Volkswagen and luxury electric car maker Lucid will build EV chargers 

Robert Ferris | CNBC

The Lucid Air Alpha test car, displayed at the New York Auto Show, reached a software-limited 217 miles per hour on a text track in Ohio.

Luxury electric car maker Lucid is building a high speed charging network for electric cars across the United States with Volkwswagen-funded project Electrify America, the companies said Tuesday.

According to the deal, Electrify America will build a network of 500 charging sites across 40 U.S. states by the end of 2019.

It is another sign competition in the luxury electric car segment has been heating up.

Lucid, which is based out of the San Francisco bay area, is making a luxury electric car it plans to put into production in 2020.

The firm recently upped the ante in the race to catch Tesla after receiving $1 billion investment from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). The company’s chief technology officer is Peter Rawlings, who was former Tesla’s Chief Engineer, and who worked on the team that developed the Model S sedan.