The specs and backstory of the Lucid Air read like something out of a dream. It’s a second shot at a high-end electric luxury sedan by Peter Rawlinson, the former Chief Engineer of Lotus who went on to be the Vehicle Engineer for Tesla’s Model S. It packs a high-voltage electrical architecture capable of accepting more than 900 volts, Dolby Atmos audio, a posher cabin than the Tesla Model S, more than 500 miles of range when properly equipped, and north of 1,000 horsepower in performance trims. No matter where you stand in the automotive kingdom, at least one of those features should draw your attention; it’s no wonder it won Motor Trend Car of The Year. Still, as cool as it is, it’s expensive as hell, though now that price is moving towards “expensive as purgatory” thanks to some cheaper trims like “Pure.” Let’s look at that.
There’s a lot of stuff the Pure doesn’t actually get. No glass roof, no real leather upholstery, no standard top-end audio, no extended-range battery pack, and eventually no standard all-wheel-drive. However, Despite being the baby of the Air range, the Pure can still charge at 250 kW, run a manufacturer-claimed zero-to-sixty time of 3.8 seconds when ordered with all-wheel-drive, and go an estimated 410 miles on a charge of its 88 kWh battery pack when ordered with the 19-inch wheels.
Plus, ditching such fanciful features has allowed Lucid to drop the price of the Air Pure all the way down to $87,400, although there’s a bit of an asterisk on that price. More on that later. Truthfully, I’d love to try a slicktop rear-wheel-drive Lucid Air as it might live up to its name and be the purest sports sedan Lucid offers. Next up the range, it’s the Touring. Packing 620 horsepower and a claimed zero-to-sixty time of 3.4 seconds, it’s the M550i of the Lucid Air range. However, just because it offers a big jump in power over the base Pure model doesn’t mean it comes at the expense of efficiency. In fact, the Touring is supposedly the most efficient Air yet, promising EPA estimated efficiency of 4.62 miles per kWh. That doesn’t sound like a great figure if you’re used to miles per gallon or rods to the hogshead, but it’s actually very impressive. For context, the Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ should return around 3.24 mi/kWh, while the Taycan 4S with the big battery achieves around 2.71 mi/kWh.
The Touring also gets loads more toys than the Pure. The fake leather gets swapped out for real leather, all-wheel-drive is standard, and a glass roof is an optional extra. However, the Touring still gets the same small battery pack as the Pure and features a fairly large price jump from the Pure model. At $107,400, it’s $20,000 more than the base trim. For context, the Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+ starts at $103,360 including a $1,050 freight charge, while the Porsche Taycan 4S starts at $107,950 including a freight charge of $1,450. Frustratingly, Lucid hasn’t provided freight charges for the Air Pure and Air Touring, so it’s hard to give an apples-to-apples comparison on price.
While it’s taken a while for Lucid to really hit its stride, these cheaper versions of the Air should broaden the appeal of the startup’s first car. Production starts this month for the Touring and December for the dual-motor Pure model, with the single-motor Pure model arriving at some point in 2023. Needless to say, expect to see a lot more Airs on the road once deliveries of these cheaper models start happening.
All photos courtesy of Lucid
But gah, that touchscreen center stack. Why do EVs have to be such usability nightmares?
A link about the factory https://insideevs.com/news/556590/threedigit-number-lucid-air-cars/ https://insideevs.com/news/488283/first-look-inside-lucid-amp1-factory-arizona/
This is why the onus should be on the major automakers to get a low-cost long-range EV to market. But clearly they aren’t all that interested in that. It took Martin Eberhard and Elon Musk to get the electric car genie out of the bottle, and now the rest of the automakers have been scrambling to catch up, when we could have had 150-200+ mile range affordable EVs in the 1990s with the tech available at the time if the biggest automakers truly were interested. James Worden had a 150-200+ mile range compact sedan called the Solectria Sunrise that could have sold at $20,000 in mass production, in 1996, and none of the major automakers were interested in doing anything with it other than trying to buy it up and shelve the technology. It only needed a 28 kWh pack to get that kind of range in real-world conditions, but if hypermiled, it set a range record at the time of 373 miles in the Tour De Sol and was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records.
From an efficiency perspective, the Sunrise makes the Lucid Air look like an absolute pig. Which is really a shame, considering the battery technology we have available today is about a 4-fold improvement over what we had in the 1990s when it comes to specific capacity. But the Air is meant to be a luxury car and the Sunrise meant to be something your average person could afford, so it is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison.
My Milan SL velomobile has a 0.08 Cd, and if I had the money, I’d LOVE to scale that thing up into a two-seater four-wheeled sports car. Just imagine the possibilities: 1.9L VW TDI engine getting 100+ mpg in a vehicle that can do 0-60 mph in under 4 seconds and top 200 mph… Or if performance isn’t the goal, a 660cc turbodiesel would be plenty, allowing 120+ mph top speed and returning 200+ mpg. Or if performance is the goal, maybe an ultralight EV that weighs under 800 lbs, using an ebike hub motor and controller in each wheel putting out a combined total of around 200 horses peak, that with a tiny 20 kWh battery pack, can get 300+ miles range real-world driving doing 80+ mph on the freeway, 0-60 mph in under 3 seconds, and could be geared for a maximum continuous top speed of 160+ mph and get an honest 80-100 miles of range at the racetrack.
When i’m ready to go full electric, some form of Lucid will be on the short list.
When the charging port door is the slightest bit open or closed too much (which it always is) the reflection of light makes it stand out. Sometimes it even looks like it was painted a different color.
Kinda hate the flat bottom steering wheel, but it should still be OK. (Since they went to a yoke, I’m not even fantasizing about a Tesla anymore.)
The yoke is an ergonomic disaster.
Allow me to introduce the Lucid Spirit (Airlines) version! Same range, but straw-based material replacing the pleather, welded trunk, hay bail back seat (optional), and range over 60-miles is a subscription-based service (lower rates if you sign up to be an UberEATS driver for 2-years).
If the Bolt had the aerodynamic drag of the 2000 GM Precept, it would get 50% extra range on the same battery pack, or the same range on 2/3 the battery pack.
An electric sedan or hatchback SHOULD be getting at least 6-7 miles per kWh. The 1996 Solectria Sunrise could do it, thanks to its 0.17 drag coefficient. But efficiency, in spite of the technology available, is still mostly an afterthought. Efficiency is also necessary to reduce the cost of building an EV with a given amount of range, and it is clear that the mainstream auto industry is not currently interested in inexpensive long-range EVs for the masses, or we’d have had them 25 years ago when the technology began to be viable.
I don’t care what fancy IR coatings are put on it, it will run hotter in the heat, and colder in the cold, than a metal roof, that’s just physics.
I don’t care how tough you make it, the second it gets hit by something that would merely dent a metal roof, it will break the glass, that’s just physics.
I don’t care how strong your side rails are, the lack of a shear-carrying web on top of the car has reduced it’s strength and crash energy absorption capability, that’s just physics.
Glass roofed cars suck. Some people like them. I hate them, and would love to be able to never had one in my car.
