Radical Ceer Exobot SUV and saloon are oil giant Saudi Arabia’s first EVs of many
The Exobot electric SUV and saloon will be designed, engineered and manufactured in Saudi Arabia
It's a serious sign of the times when a brand from Saudi Arabia – one of the world’s biggest producers and consumers of oil – is starting to make electric cars. Its first efforts are the radical new Exobot SUV and saloon, which are supposedly just the beginning of an ambitious plan to launch seven models by 2030.
The company behind these extreme-looking EVs is called Ceer – Saudi Arabia's first national carmaker and electric vehicle brand. It was launched in 2022 as a joint venture between iPhone-maker Foxconn and the country’s sovereign wealth fund PIF, which currently manages more than $900 billion dollars (£673bn) in assets, including major stakes in Aston Martin and EV start-up Lucid.
The Exobot SUV and saloon have been designed and engineered in Saudi Arabia. They will be built there, too, as the kingdom looks to “establish itself as a leading force in the global automotive industry”.
It’s worth noting, however, that the company uses technology licensed from BMW. Plus, Ceer’s electric-vehicle architecture was developed by Foxconn – the Taiwanese firm has experience with EVs through its own brand, Foxtron – while the high-performance rear drive units and torque-vectoring software in the flagship models are being supplied by Croatian hypercar creator Rimac.
The new cars boast some impressive performance figures, with their tri-motor powertrains capable of delivering up to 1,096bhp and 1,500Nm of torque, allowing them to rocket to 62mph in close to two seconds. Both are powered by a 112kWh battery that gives the saloon a range of up to 416 miles, while the SUV is good for 348 miles on a single charge.
Those figures are based on the older NEDC test cycle however, rather than the newer WLTP testing programme now used in Europe, so the cars probably won’t go as far in reality. But with an 800-volt architecture, their huge batteries can be topped up from 10 to 80 per cent in half an hour or so.
Not surprisingly, the Exobot SUV and saloon have been engineered to cope well in the Middle East’s scorching heat, plus demanding long-distance driving. So they feature an advanced ‘Halo Cooling’ system delivering what Ceer claims to be “industry-leading cooling performance that outperforms benchmarks in extreme climates”. The cabin temperature can also be reduced from 65 to 32 degrees in just 10 minutes.
Former McLaren design boss Rob Melville, whose CV includes the P1, 750S, Speedtail and Senna, is the man responsible for styling Ceer’s cars. The visually dramatic Exobot twins look like they've escaped from the set of a new sci-fi blockbuster, especially the lunar rover-esque SUV with its high ground clearance, chunky tyres, pronounced wheelarches, ultra-thin lighting motifs and nearly three-meter-long gullwing doors.
The SUV is just over five metres long, 2.1 metres wide and 1.69 metres tall, making it about the same size as the Land Rover Defender 110, but not as high.
Meanwhile, the wedge-shaped saloon is low and its enormous windscreen is so sharply angled we’re not entirely sure how anyone is supposed to sit in it. We would hope there’s plenty of space inside considering the car is longer than a BMW 5 Series at 5.26 metres from nose to tail. It’s also 2.1 metres wide, but only 1.43 metres tall – nearly as low as a Ford Mustang.
The design of the Exobot cars was supposedly inspired by “Saudi Arabia’s landscape, rooted in its culture, and reflective of its vision”. For instance, there are apparently 32 bars in each of the cars’ lighting arrangements, inspired by the year 1932 when Saudi Arabia was unified and became a kingdom.
Inside, the Exobots feature a steering yoke, a 48-inch pillar-to-pillar 8K display similar to BMW’s Panoramic iDrive set-up and a 10.4-inch central touchscreen. There is a smattering of physical buttons and toggle switches on the centre console, plus lots of leather throughout and a fragrance system much like that in the Mercedes S-Class.
We assume that Ceer plans to eventually sell its cars in other markets outside of Saudi Arabia, if it does become a global force. However, the company hasn’t offered any timelines about when we might see one of these radical-looking creations on our roads, nor has it revealed how much they’ll cost. Even so, deliveries of the First Edition models are supposed to begin early next year.
Ceer’s plans for the future include mid-size and compact models that will arrive in rapid succession before the end of the decade, and will offer various propulsion options to serve different customer needs. All will be manufactured at the firm’s complex in the Industrial Valley of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Economic City, on the Red Sea coast.
Get the latest car news in your inbox, for FREE! Sign up to the Auto Express email newsletter...
