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Lucid Motors receives approval to build Phase 2 of Casa Grande factory

Credit: Lucid

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Lucid Motors has received approval from the Casa Grande City Council to begin the construction of the Phase 2 portion of its new electric vehicle manufacturing facility.

Lucid, an electric vehicle company based out of Newark, California, has been preparing for the initial production phases of the Lucid Air, the company’s first production vehicle. The EV will be built at the company’s Casa Grande, Arizona factory, which has been under construction since December 2019. The first phase was completed on December 1st, 2020, and is capable of delivering up to 30,000 vehicles annually. However, the company has planned an expansion since before the initial groundbreaking took place several winters ago.

After applying for an expansion, known as Phase 2, Casa Grande’s City Council approved the project on March 4th, which will ultimately see an expansion of 2,400,000 square feet.

Lucid’s Casa Grande Factory (Credit: Lucid)

The application for the site describes the project in detail:

“Lucid Motors, Inc. is planning to develop Phase 2 of a car manufacturing facility within the city of Casa Grande at the Southwest corner of Peters Road and Thorton Road. The proposed development encompasses ±500 acres of land in a portion of Section 36, Township 6, Range 5E, relative to the Gila and Salt River Base Line and Meridian in the City of Casa Grande, Arizona. More specifically, the disturbed area of the parcel is bounded by Phase 1 of the developed site immediately to the north, and underdeveloped land to the East, South, and West. In Phase 2, Lucid Motors is proposing to construct an approximate 2,400,000 SF of mechanical/industrial building space and approximately 3,000 parking spaces on approximately 152.36 acres. This plan set is to provide direction on the Phase 2 construction activities.

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According to documents obtained by Teslarati, the Phase 2 expansion will consist of the following facilities:

  • Body in White Expansion
  • Stamping Plant
  • General Assembly
  • Powertrain Plant
  • General Warehousing
  • Several Supporting and Auxiliary Structures
  • Future phases will expand the existing buildings and add a Customer Experience Center

Kimley-Horn Planning and Design Engineering Consultants is listed as the acting Civil Engineer and Landscape Architect.

The project was approved conditionally on March 4th, 2021, with the Planning Commission requesting that Lucid perform the following revisions to the project before it will be allowed to break ground:

  • Extend pedestrian sidewalks to connect to Thornton Road sidewalk.
  • Provide additional landscape per table 17.36.060.
  • Meet all fire review comments regarding fire flow.
  • Provide Finalized Traffic Impact Analysis.
  • Provide Geotechnical reports reflecting specific building locations for caissons and vertical load.

Lucid details that the Phase 2 portion of its facility should begin later this year, “enabling production of Project Gravity, our premier SUV.” Recently, Lucid announced that it would delay the production of the Air until the second half of this year, Bloomberg reported initially. With the new Phase 2 beginning construction later this year, it plans to have a manufacturing capacity that will be “up to 400,000 annually,” the company said.

Recently, it was announced that Lucid had reached a merger agreement with Churchill Capital, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) that will take the electric automaker public.

The details of Lucid’s Phase 2 buildout are available below.

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Lucid Phase 2 Plans Approved by Joey Klender on Scribd

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

Tesla owners surpass 8 billion miles driven on FSD Supervised

Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla owners have now driven more than 8 billion miles using Full Self-Driving Supervised, as per a new update from the electric vehicle maker’s official X account. 

Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.

“Tesla owners have now driven >8 billion miles on FSD Supervised,” the company wrote in its post on X. Tesla also included a graphic showing FSD Supervised’s miles driven before a collision, which far exceeds that of the United States average. 

The growth curve of FSD Supervised’s cumulative miles over the past five years has been notable. As noted in data shared by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, annual FSD (Supervised) miles have increased from roughly 6 million in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and 4.25 billion in 2025. In just the first 50 days of 2026, Tesla owners logged another 1 billion miles.

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At the current pace, the fleet is trending towards hitting about 10 billion FSD Supervised miles this year. The increase has been driven by Tesla’s growing vehicle fleet, periodic free trials, and expanding Robotaxi operations, among others.

Tesla also recently updated the safety data for FSD Supervised on its website, covering North America across all road types over the latest 12-month period.

As per Tesla’s figures, vehicles operating with FSD Supervised engaged recorded one major collision every 5,300,676 miles. In comparison, Teslas driven manually with Active Safety systems recorded one major collision every 2,175,763 miles, while Teslas driven manually without Active Safety recorded one major collision every 855,132 miles. The U.S. average during the same period was one major collision every 660,164 miles.

During the measured period, Tesla reported 830 total major collisions with FSD (Supervised) engaged, compared to 16,131 collisions for Teslas driven manually with Active Safety and 250 collisions for Teslas driven manually without Active Safety. Total miles logged exceeded 4.39 billion miles for FSD (Supervised) during the same timeframe.

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The Boring Company’s Music City Loop gains unanimous approval

After eight months of negotiations, MNAA board members voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to move forward with the project.

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The-boring-company-vegas-loop-chinatown
(Credit: The Boring Company)

The Metro Nashville Airport Authority (MNAA) has approved a 40-year agreement with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to build the Music City Loop, a tunnel system linking Nashville International Airport to downtown. 

After eight months of negotiations, MNAA board members voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to move forward with the project. Under the terms, The Boring Company will pay the airport authority an annual $300,000 licensing fee for the use of roughly 933,000 square feet of airport property, with a 3% annual increase.

Over 40 years, that totals to approximately $34 million, with two optional five-year extensions that could extend the term to 50 years, as per a report from The Tennesean.

The Boring Company celebrated the Music City Loop’s approval in a post on its official X account. “The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority has unanimously (7-0) approved a Music City Loop connection/station. Thanks so much to @Fly_Nashville for the great partnership,” the tunneling startup wrote in its post. 

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Once operational, the Music City Loop is expected to generate a $5 fee per airport pickup and drop-off, similar to rideshare charges. Airport officials estimate more than $300 million in operational revenue over the agreement’s duration, though this projection is deemed conservative.

“This is a significant benefit to the airport authority because we’re receiving a new way for our passengers to arrive downtown at zero capital investment from us. We don’t have to fund the operations and maintenance of that. TBC, The Boring Co., will do that for us,” MNAA President and CEO Doug Kreulen said. 

The project has drawn both backing and criticism. Business leaders cited economic benefits and improved mobility between downtown and the airport. “Hospitality isn’t just an amenity. It’s an economic engine,” Strategic Hospitality’s Max Goldberg said.

Opponents, including state lawmakers, raised questions about environmental impacts, worker safety, and long-term risks. Sen. Heidi Campbell said, “Safety depends on rules applied evenly without exception… You’re not just evaluating a tunnel. You’re evaluating a risk, structural risk, legal risk, reputational risk and financial risk.”

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Tesla announces crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone

The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has announced a crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone, as it has officially confirmed drivers have surpassed over 8 billion miles traveled using the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite for semi-autonomous travel.

The FSD (Supervised) suite is one of the most robust on the market, and is among the safest from a data perspective available to the public.

On Wednesday, Tesla confirmed in a post on X that it has officially surpassed the 8 billion-mile mark, just a few months after reaching 7 billion cumulative miles, which was announced on December 27, 2025.

The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.

The milestone itself is significant, especially considering Tesla has continued to gain valuable data from every mile traveled. However, the pace at which it is gathering these miles is getting faster.

Secondly, in January, Musk said the company would need “roughly 10 billion miles of training data” to achieve safe and unsupervised self-driving. “Reality has a super long tail of complexity,” Musk said.

Training data primarily means the fleet’s accumulated real-world miles that Tesla uses to train and improve its end-to-end AI models. This data captures the “long tail” — extremely rare, complex, or unpredictable situations that simulations alone cannot fully replicate at scale.

This is not the same as the total miles driven on Full Self-Driving, which is the 8 billion miles milestone that is being celebrated here.

The FSD-supervised miles contribute heavily to the training data, but the 10 billion figure is an estimate of the cumulative real-world exposure needed overall to push the system to human-level reliability.

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