Lucid Air Sedan 2021, dailycarblog
The Lucid Air is Still A Thing?
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Yes, it certainly is. Despite being founded in 2007, originally making electric vehicle powertrains and batteries, Lucid Motors is still considered to be a start-up company. Over the years, the company acquired financial investment and morphed into Lucid Motors in 2016. And in the same year, they revealed the Lucid Air, a high performance luxury electric car concept. And now after years in pre-production gestation, the Lucid Air is actually moving a step closer to becoming production-ready. Lucid Motors recently officially announced EPA ratings of the Air EV.

Apparently Lucid has managed to extract 520 miles of range (837 km) from the Air’s battery pack. It is unclear as to which specification was tested. When the Lucid Air launches it will be available in 75 kWh to 113 kWh variants, based on a 900-volt electrical architecture. Let’s assume the figures Lucid is quoting are based on the top-spec 113 kWh battery pack. EPA ratings can be, let’s say, extrapolated based on best-case scenario testing or the intensity of the test schedule.

Lucid Air Sedan 2021, rear dailycarblog

Less intense driving will yield efficient results. Other variables need to be factored in such as the geography of the landscape and temperature. If there are a lot of hills on a particular test route more power is needed to get the Air up the hill. And we all know batteries are less efficient in the cold. We have no way of knowing how these figures were calculated so while the EPA figures add a lot of credibility car manufacturers have always found ingenious ways of extracting as much range out of a car as possible. 

Offering a high range and efficiency is a good way to sell the car later on down the sales channel funnel. To get big range out of an electric car all you need to do is add a large battery pack. At the moment battery technology is still searching for that big breakthrough where a small battery pack can offer big range. 

Lucid Air Sedan 2021, interior, dailycarblog

Current battery technology is heavy which burdens the efficiency and range of an electric car. Small improvements can make for evolutionary efficiency gains as demonstrated with Tesla’s so-called “tabless battery”. But the big game-changing battery technology leap is yet to arrive.

The biggest issue for Lucid Motors is scaling for production. This is the toughest part of being a car manufacturer. Lucid Motors has stated that it wants to take on and beat Tesla. So that would mean making and selling over 500K Lucid vehicles every year. Lucid’s actual target is far more realistic, they aim to make 500 units in 2021. Things ought to improve by 2022 when the company expects to ramp up production to 20,000 and settle on 50,000 by 2023.

Peter Rawlinson Lucid man Daily Car Blog

That’s still a small number compared to Tesla, but they may well struggle to even meet their own targets because scaling vehicle manufacturing isn’t as easy as the public pronouncements make it out to be.


Lucid Air Sedan 2021, dailycarblog
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