Editor's note: This is the first of a four-part series. Follow the coverage here.
Has any company in history had a greater stroke of luck in its post-launch year than Lucid Motors?
The upstart maker of luxury electric cars, founded by Tesla Model S guru Peter Rawlinson, was in competition with his estranged former boss Elon Musk. Rawlinson's flagship Lucid Air was released in limited edition Dream form in 2021 (here's my Lucid Air Dream review). The first full-production model, the 2023 Lucid Air Grand Touring(opens in a new tab), started shipping to customers in late fall 2022.
In numerous(opens in a new tab) head-to-head comparisons(opens in a new tab), the Lucid Air was judged a better electric vehicle overall than Tesla's equivalent, the Model S, and won multiple(opens in a new tab) car of the year (opens in a new tab)awards.
But the better car doesn't always win in the marketplace; motor history is littered with burned-out husks of revenge-fueled better cars that smashed headlong into better-funded competitors. Lucid kept slashing its production(opens in a new tab) last year, thanks to supply chain issues(opens in a new tab) and price pressure from Tesla(opens in a new tab); Lucid's shareholders aren't happy(opens in a new tab) with all that red ink.
What Rawlinson needed was for Musk to get distracted and flame out in some massively public way, making the Tesla brand toxic for its planet-conscious customers … and that's exactly what Musk has done with his tyrannical, Tesla stock-tanking reign at Twitter.
That's a big stroke of luck! Still, I've got a better one. Because when Lucid Motors offered a test drive of the new $109,000 Lucid Air Touring edition (that's a midrange Lucid, compared to the $155,000 Grand Touring; still to come is the $89,000 Lucid Pure), I was hunkered down for the worst series of winter storms to hit California since I arrived here decades ago.
What better time, I figured, to get out of town, to see if I could find the sun anywhere – and even if I couldn't, to put this fancy EV through its paces in the wettest and snowiest environments the Golden state has to offer?
Lucid dream hits the EV reality road
I've long loved electric cars, and cheered their challenge to the destructive combustion engine. But if I'm being honest, I've also long harbored the background fears that can strike any potential EV purchaser. It isn't just range anxiety (though I was curious if I'd feel such a thing in the Air Touring, which boasts 425 miles on a single charge). It's the nagging worry that electric cars are more fragile in extreme conditions.
Cold weather can significantly sap even the best batteries(opens in a new tab), after all. I'm still not over what happened to my first-generation Prius almost every winter when my wife and I took it to the snowy heights of Lake Tahoe. Invariably, its regenerative battery and its ignition battery would tap out. The mechanics of Tahoe City were kind and helpful, but it was this repeated experience that made us sell the car in the end.
I was suspicious of the big fancy Lucid sedan for other reasons. Over the last 10 years, I've done most of my daily drives in a Fiat 500e, a zippy little EV with about 75 miles to a charge. It's light, accelerates like crazy, is great at cornering, fits into parking spots others can't reach, fills its battery overnight even from a regular outlet, still looks cute even with a few dents and scratches – in short, the perfect little around-town car. For longer trips, for hikes, for dog adventures, I lease a Toyota RAV4 hybrid.
How could the Lucid compete? It seemed too large for city EV needs, and not rugged enough for the country. I'm not a car nerd by any means, nor a speed-head. I'm excited by the concept of going zero to 60 in three seconds, sure, but more interested in how the day-to-day driving experience feels than in the 620 horsepower under the hood.
What follows, then, is a different kind of car review: A 10-day date with a luxury EV to see if it can win over my hard (but open) heart. This story covers my first two days with the Lucid Air Touring, and we'll publish more as the week goes on.
Lucid display software, a work in progress
January weather in California is often weird, but this takes the cake. I arrived at the pre-arranged pickup spot under warm blue skies, fresh from jogging, wearing running shorts.
Then, once I took possession of the Lucid's rubbery key fob and came to grips with the car's center tablet and wrap-around dashboard screen, after I got over the weird sense that there's nothing to turn on or start (the car just knows you're in it and is ready; there's not even a handbrake, just a button), right as I pulled away from the curb, clouds gathered and the heavens opened.
Which is why this may be the first luxury EV review ever to focus more on windshield buttons than on the car's horsepower: I had to figure them out in a hurry.
What I discovered was an odd fact about the button-filled part of the touchscreen that falls to the left of the steering wheel, one that irked me for the rest of the long week. It seemed indicative of the teething troubles Lucid is having with data arrangement on this display.
The screen real estate here on the left of the wheel is so limited that there's only room for a button that opens the frunk, not one that opens the trunk. For that, annoyingly, you have to use the center display.
But there are five wiper buttons on it (not counting the wiper button on the turn signal handle that's right there). Two buttons that promised to auto-detect rain did not seem to work in this sudden storm.
Luckily, button layout is the kind of feature that could easily be changed in a future update. Lucid seems particularly keen to upgrade its software, with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto set to come online shortly.
And not a moment too soon, especially on the Google Maps front; as we'll see later in the series, Lucid's own navigation system left something to be desired too.
Lucid brakes and one-pedal driving
Living at the top of a steep road — the steepest road in the Bay Area, as it happens — makes you used to riding the brakes when heading for the flatlands. Our Fiat 500e gets a ton of regenerative energy this way, usually a couple of extra percent on the battery from one ride down the hill.
But the Lucid Air loves regenerative braking so much, you don't even have to pump the brake. In fact, it's braking for you so hard by default at all times that you actually have to keep your foot on the accelerator when going down hill just as much as you need to do on the flat – which can be a profoundly out-of-control feeling, at first.
This was a taste of the single-pedal driving Lucid Air wants to encourage you to do as much as possible. Single-pedal driving was weird in my Dream test drives, and it was weird in the first few days of this experience too. But the car will brook no compromise, especially not in its basic "Smooth" mode; either you're accelerating or you're braking pretty heavily.
So weird, in fact, that my wife tapped out after that first test ride. Every few years a car literally runs out of control on this hill, smashing into poles or houses; to accelerate down it goes against every instinct of local knowledge.
I'm happy to report I got used to it fast, once I figured out exactly how much of a delicate touch the pedal needs on a downhill. I even started to enjoy this impressive dose of regenerative energy, to the point where I preferred it to the regular driving experience. But this was after a range anxiety experience that made me welcome every single time this car tries to claw energy back from the road.
Check out Part 2, which covers Lucid Air's range and charging.
