2022 Lucid Air

ALISTAIR WEAVER: Hi. Alistair Weaver here for Edmunds with our full independent instrumented test of the Lucid Air Dream Range. In other words, we're going to submit it to the same rigorous process it recently applied to the Tesla Model S Plaid and the Rivian R1T. We're going to perform the globally famous-- yes, globally famous-- Edmunds real-world range test to find out whether this car really can do 520 miles on a single charge as the EPA claims. If it does, it'll overtake the Mercedes EQS to become our new range leader and be the first production car to top 500 miles. And here at our test track, we're going to find out whether this luxury sedan with 933 horsepower really can do 0 to 60 in 0.27 seconds as Lucid claims. And we're going to discover whether its rivals, the Mercedes EQS and Tesla Model S, is worth $170,000 of your money. Yes, we are. You've probably seen or maybe read lots of gushing press about early pre-production versions of this car. But was it justified? Is this really a Lucid dream or actually an incoherent nightmare? This driver's door appears to have seized. This is going to look like I'm kind of beating up on Lucid. And that's not the point at all. Oh, and we're going to repeat the infamous Edmund steering test to find out whether the Lucid wheel is better than a Tesla yoke. Cue the abuse. Doing this stuff properly cost time and money. So if you like what you see, please subscribe to the channel and don't forget the bell. And if you're looking to sell your car, head to edmunds.com/sellmycar for a cash offer. And now, without further ado, let's get on with it. So who or what or is or are Lucid? The company was actually founded back in 2007 by Tesla's former vice President of engineering Peter Rawlinson. But it's in the last decade that it's kicked on, backed first by Saudi billions and then from a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC. Think of it as Tesla reborn minus Elon and the Teslarati. Today it's worth about $40 billion, about the same as Rivian. So it's proper. Now, if you're honest, we are a bit late to the party here. Reviews of this car have been around for about eight months. And we have a brief drive at the launch back in September. But Lucid kept pushing back our official loan. Why? Because they knew we wanted to do full test numbers and an EV range test, and that meant waiting for a finished car. This is a production press car, and it's done about 9,000 miles. It was actually back at the Lucid factory having a once over before it came to us this week. So they say, and we say it is representative of what you can buy. The Dream is the launch edition of the Lucid and comes in two forms, Performance and Range. The former focus on performance-- see what they did there-- and has, for PR reasons, 1,111 horsepower. The Range edition we have here was designed to give Lucid a headline-grabbing EPA rating of over 500 miles. It has two electric motors, one at the front and one at the rear, with a combined 933 horsepower. For context, that's 101 horsepower less than a Tesla Plaid, but roughly double what you'll find in the Edmunds top-rated gas-powered luxury sedan, the Mercedes S-class. And the Lucid has such fuel-sipping niceties as smaller 19-inch wheel rims, which help reduce the rolling resistance. Lucid actually wanted us to swap out the 19-inch rims for some 21s between the EV range test and the straight-line testing we're doing here today. But we politely declined. We reckon that most luxury sedan buyers won't have spare rims sitting in the garage, unless they're Jay Leno, of course. But he's probably got a chap for that. Lucid says it's good for 0 to 60 in 2.7 seconds. But as by now, we never take their word for it. Over to our guru of testing, Jonathan Elfalan. JONATHAN ELFALAN: All right. Here we go. We are in sprint mode. Stability control on because we don't have that much tire. Left foot on the brake. Right foot on the accelerator. Oh, there we go, launch control. Whoa! There we go! That's quick. Oh, my god. [CHUCKLING] Oh. Oh, OK, braking's a little hairier than I was anticipating. OK. All right. Yeah. That's-- Those were the beans, yeah, for sure. This thing is pretty sick. ALISTAIR WEAVER: As always, it's going to take some time to crunch the numbers. So in the meantime, let's bring some lucidity to the Lucid. Let's start with the looks. Now, these things, of course, are always subjective. But for what it's worth, I think it looks great. It's got a fantastic mix of future eco appeal, with some pretty classical handsome proportions. It's a long time since I drove a car that got this much attention. There's also some really cool detailing. These little ports here actually feed air through the nose and then exit here along the hood. And there's a similar system going on here. Air comes in here and comes out here just in front of the front tires. Now, if I remember correctly, Ferrari was the first company to introduce this sort of technology on road cars, but they were doing it more for downforce. I think Lucid is doing it really to improve the efficiency, reduce the coefficient of drag, and hence improve the range. As we move down the car, this car is riding on 19-inch rims. And we're now getting used to see more and more sidewall on cars built for lots of range. I actually kind of like them. There's plenty of [? skilltering ?] going on here. And on every Lucid Air, you get this sort of two-toned roof treatment, which becomes more pronounced if you go for a darker color. Follow me to the rear, Mr. Charlie, if you will. Another thing to point out on this rear light strip when you actually turn it on or if you use the brakes, that's a really clever use of LEDs. And if I can open the trunk-- and if I can open the trunk-- there we go. This is actually pretty clever. Lucy did managed to create a much wider trunk opening, although it's still quite shallow because you've obviously got the wheels in play. It does mean that you can put some longer objects here, maybe like golf clubs, for example. Now, excuse me a moment. I've just had kid, and I literally haven't slept in months. But if we open this rear, this actually-- get rid of the scooter. There's actually a pretty big area underneath the trunk floor to supplement all this space. And there's a very big front, which is interesting because this car just feels so much better packaged than the Mercedes EQS. The EQS is bigger but less practical. How does that work? The packaging genius continues inside. This car has a footprint similar to a Mercedes E-class. But inside, it's more S-class and certainly bigger than the EQS, which is the S-class's electric brother, if you are continuing to follow me. I'm 6 foot 4. This car is set up for me. And as you can see, I've not only got plenty of headroom, I've also got plenty of knee room too. Now, this is the big battery version of the Lucid. And as a result, all the underfloor of the car is packed full of chemical cells. But if you go for the entry-level model, The so-called Lucid Pure, which is going to cost about $80,000 when it finally arrives, then that will have less batteries. And as a result, you get a nice little footwell to plant your feet, which means that your knees don't end up somewhere around your chin. Before jumping to the front, I also wanted to talk about some of the Easter eggs which are part of the Lucid fun. Littered throughout this car are little Californian bears. And that's because Lucid, like Tesla, is headquartered in California. Then there's this weird little tripod thing in the roof here, which we've discovered is actually a microphone for the in-car telephone. But our producer is utterly convinced that it's actually modeled on Doc Brown's flux capacitor from the Back to the Future DeLorean. Is that true? Don't know. But it's kind of cool. Inside, to my eyes at least, it's a sort of blend of Porsche Taycan and Tesla, which, to be honest, is no bad thing. As you'd expect, there's a real focus on touchscreen technology but also some proper physical controls too. I like the fact that there's proper buttons for things like the temperature, the fan, and the volume. And get this Tesla fanboys, look at this, real analog controls for the air vents. So somebody who owns the Model 3, I think that's a good thing. I also like the way these screens interact with one another. Let's say you want to call it the navigation up here, which is very much in your eye line as you're driving. But it's a little screen, so if you want to input where you're going, you can drag it down here, Type in where you want to go. Once you've agreed to go to a certain restaurant of choice, you can simply swipe it up again. The map continues on here. And you've got access to the rest of the functionality for things like massage seats and themes, which is what kind of colors you want going on, charging infrastructure, drive modes, et cetera, et cetera. And watch this. If you swipe up from the bottom, the whole thing disappears to reveal a cunning little cubby. Then it slides back into place. I think that's really cool. But let's leave the gadgetry behind for a minute. What do we think of the overall interior? What's the what's the ambience? Well, a bit like the exterior, it has a neat blend of futuristic but still practical and sensible. This whole car feels like the CEO is an engineer and not an eccentric billionaire. I like the way the different surfaces play together. The driving position is good, even if I sit a little bit too high. And it has a wonderful feeling of space and sort of outdoorsiness, thanks to this exaggerated glass roof, even if you do get a bit too much heat soak on a hot day, and the tint kind of runs through my eyeline, which is, frankly, a bit irritating. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a neat segue into some of the foibles of this car that we really must call out. Let's start with the software, which really falls into two camps, the stuff that's a bit buggy or a bit laggy and the stuff that, frankly, they haven't got around to yet. There's stuff that are buggy include things like your Bluetooth phone, which sometimes connects, sometimes doesn't. Sometimes you can play Spotify streaming through your phone. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes the blind spot monitoring's so slow that you've actually made the turn by the time it pops up in the dashboard. Then there's the stuff which they're obviously still developing. For example, you cannot yet turn off the satnav lady. Now, I'm sure she's charming, and she chats along quite happily. But after a while, it gets a bit grating. Now, have no doubt that all of this can and probably will be fixed with over-the-air updates, as Lucid matures and progresses. But, hey, this car's already eight months old. What might be harder to fix is the perception of quality and even the build quality, too. The material choices in here might look good. But in terms of overall quality, they're simply not a match for the best of the Germans, certainly not Porsche. Interestingly and purely coincidentally, we had a BMW iX in the office this week alongside the Lucid. And the BMW's aura of quality was vastly superior to this despite the fact it costs half as much. Let me give you a fairly obvious example of what I mean. The center armrest looks nice, nice bit of stitching. But when you let it go. Now, you probably wouldn't expect that on a $20,000 hatchback these days, never mind a luxury sedan of this aspiration. Now, I'm not making this up. Literally, as we're filming the problems of the build quality, this door-- this driver's door, I should add, appears to have seized. I'm going to try locking it. So we lock it. So we lock it. So we lock it. Don't do this. Locking it. Aw, OK. Car's locked. Door handle's still open. This is going to look like I'm kind of beating up on Lucid, and that's not the point at all. It's just that we don't give Tesla a free ride. And we haven't given anybody else a free ride. And this is all genuine. OK. So now the door handle's open. Click, click to open. Car opens. The other thing I should point out is that I was told to keep the key on me at all times because if you leave it in the car, it might automatically lock, which is something that happened to me in the Mercedes A-class back in '98, and that's not good, people. And now the door is locked. Rear door opens. So let's have a look if I can now clamber across. OK. [CHUCKLING] SPEAKER 1: So that's all you had to do is just go-- ALISTAIR WEAVER: So we'll now shut it. OK. So that's now opening. Lock it. Unlock it. Back in the game. Well, the point of this was actually to demonstrate an issue not with a front door but actually with the rear door, which has been driving me nuts all week. So you shut the door. It shuts, got an automatic locking, which is nice. Then it opens again. Then it shuts. Then it opens again. So you can't realistically drive away because your back door's now open. So the only way to get around it, give it a good old-fashioned British shove. Then it stays shut, and all is well with the world. Panel gaps aren't great either. You can actually put your fingers inside the panel gaps in this door. Now, in our trade, we do drive pre-production prototypes. And sometimes you make allowances for cars that are hand built, fit and finish, that sort of thing. But the reality is this isn't one of those. This is an actual production car. We went to the Lucid launch back in September. As I talk to you, it's now April. It's done about 10,000 miles or 9,000 and a bit. And it was actually at the Lucid factory before it came to us for this test. But anyway, enough of that. Let's move on to the fun stuff, the driving. And to preview all of that, here comes Jonathan with the numbers. So Jonathan, claims 0 to 60, 2.7 seconds. Edmunds says? JONATHAN ELFALAN: 2.8. ALISTAIR WEAVER: But I think there's a caveat here. Isn't their claim on 21-inch wheels on a prepped surface. We're actually on 19-inch wheels, which, generally speaking, would be slower, on a normal asphalt surface. JONATHAN ELFALAN: That's correct. And not to mention these 19s are all seasons, versus the 21s, which are summer tires. So-- ALISTAIR WEAVER: It's actually a really, really good result. JONATHAN ALFALAN: Really good result. Actually, I wasn't expecting it to probably perform as well as it did. But it's the real deal, so 2.8 seconds. ALISTAIR WEAVER: For a bit of context, Tesla Model S Plaid? JONATHAN ELFALAN: 2.3. ALISTAIR WEAVER: 2.3. JONATHAN ELFALAN: Oh, my god. Yeah, 2.3 seconds, which is-- that's a fair bit amount quicker. But it had much wider tires, 265s in the front and 295s in the rear. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Same driver, same track. JONATHAN ELFALAN: Yes, exactly. We did the quarter mile in 10.3 seconds at 132.2 miles per hour, which is moving, again not quite as quick as the Plaid. It's about a second behind it. But still, well faster than most cars that we've had out here. ALISTAIR WEAVER: And this of course is the Range edition, not the Performance edition, which has the stickier tires and has an extra 180 horsepower. JONATHAN ELFALAN: Yeah, give or take. ALISTAIR WEAVER: 1,111-- JONATHAN ELFALAN: Yeah, exactly. ALISTAIR WEAVER: --if memory serves. Braking? JONATHAN ELFALAN: Braking, 127 feet, which it's not great. But it's also not that bad for a car that's, again, on such small all-season tires and weighs 5,232 pounds. ALISTAIR WEAVER: 5,200 pounds. So that's kind of like a Ram 1,500 truck. JONATHAN ELFALAN: Yeah, yeah. It's a heavy-- it's a heavy vehicle. ALISTAIR WEAVER: So after braking the skid pad lateral G, or as we know in the real world, grip. JONATHAN ELFALAN: We averaged a 0.89 G around the skid pad, which, again, isn't great. We're on all seasons. And in fact, this was just a hair better than the Rivian. But the Rivian is an over 7,000-pound truck. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Truck, yeah. JONATHAN ELFALAN: So I would maybe proceed with caution out there. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Maybe leave the stability on for a while. JONATHAN ELFALAN: Yeah, just a little bit, yeah. ALISTAIR WEAVER: Jonathan, thank you. I'm going to head out on the circuit. JONATHAN ELFALAN: Have fun, sir. ALISTAIR WEAVER: OK. So here we go for the ride and handling section. Now, it's a long time since I drove a car that there's this much under tire. By which I mean this car's got 245 tires all around. Now, for a bit of context, a standard Audi Q5, that we also have on test, has 255. That's wider tires. And they're also pumped up like a kind of 1970s Arnold Schwarzenegger to 49 PSI. Now, this is all about maximizing the car's range. But, of course, you've still got 933 horsepower. And what's more, the tires-- I should have said earlier, the tires are actually all season. And it's a red hot day in Southern California. So this should be entertaining. We've run the official figures. But I want to get a proper feel for launch control. So drive modes, out of smooth into sprint. You have to confirm that you want to go for the full-bore power and torque. Now, left foot on the brake. Right foot on the power. Then I get a little Californian bear. Launch mode is activated. Let the camera man know. 3, 2, 1, and boom. Whoa! What's extraordinary is that you actually feel the whole car. A, all four wheels start spinning. Now, that would be down to the tires. But then you also get this kind of little nose in the air. It's almost like driving a powerboat. You get this sort of, like, boom, up in the air, and away she goes. I don't think I've ever experienced something like that before. That was awesome. So let's see what 933 horsepower and, should we say, an interesting choice of rubber feels like. Let's just get a little feel for it now. Peter Rawlinson, Lucid's CEO, is ex Jaguar, ex Tesla, but also ex Lotus. And there is a hint of Lotus, particularly in the way that this car steers. The turning's very sharp, which is also true of a Tesla. It has a nice kind of-- initially, a nice sort of linearity to it. Pretty strong region as well. And that's something that you can set up in the controls. Now, immediately, as I sort of line out, you can feel the tire starting to push. There's just ultimately not that much grip. The fundamental balance of this car is actually really good. And you certainly feel it out on the road. Because with a lot of these cars, though, you get that weird sort of transition between regenerative braking when you lift off the throttle. Then as you go for the brakes themselves to supplement it on a track like this, you never quite get the feel that you would in a traditional gas-powered car. Stability control's working overtime. And boom, 50, 60. [EXHALES] It's such a weird feeling. That was, like, 100 miles an hour. I'm just going to ease it through this first quick section. Yeah, there's very little grip, to be honest, for something with this much power. I know this is a PR stunt. I know it's all about maximizing the range, 500 miles plus, and all the rest of it. But this is going to be a big challenge of EVs moving forward. It's this sort of debate about how much you maximize range and efficiency and how much you maximize driving dynamics. And it's a difficult trade off because ultimately is it wise to put 933 horsepower through this kind of tire, this kind of set up? Because what's the old sort of adage I think from the first century? With power comes great responsibility. With 933 horsepower does not come 245, 49 PSI all-season tires, at least not normally. Turn it in, sort of ease it out of the throttle. It's kind of nice and progressive on the throttle. I just like a little bit more consistency and feeling the brakes, particularly through the initial part of the pedal. Now, the ride quality-- I'd say the ride quality in this trim, on these tires, with these tire pressures is good, but it's not superb. It's luxury car standards. But, say, on the highway, it does tend to fidget a little bit. We can't wait to try this car on 21-inch tires, which is perhaps more normal. It's probably what more people are going to buy. And we suspect that might actually improve the ride quality. Although you've got less sidewall, you've also got less pressure. And it just might be a better compromise because it's good, but it's not great. I'm going to try something here. I'm going to go into the systems and actually turn off the stability control. It's saying significantly reduced traction control. It doesn't say it'll turn it off all the way. And modify ABS performance should only be done by advanced drivers on closed courses. Well, we're certainly on a closed course. And I suppose I should be advanced by now. Disabling collision protection. Well, are you sure want to disable? Disable. Here we go. OK. So now everything is off. It's still getting some traction control right. So I think what it's doing is diminishing my stability but actually still giving me a little bit of traction control just so that we don't sort of eat up these tires. OK, turn it. It's just a lot of push. It's weird how we're getting so used to 900 horsepower. I mean, in recent weeks, we've driven the Tesla Plaid, with 1,000 horsepower, the Rivian with, what, 800 and something, now this with 933. It's almost becoming, like, matter of fact, which is just kind of crazy when you think about it. And I'm not sure it's all that responsible, either. It's starting to see issues on social with people yumping Teslas in Echo Park and everything else. It's a lot of responsibility to give people. And it's unlike an old kind of gas-powered supercar, which you knew you had to respect, these things are just like 900 horsepower golf carts. You just get in, boot the throttle, and there it all is, instantaneous. One other really pet irritation about this car is the button for the windscreen washers is actually on the end of the column stalk where the indicators are. So sometimes when you're not concentrating, you go for the indicators. You tend to like wash your windscreen. OK, slightly pedantic point, but there you go. There's some really solid fundamentals here. The underlying chassis balance feels great. The steering is very quick to turn in, rather Tesla-like in that respect. There's some adjustability on the throttle, if you like, that sort of thing. And it feels very well balanced. I suspect a lot of our issues here are really because of the tires rather than because the fundamental setup of the car. It feels like there's a huge amount of potential here, that the fundamentals are great. And, yeah, there's a lot to work with. The other big part of our process is the now-famous or, depending on your point of view, infamous Edmunds EV range test. We drive every electric car on a real-world loop from our office in Santa Monica, California, testing how far they'll travel on a single charge. Well, of course, the PR marketing point of this car was it's extraordinary EPA range figure. This car, after all, is called the Lucid Air Dream Range edition. So welcome back, head of testing, Jonathan, to reveal the official globally famous Edmunds real-world EV range testing result. Jonathan. JONATHAN ELFALAN: Well, Lucid says that according to the EPA this car is supposed to go 520 miles. And we went-- drumroll-- 505 miles, which is pretty incredible, don't you think? ALISTAIR WEAVER: Yeah. It immediately goes to the top of our range testing leaderboard, beating the EQS, I believe. And it's the first car we've tested that beat 500 miles. JONATHAN ELFALAN: Exactly. EQS certainly outperformed its original estimates. But this is still 422 miles. Lucid, 505 miles is a fair bit amount more and like you said, the first EV to do that. ALISTAIR WEAVER: But it does mean, however good the result is that Lucid joins Tesla in being just about the only brands that we've tested that don't hit the EPA numbers. Now. We understand that's because they do the five-cycle test rather than the two-cycle test. But hey, what does that mean in the real world? JONATHAN ELFALAN: So essentially, the five-cycle test is just a more involved test that gives a more favorable correction to the end result. But what we've seen is that with the five-cycle test, we have a lot of trouble meeting those results in the real world. So it's just less accurate for the consumer. ALISTAIR WEAVER: And this is the problem and why we do our independent range testing, that manufacturers can pretty much choose what kind of tests that they do, the two cycle or the five cycle. And they self-certify. That's why we exist and why you should check out edmunds.com/range for all the great work that Jonathan's team do. Promo over. Let's carry on. Most of the headlines right now focus on range. But a car's efficiency tells you how much it'll cost to run. And we measure that, too. The lucid consumed 28.3 kilowatt hours per 100 miles on our range loop. Think of that as a kind of MPG. That's more than the EPA claims, but better than both a Mercedes EQS 450-Plus and the Tesla Plaid. Beating the EQS is particularly impressive. The 450-Plus has just one motor, rear-wheel drive, and 329 horsepower, 600 horsepower less than the all-wheel drive Lucid. Regular viewers of our channel or those with a penchant for Twitter might remember that we used a low-grip surface here at our track to demonstrate the Tesla yoke, the aircraft-style wheel fitted to the Model S Plaid. It did not go well. So now in the interest of fairness and equality, we are returning to the same track in the Lucid Air Dream. Now, it might look like familiar asphalt. But it's actually a special low-grip surface that simulates the effect of ice and allows you to explore a car's dynamic repertoire at low speed. So let's put it into sprint for the whole 933 horsepower. And let's turn off the stability control. Do I want to accept all the [INAUDIBLE]? Yes, give me the liability. And away we go. The sun is setting in California. I love this time of day. Apparently, on this software setting, it's impossible to fully turn off the stability control. But apparently, Lucid are working on ways of actually giving you more control, which allows you to do a little bit more silliness and drifting. But as you can see, this is already infinitely better than Tesla's yoke, which is probably the most stupid automotive idea I've known in 20 years in the business. This is a proper steering wheel. And when you need to deal with agility like this, of course, using pretty much all the sides of it. As the tires warm up a little bit, we are starting to get a bit more drift action. And as you can see, it's pretty controllable. I don't know what's happened to the software. But she's certainly doing a thing. And as you can see, a real steering wheel is actually infinitely preferable to a yoke. Who knew? At the end of the day, both literally and metaphorically, there is so, so much to like about this car. Does it have the potential to be a world beater? Absolutely. The fundamentals really are that good. And it instantly makes a Tesla Model S look what it is, old. But [INAUDIBLE] is significant. But right now it just doesn't feel finished. We have no doubt that the software issues can and surely will be fixed with over-the-air updates. But we really hope that Lucid solves some of the quality issues too. Right now, it's like the proverbial prodigal son. Truth is that car shoppers spending more than $100,000 on a luxury sedan expect and deserve a certain standard, car shoppers, like us at Edmunds. As editor-in-chief, I've just signed off spending $139,000 of our own cash on a Lucid Grand Touring because we want to follow the evolution of the car like a real shopper. And it's arriving very soon. Will Lucid get it right? And will this car fulfill its undeniable potential? Probably. Certainly hope so. [MUSIC PLAYING]