The Lucid Air Is a Tesla-Rivaling Luxury Performance Sedan

this is a lucid air and it's a new electric car although that's understating it a bit because this is pretty impressive it has around a thousand horsepower it'll do 0-60 in 2.4 seconds and it'll go more than 500 miles on a single charge which is a huge deal and today i'm going to review it [Music] before i get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era now with free listings you can list your car for free and auction it on cars and bids and we've had some great sales recently including this square body chevy suburban which brought over twenty thousand dollars this mercedes g wagon which sold for just under a hundred and sixty thousand dollars and this fantastic ram trx which sold for just over ninety thousand dollars if you're looking to buy or sell a cool car from the modern era the 1980s and up cars and bids is the place to do it with a great selection and daily auctions at carsandbids.com so let's talk lucid air this is a luxury sedan and i'm reviewing the dream edition which is the top version of this car with a sticker price of around a hundred and seventy thousand dollars that's big money but this car has some amazing numbers like i said supercar performance and a range of 520 miles that beats out even the longest range tesla model s by over a hundred miles and there are more affordable versions coming too a base model lucid air will come out soon with a starting price of around 77 000 but even that has about 500 horsepower and gets more than 400 miles of range which is an impressive number now lower level lucid air models are rear-wheel drive while upper trim versions are all-wheel drive and lucid is headquartered here in california with the cars built in arizona so what we have here is a major tesla rival and a seriously appealing electric car at least on paper today i'm going to review this car and find out what it's like in person first i'll take you on a thorough tour of the lucid air and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'll get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a dug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the lucid air with getting in now you walk up to this car you can unlock it with a smartphone app of course that's pretty common with cars like this but there's also a key and it is cool look at this thing it's almost like a blade or a boomerang and on the front it merely says lucid nothing else now you flip it over and you can see three little diagrams there's a lock with one dot underneath and then an unlock with two dots underneath and then like a trunk open and a line underneath that's there to tell you in the simplest terms possible how to use the key fob if you press the top of it once it will lock hence one dot under the lock button if you press the top of it twice it will unlock hence two dots under unlock and if you hold it down that will open the front trunk hence the line symbolizing holding it down under the trunk that is pretty cool a very minimalist key and kind of a neat look now one other cool key that this car offers is this one which almost looks like a hotel room key it's credit card sized and you can put it in a purse or wallet and just kind of store it there that way if you're using your phone as the key like most people will be and your phone dies or you lose it you still have this backup key you're just carrying along with all of your credit cards and your id which is a neat idea but anyway you unlock the lucid air and you can see the door handles pop out from the doors normally they're sort of flush with the doors for a cool look and better arrow but when the doors are unlocked they pop out you reach under pull on the door handle and you can open up the door and climb inside when you get in here you are greeted by a fairly simple modern looking two-tone interior with some very interesting quirks and features so let's go through them starting with probably the biggest quirk that you notice when you first climb in and that would be the glass the windshield is one uninterrupted piece going from the top of the hood like a normal car all the way over your head and above the seats in front one big piece of glass here tesla does something similar to this but not as large of a panel this really has the effect of making it seem like a massive open air feel in this interior it is quite interesting and a little bit unorthodox when you climb inside now unfortunately you can see the sun visors are stuck on this panel just like a normal car sun visor i asked and they said that's a regulatory thing you gotta have those visors there so they couldn't take it away so even though you have this futuristic glass panel you still have your normal sun visors kind of screwing up this full glass sheet look now this glass above you can't be closed there's no like shade over it so i asked about heat and lucid says it's not a problem it's heavily tinted there's uv protection and there's a metallic coating on the outside that really prevents sun from getting in and making it too hot or too bright in this interior but it does feel very open and airy in here with this glass but anyway the next thing you notice when you get in this car is there are a lot of screens in here now most of the screens are mounted on this sort of floating pod that sits above the dashboard you can see it really is floating it only mounts in this spot right above the steering wheel otherwise it's sort of just hanging there over the dashboard which is kind of a cool look this sort of floating screen design now this floating pod is really made up of three separate screens to the left you have one screen that just has basic vehicle functions and controls what would normally be buttons and regular cars is on this screen so like a lock and unlock button your headlight controls your wiper controls defroster that sort of thing just a fairly simple pad of buttons off to your left now directly in front of you on this floating screen you have your gauge cluster which gives the basics that you would expect when you're driving along gives you your speed obviously and it shows your current charge percentage and like a trip odometer and it gives you like warning lights your headlights your parking brake lights shows you which gear you're in your odometer that kind of thing all the usual stuff you'd expect to see from a gauge cluster more interesting are the screens in the center and that would be the one on the right part of this floating screen above the dashboard and this large center screen in the center control stack they're especially interesting because they work together let me show you what i mean let's say you want to change the radio station you pull up the radio tab here in this upper screen and you have a few different options but let's say you want to look through more options or go see spotify or additional radio presets well you can just slide this display down and then it appears in larger form on this center screen take another look at that i have the display right here i slide it down and now there's a larger version of this display with more information in the center screen the thinking here is the upper screen is more for the driver it's smaller tilted towards the driver and more in their line of sight but if the passenger wants to adjust something that's on the driver's screen it can be brought down to the center screen that's easier for both front occupants to reach and that is incredibly cool and of course once you're done making this selection you can slide up and send it right back to the upper screen and clear the lower screen out to do other stuff down here that's pretty cool another good example of these screens working together you go to navigation and you can enter a destination in the lower screen but actually have it navigate you in the upper screen that way the driver sees the navigation on the screen turn towards the driver but the passenger is the one who can input the destination on the lower screen it's really interesting and futuristic feel but anyway next up i want to move on to all of the functions in the lower screen and it's worth noting here that while the two screens do work together generally speaking the upper screen is reserved for stuff you're going to want to change more frequently like the navigation or the radio or the phone and the lower screen has controls that you might not use quite as often for instance the lower screen allows you to change the position of the steering wheel you tap here and then you just use the screen to adjust where the steering wheel is up down in telescope same deal with the mirrors you tap the mirror and then you can select the mirror and choose exactly how you want it adjusted in your lower screen this screen also allows you to choose between drive modes you can see smooth sort of the default and then also swift and sprint so sort of a normal sport and sport plus but that's how they've named it here next up some other controls in this lower screen one you can press seats and you can see seat controls here don't worry all of your seat controls are not stuck in this screen you still have regular basic seat controls on the side of the seat where you would find them in a normal car but if you want to change stuff like your thigh support or your backrest width those types of adjustments can be done in the screen or you have a lot more little adjustments to tailor the seats to exactly what you want next you have a tab in here for massage you can turn on your massaging seats and you can see there are many different massaging options in here you also have a tab for themes and that adjusts your lighting color in the interior and you can move this little wheel to kind of brighten or dim the lights depending on how much you want to see them and you can select between these various different themes that correspond each to individual colors there's a lot of different places where ambient lighting is seen in this interior when you turn on the themes but my very favorite is this line right above the seats this narrow little strip of light the color here can be changed it really does help set the mood directly above you in the center the only thing breaking up that giant pane of glass that's going over you do other things worth noting you can also use this center screen to open stuff go to openings and you can open up the front trunk here or the rear cargo area the charge port that kind of thing can all be done in your center screen which is nice next up another nice function of the center screen it shows you your camera system and you can see it is quite advanced i've spent a lot of time in electric cars recently rivie and tesla this is the best ev camera system high quality display and you can scroll all the way around the car as you can see this great 3d camera system and one cool feature you can have a reversing camera on the upper screen on the dashboard but then have this 3d camera live at the same time on the lower screen which is pretty cool you can see both things at once most cars make you choose one interesting thing about this 3d camera you can zoom in and actually get into the interior i'm not exactly sure why or if anyone would really want to do that but it is a strange possibility in the lucid air and next up another interesting item in the center screen the climate controls you press this little fan icon on the bottom and it brings up your climate controls and you can adjust various items in here the temperature the fan speed where the air comes out all that sort of stuff except you don't have to use the screen if you don't want to that's because this car rather controversially has a few buttons in this interior most of these futuristic electric cars have gotten rid of buttons entirely but not the lucid air and directly above the center screen you can see a few switches to adjust temperature and to adjust fan speed on both sides in front you also have a little wheel here to adjust volume this is stereo volume right in the center you can move this up or down and this changes your stereo volume again this is a pretty daring decision because most cars like this have ditched buttons entirely that's the old school the future is screens but not the lucid air there are still a few buttons in here i suspect they did this to try to ease the transition for people who are coming out of a more traditional car maybe a combustion engine car and they don't necessarily want to go screens for everything and give up buttons for some of the more obvious and easy controls including adjusting the climate control and another good example of this is the climate vents which you can move like normal you use this little dial in the center to move it left or right or you can twist it to close or open the climate vents this is kind of an old thing by the standard of these futuristic electric cars most of them are hiding their climate vents entirely and when you can adjust them it's through the screen not in the lucid air again a more traditional setup probably to try to make people feel more comfortable if they're coming out of a more normal vehicle and it's the same deal on the steering wheel you have some physical hard controls although in this car they're a little bit unorthodox on the left side of the steering wheel you have the controls for this car's cruise control system which is called dream drive and the buttons on the bottom are fairly straightforward the dial on the top is a little weird you can see it kind of juts out that adjusts your following distance from the car in front of you when you're using the dream drive system over on the right these controls are for audio you can see next track previous track a microphone and a little dial that adjusts your volume control from the steering wheel which is kind of interesting some strange controls and next up behind the steering wheel you have two stalks coming off which are fairly standard on the right you have your gear selector to go into reverse noise to drive park etc on the left you have your turn signal stock although i noticed one little annoyance here at the end of the turn signal stock you press to turn on the wipers and so if you're going to put on your turn signal at just the right angle you can catch that and the wipers go on not exactly ideal a little bit of a quibble but anyway next up i want to move on to the center of this interior where there are more interesting quirks one is back in the center screen if you touch and hold down the very base of the center screen it goes away you can see it automatically retracts into the car and provides you with a hidden storage compartment you wouldn't know about otherwise and if you want the screen to come back you just tap the bottom again on the little exposed part and it will extend back into its normal place and the storage compartment is now covered up which is kind of cool now the center armrest here you can lift up and reveal a storage compartment which is pretty standard and on the top of that storage compartment you have this little plastic tray for smaller items and you can see there's a bear printed in it which is kind of strange that bear is sort of an unofficial mascot for this car and for lucid in general it's modeled after the bear on the california flag where lucid is headquartered and lucid told me there are many bears hidden throughout this car the designer of the car told me around a dozen but i don't remember which is the worst thing to say to me someone who's obsessed with little details because then i started looking for bears and i found quite a few you can see bears in the backs of the front seats this little metal piece driver and passenger there's a couple more and you can also see a bear right here at the top of the instrument panel looking in from the windshield a little hidden bear easter egg maybe my favorite use of the bear though is when you go into launch control the bear appears in your gauge cluster screen with a flag letting you know that launch control is ready and has been initialized and that is a really cool touch and a nice little easter egg more on launch control later when i drive this car but those are your bears and i'm probably missing some there's probably more hidden throughout this interior which is kind of a cool little thought but anyway back to the center console one rather interesting quirk here you can see the center console lid is this nice piece of light wood looks good feels good and you can roll it back when you do that i'm not exactly sure where it goes it's almost like a magic trick because it isn't like ribbed where there are little sections to make it clear that it rolls up it just sort of disappears one large flat panel just gone poof which is obviously kind of an interesting quirk but anyway below this magic panel you can see some cool stuff in here a couple of wireless cell phone chargers which are obviously going to come in handy and this is also where your cup holders are located underneath your magic panel in the center and next up a few other quirky interior details one is the door handle to get out you can see on the door panel this black piece that operates like a trigger you pull it back and that pops the door open which is a really cool touch take another look you pull on it like a trigger and that opens the door definitely an unorthodox way to think about door opening but i must say that i like it also worth noting in this interior on the ceiling in the center is this little alien looking symbol three lines with dots at the end there's been some speculation about what that is and i can confirm it's a microphone it's the interior cabin microphone from bluetooth that's all it is it does have kind of an interesting look and there's another one behind the rear view mirror in the front but it's not some weird crazy thing it's just a microphone and finally before i move on from the front of the lucid air i want to talk over interior materials very nice in here very luxurious although it's not quite on the standard the very top luxury sedans the bmw 7 series the mercedes s-class generally have a more luxurious use of material softer leather nicer trim aluminum just a little bit nicer now the lucid air makes up for that in other ways performance obviously technology the electric range that sort of thing so there are some trade-offs but in terms of overall interior quality very nice in here very nice materials but not quite a mercedes-benz s-class or an audi a8 sort of the standard bearers of luxury in this segment but next up we move on to the back seat where you can see a major advantage that the lucid air has over some of these established rivals and that would be interior room check this out the lucid air is only as long as a bmw 5 series but the interior space is longer than in a mercedes s-class so there is an enormous amount of room back here you have mercedes s-class levels of interior space i can lie down and stretch out and you just can't do that in a 5-series it's quite impressive and the reason for that is packaging ultimately an electric car doesn't have a giant engine up front and it just doesn't need to devote that much overall space to powertrain and lucid has made some other advancements in its powertrain system to make them even smaller and maximize interior room and you can really tell that when you're sitting back here there's just a lot of space also worth noting in terms of interior space this is the dream edition model the top trim level with the biggest battery possible but if you get a lower level model with a smaller battery you actually get more legroom more foot room in the back you can see here in the dream edition a flat floor because the bottom of this car is all battery but they've designed this car so that when you get the small battery the part that is removed is right under the floor you can see it here there's actually more depth to the floor and thus more room for your feet and your legs so if you get the small battery you do get a benefit in even more rear seat room which is a cool idea but anyway other interesting quirks of the rear seat in this car for one when you climb inside once again a giant glass panel overhead unfortunately it cannot connect to the front glass panel you can't just have one massive piece of glass because this bar here in the center is very important one for structural rigidity but also lucid told me because there's like antennas in here at the top of the car which makes sense and so you have big glass panels but not just one huge one unfortunately other interesting items in the rear seat a few of them in the center console area for one you get a little storage compartment here you pull on this latch pop it open you can stick stuff in there and mount it on the outside of the storage compartment you can see a couple of charge points for devices which is nice you also have a screen back here which you can use to put up the sun shade or put it back down you just tap this and the sunshade in back goes up or down which is nice and you can control the rear seat climate controls back here you can change the temperature of the fan speed that sort of thing you can also use this center screen to turn on the heated seats which is kind of weird because you have heated seat buttons right next to the screen so you can turn on the seat there and then turn it off an inch away that seems a little repetitive and strange but you do have a center heated seat control integrated in the screen which you don't have outside of it so it's useful for that finally one other rather interesting rear seat quirk the rear seats are a different color from the front seats you can see the front seats are darker this like dark gray the rear seats are this lighter color you don't often see mismatched front and rear seats but there's a reason for it lucid told me they think that the front area is supposed to be more focused more like drivery and so you have materials like alcantara and the darker seats to give it sort of a sportier vibe back here it's intended to be more of a lounge and so you have a lighter more relaxing color and more leather back here instead of alcantara to kind of give it a lounge feel which is an interesting thing the distinction between the front and rear in a car and next up i'm going to move outside the lucid air where frankly there are probably even more quirks than on the inside and i'm going to start with the door sill now front and rear both has a similar door sill it says lucid in the center and then dream edition reminding you that you are getting into the very best version of this car over on the right you have a little number this one says number 109 that's because these dream edition models are limited production lucid says they're only making 520 for north america so they're rare and this is one of the rare ones now over to the left in the door sills probably most unusual part it says santa monica california and gives coordinates that's because this car has the santa monica interior each of lucid's interiors are named after a specific spot in california at a specific time so this one is intended to correspond to santa monica at these exact coordinates early in the morning when everything's kind of gray and they've taken those colors and put them in this interior all of the other interiors also have specific coordinates and places and times that they're matched to california that explains why they got the colors that they did and this is the santa monica but amazingly perhaps that isn't the quirkiest thing on the outside of this car next i want to talk about the general design and style of this car lucen says i want to kind of reinvent the sedan and i have to say it looks like that it looks like a futuristic concept on what a sedan would be certainly distinctive and i kind of like it frankly i think it looks really really nice there are a few little details i maybe would like to change here and there but overall a beautiful shape and kind of a gorgeous car which you can't really say about most electric vehicles but i think you can say it about this one very unique and frankly very attractive this color by the way should be noted is only offered on the dream edition model the top trim level it's called eureka gold but if you don't like it you can also get black or white on the dream edition and several other colors on the other models speaking of colors this silver painted piece is very distinctive going above the entire passenger compartment it's on all the lucid airs and they said they wanted it to be silver in order to kind of accentuate the size of this passenger compartment just how large it is and making it silver and kind of setting it off certainly has that effect it's another distinguishing look on the outside for the lucid air compared to most other vehicles now at the base of this silver trim in the back you can see it says air which is of course the name of this car and it also says the trim level that you've chosen so this one says dream edition you can see this touring model says touring your trim level is printed on this little panel at the back of the silver trim and next up since we're talking unusual exterior details let's come around to the back and let's talk tail light you have this massive tail light going around the entire rear of the car and it's huge one unbroken piece of tail light which is very different from most cars that have little separations and cuts for trunk openings not here lucid tells me this is they think the largest single panel tail light in the business and when you look into it it's kind of cool a little difficult to see from directly behind but if you kind of get down you can see these thin strips of taillight going across the entire thing adding kind of a cool effect to the whole light and speaking of cool effects one interesting item with this tail light it's very thin as you can see that's especially well demonstrated with the turn signal on you can see it here sweeping across the rear just this little thin line of turn signal doesn't have to be massive and blocky anymore that's the magic of leds and their brightness now next up something i hadn't realized this car isn't a hatchback despite the kind of teardrop shape and this far back rear window this is a regular trunk back here you can see i pop it open and it is indeed a normal trunk although to be honest it's not exactly normal for one thing it has a massively wide opening as you can see stretching basically the entire width of the car so you can stick wide items in here if you want that's a little unorthodox although it helps to compensate for the fact that this trunk isn't really all that huge as you can see it's not incredibly deep they wanted to save that space for the passenger compartment but there is more space in here than you think because this little carpeted panel at the bottom you can lift it up and you see a whole other compartment quite large where you can stick stuff if you want to or where you can keep it separate from anything else you might have in the trunk now you also have another little compartment over on the side with the same effect you lift up this piece of the floor and you have more storage down here for smaller items if you don't want them rolling around over on the other side of the trunk you can see in that same area this bag contains the charging cables it is perfectly sized in order to fit into this little area in the trunk so it looks good and so it's not rolling around while you're driving it has a little home but probably the most distinctive item in the trunk of this car is the brake lights there are brake lights in the trunk as you can see they're on right now kind of strange that is regulatory because you put the trunk up in this car the government has a regulation saying that brake lights cannot be on a piece of movable body work well this car's brake lights are so there has to be a second set that turns on when the trunk is up and you can see these do that that way if you're hauling some giant load of lumber with your trunk up you still have visible brake lights and turn signals you can see it does include the turn signals put them on with the trunk up and these little brake lights become turn signals they have to by regulation but when you close the trunk these little auxiliary brake lights are superseded by the regular brake lights which take effect again now if you're like me you're probably wondering why why is this a trunk and not a hatchback all these other electric cars are hatchbacks the tesla model s the mercedes-benz eqs but this has a trunk i asked lucid and they told me there are a few reasons having to do with luxury and with performance for luxury it's all about sounds if you have the passenger compartment open to the cargo area you just get more rattling and it's just harder to make an enclosed area that's quiet like you can get with a sedan as for performance it turns out that this little like bar here at the base of the windshield going across the car is really important for rigidity it helps the car feel tighter and thus steer and handle a little bit better and lucid just decided it was worth the trade-off to go with a trunk and add those benefits to luxury and handling rather than have a hatchback and next up we move on to another distinctive item outside this time on the side of the car and that would be the wheels you can see they have this very flat profile obviously for aerodynamics to allow air to pass right over them but if you don't like it these black panels come off these black plastic panels can be removed separately of the wheel if you think that makes it look better obviously keeping them in place will improve your aerodynamics and thus your range but you can pull them off if you want to if you prefer the wheel design that way very strange never seen that before also another item worth noting on the side of the car roof racks there's a giant glass panel over the whole thing but you can still mount roof racks these little panels will pop out and lucid will sell an accessory roof rack that allows you to put skis or bikes or whatever you want on the top of the car even in spite of that giant glass panel the charge port is also on the side of the car on the driver's side in front as you can see and open it it's pretty easy just tap and it opens right up and that's where you charge the car when you want to close it just sort of press it a little bit from the bottom and it closes right up of course you can also open or close the charge port using various other controls in the car on your phone whatever or you can just tap it if you want and finally we move on to the front of the lucid air there is a lot more to cover up here one is obviously lighting you can see just like in back a light bar going across the entire front and a little strip of light which looks very cool and the brand name is lit up here as well lucid lighting up to tell you exactly what this car is very futuristic and very distinctive also notable with lighting up here the turn signals you can see are vertical at the sides of the front bumper sort of perpendicular to the light bar going across the front which is kind of an interesting touch now also interesting in this vicinity around the turn signals you can see there's a little inlet here for air air is channeled through here behind the turn signal and it comes out at the back of the bumper in front of the wheel well and that helps this car's aerodynamics that particular air channel not that uncommon for a lot of cars but the lucid air also has another rather unusual one air comes in directly above the headlights here and it goes out in this opening in the hood air passes directly through this spot above the headlights through the hood and out on the top again improving the airflow and aerodynamics around this car a rather unusual thing now the other cool item this car has up front is as you can see a front trunk there's no giant combustion engine here to take up space so they can use some of this space for storage and it works pretty well this is a fairly large front trunk wide flat and you can get more stuff in here lift up this leather handle at the base of the trunk and there's a larger compartment underneath where you can stick even more items into your front trunk this is certainly one of the largest front trunks among electric vehicles that are starting to adapt these frunks now to open the front trunk there are several ways you can do it on your phone with the app or there's some controls in the car or on the key fob you just hold it down the front trunk opens like i had mentioned before and that's how you get to this spot to close the front trunk same deal you can do it on the app you can do it in the car you can hold down the button on the key fob or there's a little front closer button mounted inside here you can press that and then it closes right up and then you can walk away making this frunk so easy to access in so many different ways is a big deal because it makes it more usable the ford mustang mock e you got to go into the driver footwell and pull a latch like an old school hood release nobody's really going to do that but integrate it into your app or on the key fob makes it pretty easy to get in here and store stuff and so that's a thorough tour of the quirks and features of the lucid air now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the lucid air i remember the first time i heard about this car some of the first times i thought it was kind of vaporware i don't really care whatever but then i started hearing some numbers and i started seeing some images and your mind starts to change and then over the last few months i'm like i really have to review this thing and obviously i wanted to do it before the end of the year so we could fit it in with doug sember so first impression sitting in this car uh i love i love this windshield situation i have no clue what the replacement glass cost situation's gonna be like it obviously adds some complexity to it but i love the feel of this windshield you're sitting here and it goes all the way over you i mean it's unbelievable almost how airy and open it feels which maybe is appropriate given the car's name but it's really really crazy to just it's like you're the world is above you i don't know how to describe it it's very different from what you're used to seeing in normal cars but anyway another thing that you notice inside this car that's interesting and kind of surprising to me is well there's a few things it's comfortable this is certainly a luxury car this is a very expensive car that i'm sitting in and it's the top version there's going to be less expensive versions but you're paying a lot of money for this car 170 000 plus it's big money and so you obviously have a lot of expectations performance levels one range you get all that stuff technology but at this price point you're also going to want like a seriously nice luxury car and i'm surprised at just how much it is like that i love tesla i love the model s i think it's a fantastic car i really do but it's not the most luxurious vehicle now it's not this expensive this car is more expensive than that but if you're gonna pay a lot more than tesla you're gonna want more luxury and the feel of luxury and this car delivers that surprisingly for one thing there's not a lot of noise sitting in this car associated with this car i'm especially surprised by tire noise i'm not hearing all that much tire noise and i say that's surprising because when you're in an electric car there's no engine noise to kind of drown out some of the other sounds that are going on around you and so it's a little usually you hear more tire noise and more wind noise in electric cars i don't really feel that here which is which is important for a vehicle that's really positioning itself at kind of the high end of the luxury car realm you also do have a very comfortable ride also a little bit surprising given the size of the wheels frankly and you have a very solid feel to this car um similar to getting onto the level of mercedes s-class that's kind of the level i think that they're sort of thinking about for this car and you do sort of have that feel i do feel like the s-class has still more of kind of a bank vault solidity to it which is something that i generally find a little bit more internal combustion engine cars compared to electric cars generally but this is still a very solid feeling car okay so obviously you know i'm sitting this car it's got 1100 horsepower or whatever you know you want to try it out so holy crap wow okay well that's pretty serious uh wow that was actually pretty amazing you know i've been in a lot of these electric cars recently that have done similar things to that and yet that was kind of surprising um you know i just recently drove the river in the eqs the plaid the rimeknivera they're all pretty insane but one thing that's cool here is this car feels like such a luxury car that you really don't expect it you already don't expect it with those other cars but you really don't expect it here because you're cruising along in a more sealed uh luxurious environment than any of those rivals you really do i mean eqs probably is a little bit more luxurious than this in terms of feel but it's nowhere near this fast not even close now i've got a little on ramp here that i'm gonna try the acceleration yet again going 20 30 40 50. wow oh my god wow this car is incredibly fast but i am taken by the fact now i'm sitting on the freeway and it feels very stable and i think one cool thing that this car one differentiator it's going to have is a sort of a solid stable feel and that performance that's something that riven doesn't quite offer it's certainly something that tesla doesn't quite offer now something else i'm a little surprised by just going through a little bit of cornering here the steering is pretty strong for one thing it's a lot more precise than i would expect in a vehicle like this it's not sports car precision but you you're not going to get that i mean the car is heavy and it's a big city and they're not really looking for that but it does steer quickly the steering is surprisingly quick definitely feels quicker than an s-class in terms of stealing even an amg s-class it has more of a kind of sporty feel to it then you consider the fact that this car has a 500 plus mile range and that to me is one of the really really huge benefits here i drive across the country very frequently and you never see electric cars on the road out there it's annoying to have to stop that often once you get the range to start to get to a point of 500 600 miles you can't really make any more excuses oh here's why i don't have an electric car that's a number that most rational people are going to be kind of maxing out or charging once or in a full day of driving that seems fairly reasonable i'm going to try launch control on this car and we'll just see what it's like whoa oh my god oh my god wow that is insane this car is very very fast when you're just cruising around but doing launch control is a whole other world of insane wow that was wild now probably takes like 10 miles of range or something just to do that but it is worth it periodically i cannot believe that that feels as fast as the fastest anything i've reviewed i've done tycon turbo s that was insane i did plaid honestly i mean plat is faster we know that based on the times but this feels just as quick as planned um and it's two point something second zero to sixty doesn't really matter anyway it stood all feels insane your drawback here is price but the thing about it is one there's gonna be less expensive versions more affordable and um this car delivers a lot for the price honestly you're getting super car levels of acceleration modern tech you have 500 plus miles of range it kind of is an amazing all-around ev and i think a great argument could be made and it probably objectively is the best all-around ev but you're paying an enormous amount for for it that's just kind of the world you're going to be living in if you want everything and that's always been true in cars and all other goods and i think it's a great vehicle with a lot of great promise and it really does feel like a fantastic electric car and so that's the lucid air lucid is a startup brand that not many people have ever heard of but frankly that was tesla 10 years ago and this car has some amazing promise there's fantastic technology beautiful styling incredible range great luxury there really is a lot to love here and now it's time to give the lucid air a dug score and the doug score is here 73 out of 100 which places the lucid air among the very best cars i've ever reviewed it's tied with the tesla model s plaid and a point ahead of the porsche tycon turbo s interestingly though the three cars are quite different the ticon is more of a performance car the lucid is more of a luxury car and the plaid is sort of in between the ticon is the most engaging to drive in this crew while the lucid is certainly the nicest but the plaid is probably the best value for the next few years people are going to ask me which of these they should get and the answer is that it depends what you want if you want a luxury get the lucid and if you want driving excitement get the ticon the plaid is sort of a neat middle ground if you can't decide all three give me hope that the future of electric cars is far more exciting than it once seemed [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,656,382

Keywords: lucid air, lucid air review, lucid, lucid review, lucid air dream edition, 2022 lucid air, 2021 lucid air, 2023 lucid air, lucid car, lucid car review, 2022 lucid air review, 2021 lucid air review, 2023 lucid air review, lucid air dream edition review

Id: tRUvz1QPueA

Length: 39min 40sec (2380 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Deepinthefryer]

Every time I see the lucid side profile I think Citroen DS. Am I crazy?

[u/godmin]

Physical buttons, 500+ miles of range, more backseat room than an s-class, rear window peasant blockers, 0-60 in 2.4s, what more could you want?

Not sure how I feel about the exterior styling, sorta looks like what people in the 90s thought cars would look like in 2050

[u/CoyotePuncher]

It upsets me that "being able to move the air vents without a screen" has become something to get excited over.

[u/Burping_Dragon_]

How does everyone feel about this car? Seems the only complaint I see is the pretty big price tag. You think this car can "rival" Tesla?

[u/cadmiumredlight]

Can't imagine what a windshield replacement is going to cost on this thing.

[u/OzmodiarTheGreat]

Literally last night I was searching his channel for something about Lucid. I’m really glad that there’s some real competition in the EV space in a lot market segments.

[u/pryan886]

Someone had fun making the 360 camera that can zoom into the interior. This actually kinda feels like a mistake since there is some clipping as you go through the door. I assume the modeled the interior so you could see it through the windows, but didn’t really intend for you to be able to zoom “inside”.

[u/Alph_A__]

Looks interesting, range seems like the biggest thing to me. I wonder how well this will compete with the bigger brand name of Tesla.

Also, I'm interested in how these will depreciate. I know a lot of people don't care much for Shmee, but I watched his long-term review of the Taycan and the depreciation of electric cars being so much greater than Porsche's petrol products was interesting to see.

[u/Zudop]

The base version of this car is honestly super impressive. 406 miles of range, can charge 300 miles in 20 minutes, and starts at $77k.

Always worrying to spend that kind of money on a start up brand though. Based on the car Doug reviewed the build quality looks pretty decent but Lucid isn’t gonna give Doug and other reviewers a crappy one to look at.

Personally I’m still a little too far from getting an electric car as the lack of charge locations is worrying but hopefully once the US regulates a standard charge port and everyone can use Tesla systems as well as the others this will improve. If I can get an Electric car with 400+ miles of range, sub 4s 0-60, and the ability to charge it up whenever I need to without worry, I’ll buy one. This car is super close to that which bodes well for the industry