India, Oct. 8 -- Saudi Arabia's first home-grown car brand has arrived, with two wildly futuristic electric flagships and a plan to build a car industry from the ground up.

It's hard to miss the irony. The world's biggest oil exporter has launched its first cars, and neither burns a drop of petrol. But for Saudi Arabia, that's exactly the message. Ceer, a name that loosely means "to drive forward" in Arabic, is a pet project of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Its Exobot sedan and SUV, unveiled near Jeddah, are meant to show a nation built on oil that it can build a green future too.

Few car start-ups have had pockets this deep. Ceer is backed by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, and was set up as a join...