Ceer, the Public Investment Fund–backed company trying to build Saudi Arabia’s first homegrown electric car, marked a milestone this weekend that had nothing to do with a vehicle: it graduated its first cohort of Saudi engineers.
At a ceremony held at the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources in Riyadh, Ceer celebrated 40 of its engineers among 69 total graduates who completed “Waed,” a scholarship-to-employment track run under the King’s foreign scholarship program. The event was held under the patronage of Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the minister of industry and mineral resources, with Education Minister Yousef Al-Benyan also in attendance.
Why it matters
Ceer has been one of the most ambitious pieces of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 push to manufacture things at home rather than import them. Launched in November 2022 as a joint venture between PIF and Foxconn parent Hon Hai, the company licenses component technology from BMW and leans on Foxconn for its electrical architecture. But a car brand is only as good as the people who can design and build it — and Saudi Arabia has never had a domestic auto industry to draw talent from. Programs like Waed are how Ceer intends to close that gap.
The training itself is not trivial. Over the past year Ceer hired 40 Saudi engineers and put them through a year-long academic program that included six months at Kettering University in Michigan — a school with deep automotive-engineering roots — followed by six months of hands-on training with major global vehicle and component manufacturers. All 40 are now moving into permanent roles at the company.
This exceptional group represents the next generation of national talent that will lead the automotive industry in the Kingdom.
James DeLuca, CEO of Ceer
DeLuca credited government partners with turning the program “into a real platform for launching promising careers.” Ceer also used the ceremony to sign a cooperation agreement with supplier JVIS aimed at recruiting and developing more local talent, extending an existing relationship between the two companies.
The optimism comes with a caveat familiar to anyone who has watched EV startups: Ceer still hasn’t put a production car on the road. The company has talked up connectivity, infotainment and autonomous-driving features, and projects more than $150 million in foreign direct investment and an $8 billion contribution to GDP by 2034 — but those are forecasts, not deliveries. Building an engineering bench is a necessary step toward a first vehicle, not a substitute for one.
Still, for a company whose entire premise is doing in Saudi Arabia what has historically been done elsewhere, 40 newly minted engineers walking in the door is a more meaningful data point than another rendering.
