Automotive

Monterey Car Week...  It's a great event.  Can't say enough good things about it.  I've been attending the event nearly consecutively for 20 years now, and I remember a time when it was a dignified event and there were no young YouTubers crashing the party and self important social media influencers taking photos with funny faces.  Nowadays, the landscape has changed. 

As a result of the change in clientele, luxury brands that used to have wide open doors to anyone coming to the event, have now closed their doors and hidden themselves in some super private enclave.  The official reason is to provide a higher quality experience for invited guests - the real reason is that they need to get rid of the riff-raff.  Invitation only, invited guests have to buy tickets too!  Ranging from $700 at Lamborghini to get a week-long pass ($300 for a daily pass) to thousands at Ferrari for a week-long pass that does not include any of the cocktail parties in the evening.  And apparently nobody gets comp'd; I called my friends, including one of the most significant Ferrari collectors in the region, even he would have to pay to get in.

The times have changed. 

But.  Lucid is a new brand.  A new electric car brand headquartered in Silicon Valley, California in a small city called Newark.  Newark, California (not to be confused with Newark, New Jersey) is a small city that borders Fremont, California - the town where Tesla has their first factory and is still the only factory producing Model S and Model X vehicles.  Lucid, being the new kid on the block seems to have an event open to all.  How inclusive. 

Lucid premiered their new high performance brand, Sapphire.  Featuring a car that can go from 0-60 miles per hour in under 2 seconds, 0-100 miles per hour in under 4 seconds, and the standing quarter mile in under 8 seconds.  But they didn't let me drive their new high performance model.  I drove their flagship luxury model, The Lucid Air Grand Touring model. 

This blue car is Lucid's new high performance Sapphire brand.  When the brand first launched, they did launch a blue color.  Then they mysteriously backpedaled and removed the blue color from availability.  Now, we know why, they've made their blue color an exclusive option for their Sapphire performance brand and they don't want non performance models to wear this blue color. 

A little background about me and cars.  I like them.  I used to do some amateur driving, mainly in Porsches.  I've worked in the industry in a professional capacity.  I can't turn a wrench, but I can communicate to mechanics and alignment specialists on how I want the race car set up.  And I've had some seat time in various high performance luxury machines over the years.  I used to cover some auto shows for WatchProSite but I can't get to all of them unfortunately. 

First drive impressions (coming from a short drive):

Powertrain:  Two motors offer 819 horsepower but the heavy gas pedal made the car feel lazy and unmotivated. Lucid Air Grand Touring has three settings, even in the sportiest setting the gas pedal was too subdued to my tastes.  Perhaps a more aggressive throttle map is necessary.  Thus, in order to pass a long truck you’d have to floor it, making you worry that you don't have a lot of power in reserve. Basically the car isn’t as eager as 800+ horsepower figure would suggest.  Throttle mapping will hopefully be updated with a more aggressive map.  Nevertheless, when you fully depress the pedal, you have a significant 800+ horsepower at the disposal of your right foot.  This machine does MOVE.  But it moves more like a powerful elephant than an agile cat.  I need to experience this pedal in more scenarios.  Race drivers will notice, this gas pedal is not hinged at the floor (most Mercedes, BMW, and Porsche vehicles have their gas pedals hinged on the floor, race cars even have their brake pedal and clutch pedals sometimes hinged on the floor, the reason for this is that the human foot can more precisely modulate pedal pressure when the fulcrum is hinged on the floor and racing is all about precision).  

Braking: not wanting to be a burden on public roads, I didn't slam on the brakes.  Regeneration seemed good and consistent.  Brakes are likely to be very good.  Lucid uses Akebono brakes, an expensive and high quality brake supplier known in the racing world.  Akebono also supplies Porsche in certain racing and non racing applications - the white caliper on certain Porsche vehicles are usually from Akebono.  I'm expecting a lot of good braking ability from Lucid.

The interior space; was large and spacious. Nice materials.  Many different materials, almost a kaleidoscope of different materials.  Busy layout. Some clutter.  Lots of digital buttons giving it an airplane cockpit vibe.

Infotainment:  User interface looks more complex than Tesla. But fancier with nicer colors and picture backgrounds and faded ombre backgrounds. Seems more fluff than substance.  Some buttons are a bit small (difficult for fat fingers on bumpy roads).  I didn't check if the screens work with gloved hands.  I didn't play with the infotainment enough to get a good sense of the menu layouts.  As a Tesla owner, I was very pleased with the UI/UX until an update was made about a year ago; the update made once easily available things like trip odometers and tire pressures which were on the main screen, buried behind two menu layers!  Bring my trip odometer back to the main screen please! 

Rear Seat Room:  Rear floor still quite high, so knees are in the air and not a lot of thigh support.  But tremendous legroom space.  Rear bench is slightly too flat, but so are most cars in this segment. 

Front Seat Ergonomics: Front seats aren't very bolstered, the seat doesn't hold you in turns.  Good visibility for the driver.  Blind spot is manageable.  I couldn't find a great seating position for myself unfortunately. 

Build quality, was not great. Steering wheel had an annoying creak.  Paint quality looked reasonably good, but looked "soft" judging by all the micro scratches.  The vehicle I test drove had less than a thousand miles and had a lot of very fine scratches, probably from washing.  Soft paint scratches easily, but also polishes easily.  Fit and finish looked good upon initial glance, but still some flaws upon closer inspection.

Car is pleasant and not as noisy as Tesla. But the motor has a higher pitched wine that's also louder than Tesla. Higher pitched sound makes it more irritating.  Suggestion is to drown it out using the radio - radio system is the first Dolby Atmos system in a car.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to test the radio.

Suspension was a little softer than expected. Made the chassis feel a little difficult to feel. Car definitely didn’t feel sporty in suspension.  The soft suspension made the body rigidity difficult to assess.  Considering that there are former Lotus engineers at Lucid, I am hoping that the suspension will be very impressive with a longer test drive.  Suspension is supposed to have adaptive damping.  It's a coil suspension (not an air suspension). 

Steering was accurate, somewhat tight (could be tighter), but over assisted (too light feeling).  Ratio could be a little faster.  No major complaints.  But not a lot of praise.  As mentioned before, the steering wheel and column produced a creak noise.   

Overall. Car was fast. But you really had to get on the pedal to communicate that to the car. Driving dynamics are not looking especially good. Passenger comfort is fairly good.  Lucid is starting to look like a Lexus. Lexus being a fast powerful car but tuned more for comfort rather than performance.  At $154,000 US Dollars, it's an expensive car.  But it claims it can do 516 miles of range per full charge.  If one is considering an electric car in this bodystyle and price range, one should definitely take a look at a Lucid!  I'm hoping to get a little more seat time in this machine in the near future! 

Full disclosure: I am a Lucid stockholder and I am hoping the company does well!  I'm also expecting great things from this company! 

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