Lucid Air: How to One-up Tesla!

love me [Music] so there are a lot of different ways to enter the electric car market with your first try from the established manufacturers and from the startups so like Ford’s first mainstream EV was a sedan and then Tesla’s first one was actually a sports car but then rivian’s first one was a pickup truck and so that’s why I find these so interesting so I’ve already started to have a lot of fun with these different high-tech cars over on the new autofocus Channel shot exclusively on smartphones link with a like button of course but that is why Lucid has been so interesting to me because it seems to me that their strategy at least from the outside looking in is to just one-up Tesla at everything that they possibly can so okay this is Tesla’s Flagship the model S and this is lucid’s air Grand Tour I’m a capera but if you just listen to the basics on paper right the Lucid has much much more range 446 miles on a single charge from this air GT performance it has faster charging 350 kilowatts Max it has a thousand plus horsepower it’s got stickier tires it’s more luxurious inside got my attention [Music] so okay Tesla’s Interiors were never really anything to write home about but I can say that this is a they did a really good job this interior from Lucid one UPS pretty much everything about Tesla’s interior there are better materials everywhere with leather on things that you touch the Alcantara headliner there’s a little bit of dry wood trim and overall fit and finish of everything in here is excellent it is a quieter inside cabin both while sitting and while driving and the seats are all better with much more adjustment there’s multi-zone Heating and Cooling that turns on and is effective super fast I noticed and they even have several massage programs which I never really use in any car but every time I see it you know you just get the feeling that it’s a little bit extra luxurious and then the back seat experience is way better so just as a reminder the backseat of a Model S is pretty good right I have a 6’3 driving position and then another 6’3 passenger and my leg room’s all right headroom’s pretty good from the glass roof some decent quality materials around me and then in the middle I have a wireless charger a cup holder and a screen to control the air conditioning but this is lucid’s standard backseat first of all the door now opens fully 90 degrees low-key a really nice feature but then there’s just dramatically more legroom and space because they opted for a normal trunk instead of a hatchback so they’ve moved in the same wheelbase as a Tesla this seat way further backs now I have more space I have dedicated HVAC controls there’s no wireless charger in the middle but there is a cup holder and a screen for the air conditioning and some more storage but it’s just much more luxurious there is Storage in the back of the seats there is access to the trunk in between the two seats if you take down that armrest there’s also an option in this car for you to take a little bit of battery out of the floor for a little bit more footwell room plus you can’t forget about those executive seat options from the Prototype I tested five whole years ago but wait there is more I’ve been living this car for about a week now and I there’s just so many things to it first of all the sound system is actually incredible it has 21 speakers and they support you know Spotify and things like that but also tidal Hi-Fi in the UI and I swear I came home from a drive and I just sat and listened to the Dolby Atmos speakers for a while and it just sounds so good incredibly immersive there’s also a better steering wheel in here with stocks and real buttons and I think these knobs are a great idea they’re plastic but there’s no creaking or give to them and they work great for selecting things or scrolling I like the wheel there’s also a more impressive windshield that curves up over the driver’s head if you’re into that with some pretty sick ambient lighting strips through the middle that glows softly at night the tint in the roof is really good it also just kind of acts like a normal roof line but you can see things through it and there are better HVAC controls in this car thanks to real buttons and that knob in the middle is just a big volume knob but the center console storage is really unique it includes this this whole screen that tilts back and reveals some hidden storage space behind it where you could keep some sunglasses or a mask or whatever I don’t know but probably most impressively the Lucid has a much larger powered opening and closing front that’s thanks to this wider shape and then the smaller overall Motors in the front so this is a massive and very useful front trunk that I’m tempted to use way more than the rear trunk itself and then there is the software so it would be really hard to one-up Tesla software considering that’s like the most impressive part of their car but lucid’s gonna try and so they don’t support Android auto or apple carplay just like Tesla they’ve built their own UI and it’s pretty bold and it has to be really good I would say it is yeah it’s pretty good so you’ve got two screens here this big one behind the wheel with a touchscreen sensitive area on either side and this second one down in between the seats and the layout here is smart they actually give you a front opening instead of a trunk opening which makes me want to use it more but generally the UI in here is intuitive and fairly fast not necessarily smooth all the time as far as frame rates but it’s fast but this is by the way the 2.0 version of the software they had a bunch of 1.x versions that were much slower this version is more well laid out than before and faster than before and there’s lots of useful features like it’s got this top down view in here for parking that Tesla still for some reason doesn’t provide but it has this and a 360 surround version that shows the car you’re driving and the environment around it from various angles and it actually matches your spec here unlike Porsches but you know there are definitely some quirks too the weirdest part to me is that you can’t see music and maps at the same time at least I haven’t been able to figure out how if I want music up here I hit music but then it also adds music on the bottom screen but if I want want maps on the top screen I hit Maps but then it switches the bottom screen to Maps too so I want music one place Maps the other place but the nice thing is it’s just software and software is one of those things that can improve over time and this is one of those cars that’s actually gotten meaningful software updates over time which is great to see but there’s one other thing that this car does really well and that is Drive [Music] so something I’ve realized that is a little underrated and doesn’t get talked about enough in cars is Cars that have like multiple personalities plural a personality is nice but being able to switch between being a sporty car and being a luxurious chill car is nice so we can’t ignore the fact this is a big sedan so there are three personalities Drive modes in the settings here smooth Swift and Sprint so smooth is great when you have passengers you know it’s got the gentlest acceleration curve and regen the lightest steering and the softest suspension potholes aren’t a huge problem it still does have 21 inch wheels so it’s not the smoothest but I find that the regen and one pedal driving calibration on the Lucid is great you almost never have to touch the friction brakes if you don’t want to I do think if this had 19-inch Wheels it would make a bigger difference to the ride quality than just the suspension setting here but this is about as good as you can do with the 21s so as you get sportier everything gets a little bit lower a little bit heavier a little bit firmer if you go all the way to Sprint that is the car’s lowest most responsive and firmest setting so now I’m going to feel all the bumps but that’s what you want when it’s feeling more like a sports car now it’s not a sports car right you can’t exactly mask this car’s 5 000 plus pounds of weight but it does I will say it feels lighter than it actually is it has this level of mechanical grip it’s not Arrow it’s just this the big tires and the mechanical grip that gives you a confidence in an all-wheel drive car this is really confidence inspiring car to drive oh and then it happens to have a thousand horsepower so yeah I will say though versatile car legitimately three different personalities for a car that costs this much money I would want to be able to decouple the different modes and things that come with changing between Sprint and Swift and smooth so like I for example would really like to have the Swift acceleration but the smoother suspension but you can’t decouple the suspension from the acceleration it’s just three big buttons so it’s cool if you have a passenger you just hit the smooth button then everything’s smooth and pillow like and luxurious and that’s pretty ideal I like that mode but yeah if I want to play with a little bit for this price I should be able to now luckily that is a software thing so there’s a good chance that someday I will be able to but I gotta say I am very impressed with the way this car drives and changes the way that it drives this is the thing you always hear when people review certain supercars they’re like wow it seems to be very daily drivable I wouldn’t expect that from a car with all this horsepower and this is the opposite it’s a big heavy luxurious smooth quiet sedan and when you put it in Sprint mode and you really play with it it kind of has that oh I did not expect it to grip this well and have all this traction and really fire out of corners but it it does so when I first drove this car the Lucid air prototype like five years ago that had this crazy executive seat option which I don’t think it should be in any of them now but the point was that’s a car you’d want to be driven in more than actually drive there’s some cars like that this one because they’ve gotten all the other factors right in the steering and handling and the sportiness and the thousand horsepower I can actually say this is a car I’d be equally happy driving or being driven in and that’s an accomplishment but the other thing I wanted to know after that is okay they’ve showed the nice prototype but when they ship it will it actually get the 400 plus miles that it’s supposed to on a charge and now that I’ve driven it with the range estimates and the efficiency I can actually say yes you are able to get 400 to 430 miles on a single charge on this car’s battery but you know what this car is not perfect no car is perfect obviously but I think for me actually what it really comes down to is mostly nitpicking because there’s so many good things about this car I just don’t like the way it looks that’s just me maybe this is a hot take I’ve seen some comments from people saying like oh this is the best looking Eevee out right now they smoked everyone else in the Aesthetics Department I disagree I like the interior a lot I just don’t like the way the car looks from the outside let me explain but I think what it comes down to for me is the two-tone thing and the shape of the back of the car the two-tone thing this car has these huge not Chrome but big silver pieces on it giving it this two-tone look with the body color I think they just tried to copy my buck which is like you see a two-tone Maybach and you know that that’s luxury but this one kind of ends up looking like an older Lincoln if I’m not mistaken I don’t know there is a stealth package that lets you like matte black these out it’s six thousand dollars but then this is the back of the car back here and because they decided to go with the regular trunk and not a hatchback you end up with much more rear seat luxury and that’s great but then you also end up with this like bulbous shape back here I get why they did it they still have a trunk and aerodynamics but now it doesn’t look as good to me the mouth of it when it opens looks kind of funny because it’s this huge piece that has to open and then the opening technically is a pretty good amount of trunk space but I just went to Lowe’s the other day and bought a flower pot don’t ask why but I had a flower pot and even that was hard to fit in this small of an opening so the trunk suffers a little bit and the Arrow does benefit but that’s how you end up with this back of the car and that’s why I think I’m not the biggest fan of the aesthetic but really overall I think Luca actually does a really good job of one-upping Tesla and a lot of those key ways that people really think about and that matters in an EV now unfortunately you can probably see where this is going that also means they are more expensive across the lineup the whole thing this Grand Touring spec that I’m in starts starts at a hundred and fifty four thousand dollars and then we all know the flagship right now for Tesla is the model S plaid they’re actually coming out with a Sapphire version of this car not supposed to come out next year to match the triple motor powertrain and guess what it one-ups Tesla at everything again it’s faster zero to 60 faster zero to 100 faster in the quarter mile comes with carbon ceramic breaks by by default it has a stealth package 520 miles of range and will have all the same advantages I just talked about in luxury it’s basically the Plaid plus that never came out that Tesla never made but guess what it’s 250 000 so you know this is a new company they haven’t made a lot of cars yet but what they’re doing is starting at their most expensive highest margin versions of the cars and then working their way down I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sapphire version came out long before the Lucid air pure which is the rear-wheel drive base model for 87 000 comes out someday in the future but that’s their strategy and that’s so far made a pretty sweet car but when you only tackle Tesla’s top trims might be trending towards trouble thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace