 520 of the Dream Edition models, in a nod to the car’s EPA range.
Pricing for an entry-level version of the car, the Lucid Air sedan, starts at $77,400 before an up to $7,500 federal tax credit for plug-in vehicles.
Lucid said it has received more than 13,000 total reservations so far.
The initial vehicles being produced, including Lucid Air Grand Touring models, are earmarked for Lucid’s studios, sales teams, and for customer test drives, according to a company spokesman.

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Lucid told investors in July that it expects to produce 20,000 Lucid Air sedans in 2022, generating more than $2.2 billion in revenue, according to an investor presentation. That’s a slower ramp-up than other EV start-ups.
“Our emphasis is upon quality, delivering an awesome car, a car that our customers will really love, and delivering a luxury customer experience.,” Rawlinson said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “That takes precedent upon rushing the ramp up of production in the immediate future, but clearly next year we’re going to ramp things up on an S curve of production.”
Lucid is manufacturing the Air at a new factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. It’s building what’s expected to be a multibillion-dollar facility, which is the first greenfield EV plant in the U.S., in phases on a 590-acre site. The facility is expected to produce an SUV called the Gravity in 2023.

Andrew Evers

Lucid was founded in 2007 as Atieva, a name it now uses for its engineering and tech arm that supplies batteries to electric racing circuit Formula E. The company first focused on electric battery technology before changing its name and shifting to an electric vehicle manufacturer in 2016, three years after Rawlinson joined the company to lead its technology development before becoming CEO.
Lucid had some difficulty obtaining capital to fund its plans until September 2018 when it received $1 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. It remains the largest shareholder of the company with about 62% of outstanding shares, according to FactSet.
The automaker is among a group of EV start-ups to go public in the past year or so. Others have included Faraday Future, Canoo, Fisker and Lordstown Motors. None have produced a saleable vehicle for consumers.
Lucid’s production start comes two weeks after Amazon-backed EV start-up Rivian began production of its first vehicle, a pickup called the R1T, at a factory in Normal, Illinois.

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Mark Allen Miller and Christopher James Rajkaran are set to plead guilty in a case where they are charged in a scheme to hijack dormant shell companies and fraudulently pump up their stock shares.
A third defendant, Saeid Jaberian, remains on track to stand trial in the case, which involves four penny-stock companies traded on the over-the-counter market.
The Securities and Exchange Commission separately has sued Miller in connection with the alleged scam.
Miller dropped an effort to take control of a Florida shell company, New World Gold, shortly after the indictment and the SEC suit filing.

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Two of the three men criminally charged with a brazen scheme to hijack dormant shell companies and fraudulently pump up their stock shares are now set to plead guilty in the case in October, court records reveal.
One of the defendants, Christopher James Rajkaran of Queens, New York, and Guyana, on Monday had a change of plea hearing scheduled for Oct. 7 in Minnesota federal court, records show.

A judge last week denied Rajkaran’s latest effort to be released from a Minnesota jail on bail, saying he “poses a serious risk of nonappearance” in court. Rajkaran’s lawyer declined to comment Tuesday.
The other defendant, Mark Allen Miller, who is free on a $25,000 unsecured personal recognizance bond, is scheduled to plead guilty on Oct. 14 in the same court, according to a change of plea filing last week.
Miller’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Miller, a general contractor who lives in Breezy Point, Minnesota, and Rajkaran previously pleaded not guilty to 15 counts of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and wire fraud.
Their change of plea notices do not say what crimes they will plead guilty to.

The third defendant in the case, Saeid Jaberian, remains on track, for now, to stand trial.
Jaberian, a Minnesota resident who also is known as Andre Jaberian, has pleaded not guilty to the same charges as the other two men and is free on an unsecured $25,000 bond.
The trio was charged in June with a grand jury indictment that accused them of using fake resignation letters purporting to be from other people to seize control of four shell companies — Digitiliti, Encompass Holdings, Bell Buckle Holdings, and Utilicraft Aerospace Industries — from 2017 through 2019.
The indictment says that Miller and Jaberian, as well as an unidentified person related to Miller, actually became the nominal CEOs and presidents of the targeted companies.
The men are accused of then using the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR public filing system and phony press releases to inflate the share prices of those companies by claiming they had new business opportunities. The companies actually had no significant operations or revenue, the indictment says.

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A court filing says the men bought millions of shares of stock in the companies, in many cases for far less than a penny per share, which then were sold on the over-the-counter market for profits of as much as 900%.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota — who declined to comment Tuesday on the scheduled plea hearings for Miller and Rajkaran — previously has said the three men are believed to have made hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit profits.
Jaberian’s lawyer said in a court filing in late August that “at a future trial, Jaberian’s defense will require asserting that Miller tricked him” into unwittingly participating in a scheme to hijack a dormant shell company.
The SEC in June separately sued Miller in a civil case that accuses him of “a fraudulent scheme to target at least seven inactive penny-stock companies … by hijacking five of the companies and causing them to issue false and misleading statements, and by falsely promoting the [companies] with the intention of profiting from a ‘pump and dump’ of the stock.”
Those inactive companies allegedly targeted by Miller in the SEC complaint included the four identified in the criminal indictment, as well as Strategic Asset Leasing, Simulated Environment Concepts, and Bebida Beverage.
At the time he was indicted, Miller was involved in an effort to seize control of a Florida penny-stock company, New World Gold Corp., which is not named as one of his alleged targets in either the criminal case or the SEC’s civil case.
Miller voluntarily dropped a lawsuit he had filed in Florida as part of his effort less than two weeks after CNBC reported his involvement with New World Gold.
New World Gold’s share price has cratered from a high of $0.0275 per share on June 3 — two weeks before news of Miller’s criminal case broke — to $0.0092 per share as of Tuesday afternoon.
NWGC shares had dropped more than 47% in trading by late Tuesday, with more than 81 million shares changing hands.
The company’s purported Twitter feed on Tuesday afternoon disclosed that its credentials had been revoked by the OTC Markets Group, which organizes the listing of over-the-counter stocks on three marketplaces, due to “conflicting statements in the disclosure and application materials” filed by New World Gold.
Those materials “related to the timeline and validity of your appointment as Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Company,” OTC Markets wrote in an email to the purported CEO of New World Gold, Robert Honigford.
A message CNBC sent New World Gold seeking comment to the email address listed in a press release announcing the termination of its OTC Markets account was not immediately answered.
OTC Markets Group declined to comment on New World Gold but confirmed the authenticity of the email quoted in the press release linked to the tweet.

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More than 400,000 Americans received a Covid-19 booster shot at pharmacies over the weekend, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday.
Nearly 1 million people have scheduled to get their extra dose at a pharmacy over the coming weeks, Zients added.
“At the same time, our top priority remains first and second shots,” he said.

A woman receives the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine as a booster dose at Skippack Pharmacy in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania, August 14, 2021.
Hannah Beier | Reuters

More than 400,000 Americans received a Covid-19 booster shot at pharmacies over the weekend after the CDC cleared third doses of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine to a wide array of Americans, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday.
Nearly 1 million people have scheduled to get their extra dose at a pharmacy over the coming weeks, he told reporters at a press briefing, adding that the state and federal preparations for boosters have “propelled a strong start.”

“At the same time, our top priority remains first and second shots,” he said.
Overall, roughly 2.8 million Americans have received an extra dose since health officials in August authorized the third shots of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccines to people with weakened immune systems, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Zients’ comments come as federal health officials say they are seeing a decline in protection against infection several months after people received their first two doses. The shots remain highly effective against severe disease, hospitalizations and deaths, they said.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Friday signed off on a series of recommendations, including distributing the shots to older Americans and adults with underlying medical conditions at least six months after their first series of inoculations.
Walensky also approved booster shots for those in high-risk occupational and institutional settings, a move that overruled the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after it rejected the same proposal hours earlier.

President Joe Biden received a booster shot on Monday since at 78 his age made him eligible for one under the CDC’s latest guidance. 
Walensky said last week that officials will move “with the same sense of urgency” on recommendations for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson boosters as soon as that data is available.
Moderna submitted its application for booster shots on Sept. 1 and J&J said Wednesday that it also submitted its data showing that an extra dose of its single-shot vaccine raises protection against infection to 94%.

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General Motors’ commercial electric vehicle business BrightDrop plans to add a second van to its lineup in 2023.
The first customer for the EV410, a midsize commercial van, is expected to be Verizon Communications.
The new van was announced when BrightDrop confirmed the first production builds of the EV600, which will be going to FedEx, were completed.

A rendering of GM’s BrightDrop EV410, an electric midsize commercial van that’s planned for 2023.

DETROIT — General Motors’ commercial electric vehicle business BrightDrop plans to add a second van to its lineup in 2023, with Verizon Communications scheduled to be the first customer.
The automaker on Tuesday said the EV410, a midsize work van, is expected to cater to customers including Verizon that don’t need a large delivery van such as its EV600, which was unveiled in January.

A BrightDrop spokeswoman declined to comment on the deal with Verizon. A spokesman with the communications giant did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The EV410 was announced when BrightDrop confirmed the first production builds of the EV600 were completed. They will be arriving at FedEx, its first customer, by the end of this year, as scheduled, BrightDrop CEO Travis Katz, told CNBC.
Katz, who joined GM late last year, said the second vehicle will unlock new markets for the business, which he said is operating as a start-up within the traditional automaker.

General Motors employee Anshul Shah attaches trim pieces onto the BrightDrop EV600, the company’s first all-electric light commercial vehicle purpose-built for the delivery of goods and services on Sept. 24, 2021 in Livonia, Michigan.
Photo by Steve Fecht for General Motors

“It helps strengthen this overall ecosystem that we’re doing,” he said during an interview.
The EV410 is essentially a smaller version of the EV600. It shares the same looks and also will offer a GM-estimated range of 250 miles on a full charge.

Katz said the EV600, at about 20 months, is the fastest vehicle from conception to market that GM has ever produced. That’s better than the upcoming GMC Hummer EV pickup, at 26 months, he said.
“The world is changing. The automotive industry is changing,” Katz said. “We need to be able to iterate more quickly. A lot of what we’re doing is really pushing the envelope of how can we bring vehicles to market faster.”
GM is working with German auto supplier Kuka to help produce the initial EV600s for FedEx. The automaker is currently retooling an assembly plant in Ontario, Canada, for production of the large van as well as the EV410.
GM expects production of the EV600 to begin at the Canadian plant in November 2022, according to Katz.

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Ford Motor is asking its hourly and salaried employees in the U.S. to submit their Covid-19 vaccination status by next Friday.
The submission process is required for salaried employees, but voluntary for the automaker’s employees represented by the United Auto Workers union.

Ford CEO Jim Farley at the company’s new Rouge Electric Vehicle Center on May 18, 2021 ahead of remarks from President Joe Biden.
Michael Wayland / CNBC

DETROIT – Ford Motor is asking its hourly and salaried employees in the U.S. to submit their Covid-19 vaccination status by next Friday, as the automaker prepares to comply with mandatory testing or vaccination plans announced earlier this month by President Joe Biden.
The submission process is required for salaried employees, but voluntary for the automaker’s employees represented by the United Auto Workers union. It’s also mandatory for agency or other Ford contractors, the company confirmed to CNBC.

“This will aid our efforts to comply with federal COVID-19 vaccination requirements and, assess the overall vaccination level of our employee population in order to determine appropriate measures to support employee safety,” Ford spokeswoman Monique Brentley said in an emailed statement.
UAW spokesman Brian Rothenberg confirmed the submission process is voluntary for its union members.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said the company thinks vaccinations are “mission critical” for the safety of its workers. Farley said the automaker’s leadership team and medical staff are vaccinated.
“We’re really excited about the mandate,” Farley said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’ll work with our union partners, it requires collective bargaining in some cases. … We’ll work through this.”
Farley said he has spoken with new UAW President Ray Curry about the company’s plans.

Before Biden announced the vaccination requirements, Curry said the organization didn’t plan to impose Covid-19 vaccines on its 400,000 members. He said any company that wants to mandate vaccinations would need to do so through collective bargaining. Biden rolled out a plan Sept. 9 mandating employee vaccines for government contractors and requiring vaccines or testing for companies with 100 or more employees.
In a letter Monday to members obtained by CNBC, Curry said the union is waiting for guidelines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about the new rules. He said the guidance “will likely apply to many, if not most of the private employers” with UAW-represented employees.
Ford’s request follows General Motors, which began last month requiring all U.S. salaried employees to report their Covid-19 vaccination status.
Automakers such as GM and Ford have not required workers to get vaccinated, but they have implemented safety protocols and procedures at facilities across the globe.

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