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- 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 Auto Focus channel
shot exclusively on smartphones.
A 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 this is Tesla's flagship, the Model S.
And this is Lucid's Air Grand Touring.
I'm gonna compare.
But even just listening to the basics on paper,
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 1,000-plus horsepower. It's got stickier tires.
It's more luxurious inside.
Got my attention.
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So Tesla's interiors were never really
anything to write home about.
But I can say that 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 multizone 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 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 back seat of a Model S is pretty good.
I have a 6-3 driving position
and then another 6-3 passenger,
and my leg room's all right.
Head room'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 back seat.
First of all, the door now opens fully 90 degrees,
low key, a really nice feature.
But then there's just dramatically more leg room and space
because they opted for a normal trunk
instead of a hatchback.
So they've moved, in the same wheel base as a Tesla,
this seat way further back.
So 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 in this car for about a week now,
and there's just so many things to it.
First of all, the sound system is actually incredible.
It has 21 speakers, and they support Spotify
and things like that, but also Tidal HiFi in the UI.
And I swore 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.
It's incredibly immersive.
There's also a better steering wheel in here
with stalks 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 whole screen that tilts back
and reveals some hidden storage space behind it,
where you can 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's the software.
So it would be really hard to one-up Tesla's software
considering that's 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 frunk opening
instead of a trunk opening,
which makes me wanna 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 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 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.
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So something I've realized that is a little underrated
and doesn't get talked about enough in cars,
is cars that have 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 I can't ignore the fact that 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.
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 this suspension setting here.
But this is about as good as you can do with the 21s.
See, as you get sportier,
everything gets a little bit lower,
a little bit heavier, a little bit firmer.
And if you go all the way to sprint,
that is the car's lowest, most responsive,
and firmest setting.
So now I'm gonna 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 I will say it feels lighter than it actually is.
It has this level of mechanical grip.
It's not aero: it's just the big tires
and the mechanical grip that gives you confidence
in an all-wheel drive car.
This is a really confidence-inspiring car to drive.
Oh, and then it happens to have 1,000 horsepower.
Yeah, I will say though, a 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 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 wanna play with it a little bit,
for this price, I should be able to.
Now luckily, that is a software thing,
so there is 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 super cars.
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 outta corners."
But 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 is shipping 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,
and the steering and the handling
and the sportiness and the 1,000 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,
'cause 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,
"Oh, this is the best-looking EV 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 Maybach.
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 matte black these out.
It's $6,000.
But then this is the back of the car back here.
And because they decided to go
with a 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 bulbous shape back here.
I get why they did it,
to 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
'cause 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 aero 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 Lucid actually does a really good good job
of one-upping Tesla in 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 $154,000.
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.
And that's 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 1/4 mile,
comes with carbon ceramic brakes by default.
It has the 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 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 their rear-wheel drive base model for $87,000,
comes out someday in the future.
But that's their strategy.
And so far, made a pretty sweet car.
But when you only tackle Tesla's top trims,
you might be trending towards trouble.
Thanks for watching.
Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.