[MUSIC PLAYING] RYAN ZUMMALLEN: Hey, is that a Lucid? Why, yes it is. In fact, it's the Edmunds Lucid Air that we just bought with our own money. Now we've tested a Lucid Air before, but that model that we had in was pretty buggy and had a long list of problems. This one is all ours, and it is finally here. Just wait until you hear all the drama that it took to get this into our hands.
This car is joining our long-term test program, where our writers and editors live with the car for a year and see what it's really like to own over about 20,000 miles. We do this with hot ticket EVs whenever possible to see if these flashy newcomers can hold their shine, or if that initial glimmer fades fast. Now it's Lucid's turn.
In this video, I'll show you what we got, explain why we got it, and what it's like to take delivery of this brand spanking new EV. Is this an improvement over that buggy one that we had before? I sure hope so. Thing's expensive.
But on top of that, this is an unboxing video. So for that reason, we asked Lucid to keep on as much stuff as they possibly could. So I'm talking protective screen films, seat covers. Any and everything that Lucid could leave on, we asked them to do that.
Real quick, though, I just need one thing, and that's if you can please hit that Like button and click Subscribe because it will really help out our channel. Also if you're looking to sell your car, go to edmunds.com/sellmycar and you'll get a cash offer right now.
If you don't know, Lucid is a startup EV company, and the Air is their very first model. This is a luxury electric sedan that's made in Arizona. Now we've already been very hands on with the Lucid Air, and if you haven't watched Alistair's in-depth video on it, you should go do that now.
There were some things that we really liked and others that we really didn't. For instance, there were a number of mishaps. Like, I don't know, for one thing, the driver's door just stopped working. Also, the soft close doors malfunctioned. And there was a long list of laggy or unresponsive tech issues.
Don't get me wrong. There's a lot to like about the Lucid Air. In our testing we found it fast, comfortable, and efficient. In many ways, we find it more ambitious than the Mercedes EQS and more user-friendly than the Tesla Model S.
But if Lucid really wants to make a splash in this segment, it can't afford some of the missteps that we documented back then. In fact, that video caused quite a stir. Shortly after it aired, Lucid informed customers of a rigorous new fit and finish policy that would impact every new model coming off the line. We're confident our video had something to do with that.
Here's the sticky part. At the time, we already had a Lucid on order. In fact, it was physically on a truck on its way here. But that new fit and finish policy stopped the delivery, and eventually Lucid decided that our car no longer met its standards for build quality. In a strange way, we may have gotten our own car canceled. Oops.
With our car officially scratched, Lucid asked if we'd be interested in a similar model and gave us three colors to choose from. We couldn't pick the original white that we wanted. That would have taken an extra six months-- six months. So we got the gray. And now it's here, in the flesh with Lucid's stamp of approval.
But was it worth the wait? And has this car improved in all the ways where the previous one fell flat on its face? After all, this thing is certainly priced to impress. Ours is the Air Grand Touring, which is the middle trim in the lineup, and we paid about $139,000 for it.
Now since then, Lucid has increased the price of the Air by about $15,000. But luckily, we got our order in early enough that it didn't affect us. We bought the Grand Touring trim to get 21-inch wheels and a premium stereo.
But the big prize is this, an upgraded 112-kilowatt-hour battery pack. That's more capacity than a Tesla Model S, or about two Chevy Bolt batteries put together. That means our Lucid is generating 800 horsepower from its front and rear electric motors.
But to be honest, we're most interested in monitoring its real-world efficiency and range. The last Lucid Air that we tested did 505 miles on our renowned Edmunds EV test loop. What can this one do? That's what we'll be watching closely.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(WHISPERING) Remember when I taught you guys to get your headphones ready? Now's the time. Let's get started.
[PEELING SOUNDS]
(WHISPERING) Ooh, that's so satisfying.
[PEELING SOUNDS]
[CRUMPLING SOUND]
[PEELING SOUNDS]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Well, that was certainly fun. Well, now that we've got all that stuff out of here, let's see what else is inside our Lucid Air. First of all, there's the Monroney, or dealer sticker as you may know it. As you can see, it's got the price that we paid right here, $140,500. Wow.
There are two other numbers on here that I want to call your attention to. The first is estimated total range, 469 miles. Now we've already put a different Lucid Air on our Edmunds EV range test. You can watch Alistair's full instrumented test video to see how it performed on that.
The second one is this, 28 kilowatt hours per 100 miles. That's how much electricity you use to get 100 miles on average. These are two things we'll be monitoring very, very closely on the long-term blog.
So now let's see what's in the glove box. You open it by pressing this button here.
[CLICKING SOUND]
Nice. Don't need that.
[BLOOP]
We've got a couple of things in here. Looks like we've got a Lucid Air owner's manual quick guide. And this does seem to be real paper, so it's an actual, real, book manual. You don't see those very often anymore. And then some dealer info and our paper plate, which we can get installed and hit the road.
All right, since I am the first one inside the Lucid, I'm going to set it up for all of my personal preferences. Before we do that, let me just put you in my seat for a second, and let's talk about how it smells in here. It's kind of an interesting, unique essence, I guess.
So there's a lot of leather inside, which is very nice and feels very nice and soft to the touch, but I'm not getting the rich, genuine leather smell that you get in a high-end Mercedes or BMW, Audi, stuff like that. Instead, it's much more Tesla-ish, and I think the look and the feel and, surprisingly, the smell, too.
It just feels a little plasticky, like, clinical. But again, everything feels very nice. It's just not that pebble grain type of leather. But there are lots of other materials in here. There's a pretty big variety.
There's different metals, wood, some suede-like Alcantara stuff, and then a neat fabric that feels really nice, too. So points for variety. The smell is interesting. I'm not sure it's luxury, but it's interesting.
All right, let's walk through the setup process. Conveniently, Lucid has on the screen right here "Welcome to your Lucid. Let's get you started." OK, Set Up. What do we do first?
I'm going to select Home and program Edmunds headquarters as the address in there. No, I won't, because it wants me to set up the Lucid ID first. OK, so it wants me to put in an email and password, and I don't know the email and password they're using for this car. So I guess I won't put in the address right now.
Let's see if I can connect my phone instead. Connectivity, Bluetooth. Tap a device to pair. Ryan's iPhone. Coolio. Confirm. Now I can play my tunes.
[YODELING MUSIC]
OK, so the phone is all connected, and that's important because at least for now, Lucid doesn't have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto equipped. Instead, they're saying that they will be available in the future through an over-the-air update. But for the moment, if you want to use phone functionality or play your music through your phone, you've got to do it through your phone, not through a smartphone app.
But the last thing I want to do is check out the navigation system, so let's go to that. Nice, big, double screen layout. I want to check out the charging stations, so let's click charging and see if it's good at locating nearby stations. No results for charging stations using your current preferred charger settings. I didn't do any charger settings.
Show all chargers. Oh, now there's a ton. Charge point, charge point, charge point, charge point, and there are a bunch in a short distance here. So let's pick one. And if I pick one and go to it-- oh, there it goes. OK, so it brought up directions to the charging station that I selected out of the 30 that it showed me. And we can get started on our way to go plug in.
And with that, let's throw that up and just use the top screen. And matter of fact, why don't we just put this whole thing away? It's pretty slick.
With all that set up and out of the way, let's talk about something that we need to focus on with any startup car company, and that's build quality. There are lots of different panels in here, lots of different materials, and we're going to be monitoring very closely how they all hold up over time.
But just first off, there are a couple of areas. I noticed this whole panel moves quite a bit. This moves more than I would like. And then this section is clearly plastic and a fake metal trim. It's just not great to be moving around that much, but they don't make any creaking, any rattling noises, and they return to right where they were supposed to be. So it doesn't seem to be a terrible sign at the moment, but we'll be keeping an eye on it.
Things like this-- that feels pretty good. The wheel feels nice and soft, and I actually really like these rotating knobs for the volume and for clicking through the menu here. This volume knob is kind of a similar way, with its wide ridges, and that's pretty cool.
Obviously this tablet moves a little bit. Hopefully please be careful with your tablet in your Lucid. I don't want anybody to mess that up. And to tuck it in, you just do that.
But the other thing I do want to point out is, one of the panel gaps in the door. This is pretty wide. I don't know if you can see it over here. But look, you can stick a pen in it, and it fits nice and snug. That's not ideal.
Now let's take a look at the outside.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Now when we move to the outside, there are a couple of things that stick out to the eye basically right away, and the first one we want to show you is where this trunk panel meets this rear quarter panel. Between the two there's this line that starts out pretty tight and then gets real wide down here, gets tight again, and then gets real wide again.
And if you run your fingers over these two areas, you can feel this one's popping out. On a similar note, where lots of different elements are coming together, there's just some kind of inconsistency. So this strip should match up with this strip.
On a Mercedes or a Porsche, this would be one continuous line. And instead you can see my fingers are taking a step down when they go over it. And then this part is just kind of off in no man's land, and it's creating just an interesting little gap, and the other side is even worse. And then this panel kind of moves quite a bit.
So in general, the body panels across the entire car-- the gaps are just kind of large for a luxury car, especially one at this price. That's just how they built it, so OK, we'll see how that works out. But I think the inconsistency is kind of the worrying part, where some areas will be real tight and smooth, and others will just be larger, shall we say?
While we were looking at panel gaps earlier, we noticed one small thing over here, and that is this little bit of, I don't know, Styrofoam or rubber, maybe sound deadening material. It seems like they forgot to cut it off, this little excess part of it. And it's visible when the doors are closed, which is just not very pleasant to look at.
Now are we nit picking? Yes, but this is kind of a quality control issue, and it makes me wonder what other little hidden things are in there that we're not seeing right now. But while we're here, this gives me a good chance to test the soft close doors. Let's see if this one works. Pretty nice. Success!
Well, we showed you some of the bad, but now let's show you some of the good-- specifically, in the frunk. Man, I love me a good frunk. Lucid left us some goodies in here, so let's see what we got.
A very rugged looking water bottle, a very fashionable tote bag for your free range vegetables, a fitted hat, cleaning cloth for all the screens, and a lovely little note that says thank you for spending a small fortune with us-- not really, but basically.
As far as storage, this is a really wide space but pretty shallow. That's as far as it goes. But if you pull up this cover, it gets much, much deeper. And in fact, this is a really actually very useful storage space to have in addition to the trunk.
Check it out. It's really big in here. All right, that's cool. Let's check out the trunk.
Power trunk, very cool. Oh, look at this! Floor mats. Beautiful, lily white floor mats that we will immediately get dirty, but they look very nice right now, so that's cool.
Back here we've also got what looks like probably charging cords, and is. So this is the charging apparatus that you'll be using to boost your Lucid. And it's got a nice little storage spot right there in that pocket of the trunk.
OK, what else? Well, this is a pretty spacious trunk. It doesn't go up very high, but it's real, real wide. That's really far. And then under here you've got even more space. And then one cool thing that we noticed is, there are these pass-through tunnels to go into these sides, too.
This is actually a very clever use of space and packaging by Lucid. You've got a really nice sized trunk and plenty of extra storage in the front as well, so I'm pretty impressed by that.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
How do you charge the dang thing? Well, you're charging port is right behind this door right here. And of course, you can use that cord that we pulled out of the trunk earlier. Us personally, we have level two charging stations installed here at the Edmunds office, so we'll be using those for overnight juice. And then we'll occasionally use level three fast-charging stations when we're going around town.
Now depending on when you placed your order for a Lucid, you could also get up to three years of free charging at Electrify America stations, so we'll be documenting that process as well.
Interestingly, Lucid uses a 900-volt onboard charging system. That's a lot more than the 400-volt system in a Tesla Model Y or Ford Mustang Mach-E. It's even more than the 800-volt system in a Hyundai Ioniq 5 or Porsche Taycan.
Now the idea behind that is that with the 900-volt system, the Lucid can give you a higher rate of maximum charging speed. So if, for instance, you're using one of those really speedy level three, 350-kilowatt chargers, the Lucid will be able to take advantage of that more than those other models will.
Now, do all these numbers just exist out in the universe but don't really have any tangible difference on your ownership experience? Well, that's what we'll be finding out, so make sure you check out the blog.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Now that the Lucid is in our hands, make sure to bookmark our long-term page so you can see where we take it, how it performs, and what, if anything, goes wrong.
Has Lucid's new approach to fit and finish made any discernible difference? Well, I mean, the last car we tested barely had working door handles. At least we could get all the doors open and closed this time. And no, the panel gaps aren't great, but this does appear to be a tighter, cleaner execution. With our car, Lucid has made progress.
This is definitely a unique way to spend roughly $150,000, but our Lucid makes us feel a little bit better about that proposition. There are still some wrinkles to work out, but we consider the Lucid Air a more than worthy adversary to the Mercedes EQS and Tesla Model S.
Now, will we still feel that way after a year behind the wheel? Stay tuned. Leave a comment below and let me know your first impressions of our new long-termer. As for me, I still haven't driven this thing yet, so I'm going to take a spin. Thanks for watching.
