NEWARK, California – The Lucid Air has an otherworldly quality to it. It’s low and wide with a streamlined front end, free from the usual “face” of headlight units and radiator grille (whether real or not). The silhouette is unusual, especially at the rear, with its long wheelbase, truncated deck lid, shell-shaped trunk and floating roof in silver. There’s something almost French about this American electric sedan – it’s especially hard not to think of the Citroën DS. Like most Gallic classic cars, the Lucid stands out in a stunning contrast to the cars around it — even here in Silicon Valley, where Teslas and other futuristic EVs are commonplace.
And it doesn’t just stand out in appearance. The Lucid Air is the kind of thing that you really have to dissect to fully understand how different it is and the level of work that went into it. Yes, the Lucid Air’s specs and driving experience are hugely impressive, but how it achieves them is so much more.
Located across the San Francisco Bay from several tech giants, the company has gone to great lengths to do as much in-house as possible, from the ingeniously packaged engines to the software in its 90 in-car computers (ECUs). It’s also an unusually boutique set-up. Not only are the design and engineering teams located in the same headquarters complex and building, they literally share a room (see below). The engineers’ computers are located on a mezzanine in and overlooking the design studio where mockups are made physically and virtually. Just down the hall is an expansive workshop full of elevators and prototypes, while offices for executives, software engineers, and even public relations exist within the same complex. Similar elements from other automakers aren’t just typically scattered across individual buildings, they’re often scattered across states, countries, and even continents. That speaks as much about the potential benefits of organizational efficiency and synergy as maximizing real estate and, well, being a fairly small start-up.
Small yes, but also very well financed. When you look at the components made in-house for the Lucid Air, compare it to rival EVs, and hear Chief Engineer Erik Bach describe it all, you don’t need to be an accountant to find that corners don’t cut corners for the sake of it. budget. The best example of this is Lucid’s motor unit (bottom right), which produces a whopping 670 horsepower and weighs 163 pounds. When viewed alongside several less powerful and heavier motor units (including Tesla’s otherwise impressive unit), it clearly takes up less space.
Part of the packaging trick is the micro differential (bottom left) that fits into what would normally be empty space in the electric rotor. It’s a beautiful little piece, with intricate gears that mesh together to create a quasi-sphere with shafts spinning out of two ends. It looks designed, not designed, like something made by a sci-fi prop department rather than automotive engineers. The motor’s stator is as much a work of art as it is a machine, with wires continuously intertwined in a beautiful grid reminiscent of the mid-century buildings created by architect Minoru Yamasaki.
All this wasn’t done for beauty, though – remember these pieces are nestled in an engine case you’ll never see. Their elegance speaks of their technique and efficiency – of space, output and of the resources needed to build them. According to chief engineer Erik Bach (pictured below), the continuous weave winding of the stator that creates that grid pattern requires a fraction of the laser welding that other stators require and therefore a fraction of the energy required to produce it.
Oh, and the end result is an incredibly high-energy device. The engines in the Air Grand Touring produce 819 horsepower and 885 lb-ft of torque, while the new Grand Touring Performance, which is mechanically analogous to the limited-edition Dream Edition, produces an absurd 1,050 horsepower and 921 lb-ft of torque. has.
A key part of all that thrust is, of course, the Lucid battery pack. Each pack is much smaller than the one in a Tesla. That means that each contains less energy, but Bach indicates that smaller packages have advantages in terms of packaging, cooling and strength. The cylindrical battery cells are grouped together and placed on top of a metal cooling plate through which a water/glycol mixture circulates (Tesla slurps coolant around the sides of its cylindrical cells, which Bach says is less effective, like trying to cool someone wrapped in a Persian) . carpet from the sides as opposed to the open top). This plate, together with the smaller package size and the single piece of molded plastic that encases everything, makes for an extremely strong unit, which is beneficial for crash resistance.
There are 22 of those packs in the Lucid Air Grand Touring and Grand Touring Performance, resulting in a blistering range of 516 miles in the GT with 19-inch wheels, 469 in a GT with 21s and 446 for the Performance. The Air Pure and Touring versions have 18 packages, and indeed, the Air was originally intended to have 18. You see, those four extra packs in the GT models fit right in with a gap in the overall battery pack left over for the rear footwell. Filling that gap with the extra packs increases that footwell by 2 to 3 inches, significantly reducing passenger comfort by bringing your feet closer to your buttocks. It’s a bit like sitting in the third row of an SUV, albeit with a ton more room behind the front seats.
This is clearly a trade-off, and one that buyers should seriously consider, but Bach’s team realized a clear advantage.
“We can kill the fear of range,” he said, and crossing the 500-mile threshold certainly seems to do that.
Now it’s nice to have a huge amount of battery capacity, but charging the thing is also a pretty important ingredient. Enter the Wunderbox (pictured top left). In the simplest terms, this is the built-in charger. It draws electricity from a plug and deposits it in the battery. However, the 900-volt architecture provides powerful suction with a maximum DC fast charging rate of 300 kilowatts (that’s better than the 270 kW of the 800-volt Porsche Taycan). With a 350 kW DC fast charger, the Air can theoretically pay for 500 kilometers in 21 minutes.
At the same time, the Wunderbox makes the Air capable of “bi-directional charging,” where it can power your home at 19.2 kilowatts of AC. You can also charge another electric car – the bag with the surprisingly compact charging cord contains plugs for 120 volts and 240 volts, plus the car charging “gun”, as Bach perfectly called the thing. These aren’t unique talents, but they’re rare, with the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6 and Ford F-150 Lightning being the few with comparable capabilities (though none match the Air’s output).
The interior also gets a lot of attention. While it has traditionally been common for small and/or start-up businesses to rely on third parties for things like interior switches, door handles, and even infotainment systems, Lucid once again kept things in-house. The buttons and switches, which are few in number but do exist, look quite expensive and move accordingly. The small rollers on the thick two-spoke steering wheel are particularly beautiful. The leather, faux suede, and open-pored wood that covers most surfaces are top-notch stuff; the textile fabric in two of the four interior colors is made of alpaca yarn and clearly shows that there is much more than just cowhide to make the interior of a car look and feel expensive. Quite simply, the interior is the real deal.
Then there are the custom 1s and 0s. As mentioned, there are 90 computers in the car that control everything, 70 of which are capable of over-the-air updates. The exceptions are for things like lowering the windows. Most are also developed in-house by Lucid, and according to chief software guru and long-time Apple veteran Mike Bell (pictured lower left), his team is aiming to bring even more of the units in-house in the future.
“Because we’re in the valley, it doesn’t bother us doing that,” Bell said, noting that a contract manufacturer actually builds the units.
Bell was also a key figure in determining how to handle all that updatable software. The Air has three touchscreens, plus a display for the instruments and important driving-related information. When asked about Tesla and Rivian’s one-screen-does-all approach, he stated that it is certainly a money-saving approach, but noted that he didn’t like having to constantly look over his speed and other frequently needed information.
“I want to have the most important information in front of me,” he said, his hands pointed forward on an imaginary instrument panel. And despite having a 34-inch arc with 5K resolution screens and a second large touchscreen below, he’s not wrong in saying that the Air’s screen configuration is less overwhelming than the Mercedes EQS Hyperscreen with its three massive screens behind a huge piece of glass accentuated by an infinite number of interior colors.
“We’re not building a nightclub,” he mused.
Indeed, there is something very familiar about the interior of the Lucid Air. The touchscreens may have replaced most of the buttons, but they’re about where those buttons used to be. You also don’t have to hunt deep into menus, or wade through a huge amount of choice and customization. Basically, Lucid makes decisions in terms of layout and how things work based on its experience, research, intuition, customer feedback and just using the damn thing. This also applies to driving modes. However, with OTA updates, it can always change things if something isn’t working, isn’t working as well as it should, or people just don’t like it.
Until then, Lucid is about to release an update that corrected two points of frustration we experienced on our first car ride. The infotainment screen’s docked menu icons were on the right side of the screen, which looked neat but meant the buttons were miles away from the driver. They are moved to the left. The other problem had to do with the navigation system’s directions: the part that graphically shows you the direction arrows of your next turn, along with the street name and lane suggestions, would often be covered by a search menu element (or not appear at all if you have the audio screen up). Now those directional elements appear in the instrument display.
Of course, OTA updates are by no means unique to Lucid — they were a major strength and differentiator for Tesla. They are an absolute game-changer, and Bell says his team will do their best to ensure customer cars are still supported as they get older, noting rightly that a $179,000 car is very different from an iPhone. Planned obsolescence just wouldn’t be cool.
But the Lucid Air sure is cool, and not just because it looks cool or to say driving something with 1,050 horsepower is cool. It’s cool in the same way as a high-end watch: the connoisseurs will recognize that you have something specially designed and manufactured. And if it’s not clear enough, maybe Lucid should add an extra micro differential just as a visual aid. Man, that little thing is cool.