Here's What It's Like to Live With a Lucid Air for 15,000 Miles

• We've put 15,000 miles on our long-term all-electric Lucid Air.
• While we've been impressed with its performance, we've had more than our fair share of issues with the car.
• Here's everything you need to know about what it's like to live with Lucid's first car.

When we bought a Lucid Air Grand Touring for our long-term fleet over a year ago, we were very excited. An early model we tested blew us away with its performance at our test track and cracked more than 500 miles in our range test. So we spent more than $140,000 of our own hard-earned dough for a Grand Touring Range model, and in the year since we took delivery a lot has happened.

In that time we put 15,000 miles on our Lucid, and not all of them have been stress-free. From being locked out completely to doors that won't shut and bits of trim falling off, we've been relatively disapointed with the build quality of our most expensive long-term purchase ever. We also have yet to see our Lucid crack its EPA-estimated 516 miles of range in either mixed driving or on one of the three range tests we've done with it.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the Lucid's software is far, far better than it was a year ago. More than 40 over-the-air updates have made their way into our car's brain and the results are a user interface that's far more responsive, quicker to boot, and less prone to straight-up crashing. There's also hope that its range figures will eventually reach what the EPA touts. Every time we've range-tested the Air it's improved, with the most recent result netting an impressive 465 miles of range in our testing. Despite the age of the car, how many times we've charged it, and a year's worth of degradation on the battery, the range has gotten better. When was the last time you heard about an EV doing that?

Range is still not close to the EPA's estimate (and it's worth noting that other cars like the BMW iX, Mercedes EQS sedan, and even the Ford F-150 Lightning have all consistently beaten their EPA range figures), but the Lucid does give us hope that it will one day match that all-important 516-mile number. That still doesn't fix the physical problems with the car like the loose headliner, the squeaking steering wheel, or the unreliable key fob, but credit where it's due, Lucid is obviously improving its car and we can only commend them for that.

Edmunds says

We're going to be spending a lot more time with the Lucid (and we do have the hope that it only gets better with time). Follow all the updates of our long-term test here.