January 2022. Central California.

This morning I saw a Lucid Air driving along Rt 80 in central California. This was the first time I’d seen on in person and I got a pretty good look at the exterior design and a bit of the interior as I drove alongside for several miles.

It’s a nice looking car, very sleek, has a very low coefficient of drag (0.21). My one quibble is that diagonal line along the rear trunk. Yes, it’s supposed to make the trunk easier to load, but to my eye that line disrupts an otherwise nice design.

This car had manufacturer plates, but Lucid started delivering cars to a few lucky owners in October 2021. I contacted Lucid Motors and they confirmed that this particular car was a Lucid Air Dream Edition, which has an EPA projected range of up to 520 miles depending on tires, options, etc.

On the Lucid Motors website the lowest priced models have rear wheel drive, a projected EPA range of 406 miles, and start at $77,400. Higher priced models have a longer projected range. For example, the Air Grand Touring has a projected EPA range of 516 miles when equipped with 19″ wheels, and starts at $131,000. 4WD and other options push the price north of $160,000.

Lucid has taken a somewhat similar approach as Tesla in that they are delivering their most expensive models first, with lower priced models coming later. Deliveries of the Air Dream Edition started in October 2021.

For road tripping, Lucid’s cars will use the Electrify America DC charging network, and presumably any other CCS charging station network. The Lucid Air battery architecture is 900 Volts, rather than the ~400V architecture of many other EVs on the market. However, the Lucid will accept a charge on existing charging stations.

As a result of the 900V architecture, Lucid states that under the right conditions their car could charge up to 300 miles in 20 minutes. Real world examples reported at InsideEVs have reported charging rates up to 250 kW, with an average rate of 155 kW over a full charging session. The charging data sounds very promising.

Long story short: these are not cheap cars but I am glad to see another EV on the road.