Yesterday I had a 75-minute test drive hosted by Emory Oman at Lucid's Valley Fair Mall location in San Jose.
It was easy to set up the test drive - I just reached out to the telesales rep who had been in contact with me after I made my reservation and asked for a test drive. It took about 2 emails back and forth to set up, just to negotiate a time slot. A few days before the test drive, Emory from the San Jose store reached out to confirm and we were all set.
The Lucid Store is inside the Valley Fair Mall next to Tiffany - I had expected the store to have street frontage, so I was a bit confused when I arrived at the mall and my GPS took me in front of Macy's. Emory called me about 10 minutes before the test drive and vectored me into the store. Since Santa Clara County is finally maskless, I was able to test drive without a mask on, which made me happy.
The vehicle I drove was a pre-production Grand Touring with about 1,200 miles on it. The software version is a bit behind the current production vehicles, and the hardware is nearly but not fully production - for example, I found the steering wheel rotary controls to be a bit plasticky and cheap feeling, and Emory said they were nicer on the production cars. It would be wise for Lucid to keep their test-drive vehicles up on the very latest software - or even pre-production software - instead of older versions like this test car was on.
We drove the car for about an hour from Valley Fair mall to Stevens Creek Reservoir and back.
I let Emory know upfront why I was looking at the Grand Touring, (I also have a Porsche convertible and an F150, so I am looking for an electric daily driver) and that I'm also a wrencher / car guy in real life. I also let him know I ordered a Mercedes EQS 580 last summer, with no production slot allocated yet - so I'm choosing between the AGT and the EQS 580. He was quite knowledgeable and he's a car nerd like me. He is very proud of Lucid Air and clearly likes his job. He also reads these forums regularly - both the official forum and this one.
I found the Grand Touring to have very good handling and much more power than I would ever need. The test drive car was solid and had no visible defects or quality problems - very un-Tesla like! It was good to be able to drive it on Highway 280 and on some more fun and twisty roads up to the reservoir.
On sitting in the car, my first observation was that the front view was quite obstructed by the sun visors and by the very chunky A-pillars. When we started driving, I also found it a bit difficult to check the blind spot - again obstructed visibility - both for changing lanes and in particular for entering freeway on-ramps. I would probably like to move the sun visor up a bit higher - and I wish they had a disappearing sun visor like Tesla X for when you don't need it. Same goes for sun shades above and all-around - wish we had them or they were an option. With the EQS the dash is really high up - so I noticed a lack of visibility over the front of the car, but not the same obstructions on the side.
I really liked the UI and the font choices on the screens in the car - super clean and crisp. Seemed much more modern than even the Mercedes Hyperscreen. Good job UX designers.
I liked that the side view cameras turn on when you hit the turn signals, showing you an image of what is in the blind spot on the dashboard screen, and I think this is particularly important given the blind spot visibility issues above, but I found the blind spot images on the dash to be a bit grainy and weirdly processed / subdued - almost like the designer was getting cute with a filter - I'd rather have a crisp HD image from the camera with no artificial filtering or fading at the edges as I experienced in the test drive vehicle.
When we got to Steven's Creek Reservoir, we did a thorough walk around and go through the vehicle. The AGT has about the same cargo capacity as the EQS, but the trunk lid is very low so it seemed a bit harder to access the rear trunk. I also noted the AGT has a hood that opens and a Frunk, unlike the EQS where there is nothing under the hood user-accessible other than a filter to change. This is a big plus for the AGT vs. the EQS.
A big enhancement request or post-purchase option for the Frunk would be a rubber liner with a drain - so you could put dirty stuff in there and wash it out, or fill it up with ice for tailgating like Ford is offering.
I found it a bit strange that the rear seat fold-down release is from the trunk instead of from the interior - and that the releases are manual instead of electric on a vehicle at this price point. It would be better to have all of this happen from within the cabin so you can both release and fold down the seats in one step. Update - since originally posting this I learned that placing the rear seat releases in the truck is a security feature. It turns out when thieves break into the passenger cabin, if the rear seat releases are in the cabin then they also get access to your trunk.
I understand Android Auto support is a committed feature but not yet available. It would have been nice to see how this works and how well it is integrated. I use Android Auto almost exclusively on my F150 and I really like it - but I don't have a good sense for what you would do when road tripping in a lucid air - how does trip routing work especially if you want to take into account charging but you are also an Android Auto / Google Maps person. Google maps today does not know about trip routing for EVs taking into account vehicle range and charging station availability. Emory didn't know, but I wouldn't expect him to. I similarly have a ton of questions about promised but undelivered software capabilities, plus fixes for annoying design choices that are working as intended but should really be fixed, plus useful features they should be copying from the other OEM's. All of this stuff is well discussed in the forums - I would not expect Emory to be able to discuss on a test drive.
I was not super happy that there is no option for satellite radio on the vehicle - I realize that you can use the SXM app over the Internet, but I tend to drive a bit in areas where there isn't always cellular data coverage. I think this is a big miss. EQS has it.
I noted that the charging port is on the front left of the car - hopefully, this makes it compatible with Tesla once superchargers open up to non-Tesla vehicles - you would just nose in instead of backing in. I hope someone at Lucid checked that the charging cord on the supercharger is long enough to reach the AGT charging port once you nose into a Tesla supercharger slot. On the EQS the charging port is on the rear right, which means that it's very much completely incompatible forever with current generation Tesla chargers. I for sure will not be dragging a heavy charging cable across the paint on my $150k vehicle to reach the charging port from a charging station on the wrong side. I am not a big fan of Electrify America as I'm also not a big fan of hanging out in Walmart parking lots with my $150k vehicle - I do know this will change over time - but today the Tesla Superchargers are the schizzle when it comes to electric road-tripping - they are located right off the freeway and strategically dispersed. Plus it's no fun to have to exit the freeway and drive 10 minutes or more in town to the nearest Walmart. I am generally surprised that EV vendors have not standardized charging port locations to make things easier for charging infrastructure. https://insideevs.com/news/545500/nontesla-evs-blocks-tesla-superchargers/
I understand Lucid has bi-directional charging built-in - that is the vehicle can both take power from the grid and return power to your home. This will require the Lucid Connected Home Charging Station (LCHCS) which is supposed to be available later in 2022. This should be a big advantage for Lucid over Mercedes EQS, which does not have this capability. My F150 already has a 7.2kw 240 VAC generator built-in plus a 30-gallon fuel tank, which is useful for the vehicle providing power to my house (and my Airstream) when grid power is not available. I'm not sure if Lucid's capability is designed for backup power when the grid goes down, or for time shifting power consumption at your home, or both. Note that feeding back power to your home with a backup generator, if designed for use during power outages, will require a transfer switch to be installed at your main panel so you are not back-feeding the grid. Time-shifting your home's power consumption only helps you if you have a smart meter that bills depending on the time of consumption, and you would have to offset this with wear on your car's battery pack. So I have lots of questions here about the actual Lucid implementation. I have a whole bunch of questions about how this functionality is planned to work, the impact on battery pack life, and the intended use cases - hopefully, all will get answered as we get closer to availability.
I will be purchasing a red vehicle, so a big part of this trip for me was to figure out which interior and which wheels look and function best. I didn't love the "Santa Cruz" white / beige interior on the test drive car - I didn't think the white fabric under the dash, in particular, looked that great and on the test drive car it very much showed the dirt. I had been thinking the "Tahoe" tan / brown interior would look great with Zenith Red, but Emory thinks the "Mojave" black and grey interior goes best with their red car. Would love the opinion of the brain trust here as it's a bit hard to figure out what the final combinations look like in real life. The EQS 580 has an AMG black interior with red stitching that looks pretty killer with red exterior. I also greatly prefer the Mercedes use of leather vs the AGT fabric on the underside of the dash - I do realize this is a design choice, but leather is just easier to keep clean and I prefer the look. Hey Lucid - how about a black interior with red contrast stitching to go with your red exterior paint! Another marketing recommendation would be to stop branding the interior color combinations - it is just confusing - and simply call out the color combinations.
I'm also not sure which AGT wheel to purchase - all three choices will be available by the time my build completes - I prefer the looks of the 20 or 21-inch wheels, but I am not sure of the tradeoffs between handling and range and ride comfort between them and how big of a deal this decision is - so more research to do. It would be great for a Lucid product manager to write up a FAQ for what the exact impacts are of your wheel choice on range, handling and ride comfort. I know that the handling and ride comfort tradeoffs are the same as for an ICE vehicle, but there isn't any data I could find on the Lucid website about how much range you would lose by choosing 20 or 21s - so it's hard to make a data-driven decision. Update: According to Lucid, you will see a 5% range penalty for 20-inch wheels, and a 10% range penalty for 21's. I think I will go with the 21's - not a terrible range hit, they look better, and they are available so won't slow down delivery.
I have a pretty hard time comparing the EQS 580 to the AGT - they just seem like very different vehicles. The EQS exterior is butt ugly to me, but it feels roomier inside with better visibility other than the high dash. The AGT looks vastly cooler on the outside and is a much better driver - amazingly good for the weight of the vehicle. Both had more power than I need, and both are smooth on the road. The hyperscreen and the AGT screens are very different - the hyperscreen hardware is amazing, but the AGT fonts and UX look much better. I do prefer the Mercedes interior finishes - I think Mercedes just have this nailed - but I note many reviewers think the EQS is a big step down from the S class.
My only nit / complaint about the AGT ordering process so far is that Lucid Air doesn't provide any information to help you understand where you sit in the pecking order. They clearly know how many people are in front of you, and how many cars they are making (and planning to make) per week - so they should be able to give you a reasonable estimate of when you will come off of the reservation to order waitlist, and how long it is currently taking (or planned to take) from order to delivery. Mercedes is awful at this, but the dealers are in the middle, and shipping from Germany is a huge issue and they are having horrible parts shortages and the dealer sales reps have no insight. I would expect Lucid Air to do better - they are trying to be a "better kind of company" - they clearly could give you a wait time estimate with the proper caveats rather than no information at all as they do today. When I purchased my F150 hybrid earlier this year, I was amazed that Ford actually has a pretty good system for tracking your order through the entire process - as soon as you commit to an order, their website shows you where your truck is at every step throughout planning, manufacturing and delivery, even down to the rail car it is traveling on from the factory to your door. With a small investment, Lucid could set a new bar here for transparency - and it's soooo much more exciting for a new car buyer to have visibility into what's going on with their new baby than to be left in the dark.
Emory said he has led more than 100 test drives, and he said he has a great sense of what various types of Lucid Air prospective buyers love and like and dislike about the vehicle. I probed him for whether Lucid Air management speaks with him to gather intelligence based on this, and while he didn't really want to tell me, it sounded like the answer was no. With Mercedes EQS it was similar - there was zero opportunity for the teams running test drives to provide any feedback to Mercedes product management or exec staff. I find this extremely puzzling for a brand new vehicle - the folks running the test drives have more data than anyone on out-of-the-box customer experience - I don't understand why this wouldn't be tapped into by company product management or execs.
I started a mirror of this thread over on the Mercedes EQS forum - I think it's also quite interested to see what the Mercedes crowd thinks of this discussion - it already has more than 6,000 views. https://mbworld.org/forums/eqs/832762-eqs-vs-lucid-air.html
That's all off the top of my head. I hope this helps!
It was easy to set up the test drive - I just reached out to the telesales rep who had been in contact with me after I made my reservation and asked for a test drive. It took about 2 emails back and forth to set up, just to negotiate a time slot. A few days before the test drive, Emory from the San Jose store reached out to confirm and we were all set.
The Lucid Store is inside the Valley Fair Mall next to Tiffany - I had expected the store to have street frontage, so I was a bit confused when I arrived at the mall and my GPS took me in front of Macy's. Emory called me about 10 minutes before the test drive and vectored me into the store. Since Santa Clara County is finally maskless, I was able to test drive without a mask on, which made me happy.
The vehicle I drove was a pre-production Grand Touring with about 1,200 miles on it. The software version is a bit behind the current production vehicles, and the hardware is nearly but not fully production - for example, I found the steering wheel rotary controls to be a bit plasticky and cheap feeling, and Emory said they were nicer on the production cars. It would be wise for Lucid to keep their test-drive vehicles up on the very latest software - or even pre-production software - instead of older versions like this test car was on.
We drove the car for about an hour from Valley Fair mall to Stevens Creek Reservoir and back.
I let Emory know upfront why I was looking at the Grand Touring, (I also have a Porsche convertible and an F150, so I am looking for an electric daily driver) and that I'm also a wrencher / car guy in real life. I also let him know I ordered a Mercedes EQS 580 last summer, with no production slot allocated yet - so I'm choosing between the AGT and the EQS 580. He was quite knowledgeable and he's a car nerd like me. He is very proud of Lucid Air and clearly likes his job. He also reads these forums regularly - both the official forum and this one.
I found the Grand Touring to have very good handling and much more power than I would ever need. The test drive car was solid and had no visible defects or quality problems - very un-Tesla like! It was good to be able to drive it on Highway 280 and on some more fun and twisty roads up to the reservoir.
On sitting in the car, my first observation was that the front view was quite obstructed by the sun visors and by the very chunky A-pillars. When we started driving, I also found it a bit difficult to check the blind spot - again obstructed visibility - both for changing lanes and in particular for entering freeway on-ramps. I would probably like to move the sun visor up a bit higher - and I wish they had a disappearing sun visor like Tesla X for when you don't need it. Same goes for sun shades above and all-around - wish we had them or they were an option. With the EQS the dash is really high up - so I noticed a lack of visibility over the front of the car, but not the same obstructions on the side.
I really liked the UI and the font choices on the screens in the car - super clean and crisp. Seemed much more modern than even the Mercedes Hyperscreen. Good job UX designers.
I liked that the side view cameras turn on when you hit the turn signals, showing you an image of what is in the blind spot on the dashboard screen, and I think this is particularly important given the blind spot visibility issues above, but I found the blind spot images on the dash to be a bit grainy and weirdly processed / subdued - almost like the designer was getting cute with a filter - I'd rather have a crisp HD image from the camera with no artificial filtering or fading at the edges as I experienced in the test drive vehicle.
When we got to Steven's Creek Reservoir, we did a thorough walk around and go through the vehicle. The AGT has about the same cargo capacity as the EQS, but the trunk lid is very low so it seemed a bit harder to access the rear trunk. I also noted the AGT has a hood that opens and a Frunk, unlike the EQS where there is nothing under the hood user-accessible other than a filter to change. This is a big plus for the AGT vs. the EQS.
A big enhancement request or post-purchase option for the Frunk would be a rubber liner with a drain - so you could put dirty stuff in there and wash it out, or fill it up with ice for tailgating like Ford is offering.
I found it a bit strange that the rear seat fold-down release is from the trunk instead of from the interior - and that the releases are manual instead of electric on a vehicle at this price point. It would be better to have all of this happen from within the cabin so you can both release and fold down the seats in one step. Update - since originally posting this I learned that placing the rear seat releases in the truck is a security feature. It turns out when thieves break into the passenger cabin, if the rear seat releases are in the cabin then they also get access to your trunk.
I understand Android Auto support is a committed feature but not yet available. It would have been nice to see how this works and how well it is integrated. I use Android Auto almost exclusively on my F150 and I really like it - but I don't have a good sense for what you would do when road tripping in a lucid air - how does trip routing work especially if you want to take into account charging but you are also an Android Auto / Google Maps person. Google maps today does not know about trip routing for EVs taking into account vehicle range and charging station availability. Emory didn't know, but I wouldn't expect him to. I similarly have a ton of questions about promised but undelivered software capabilities, plus fixes for annoying design choices that are working as intended but should really be fixed, plus useful features they should be copying from the other OEM's. All of this stuff is well discussed in the forums - I would not expect Emory to be able to discuss on a test drive.
I was not super happy that there is no option for satellite radio on the vehicle - I realize that you can use the SXM app over the Internet, but I tend to drive a bit in areas where there isn't always cellular data coverage. I think this is a big miss. EQS has it.
I noted that the charging port is on the front left of the car - hopefully, this makes it compatible with Tesla once superchargers open up to non-Tesla vehicles - you would just nose in instead of backing in. I hope someone at Lucid checked that the charging cord on the supercharger is long enough to reach the AGT charging port once you nose into a Tesla supercharger slot. On the EQS the charging port is on the rear right, which means that it's very much completely incompatible forever with current generation Tesla chargers. I for sure will not be dragging a heavy charging cable across the paint on my $150k vehicle to reach the charging port from a charging station on the wrong side. I am not a big fan of Electrify America as I'm also not a big fan of hanging out in Walmart parking lots with my $150k vehicle - I do know this will change over time - but today the Tesla Superchargers are the schizzle when it comes to electric road-tripping - they are located right off the freeway and strategically dispersed. Plus it's no fun to have to exit the freeway and drive 10 minutes or more in town to the nearest Walmart. I am generally surprised that EV vendors have not standardized charging port locations to make things easier for charging infrastructure. https://insideevs.com/news/545500/nontesla-evs-blocks-tesla-superchargers/
I understand Lucid has bi-directional charging built-in - that is the vehicle can both take power from the grid and return power to your home. This will require the Lucid Connected Home Charging Station (LCHCS) which is supposed to be available later in 2022. This should be a big advantage for Lucid over Mercedes EQS, which does not have this capability. My F150 already has a 7.2kw 240 VAC generator built-in plus a 30-gallon fuel tank, which is useful for the vehicle providing power to my house (and my Airstream) when grid power is not available. I'm not sure if Lucid's capability is designed for backup power when the grid goes down, or for time shifting power consumption at your home, or both. Note that feeding back power to your home with a backup generator, if designed for use during power outages, will require a transfer switch to be installed at your main panel so you are not back-feeding the grid. Time-shifting your home's power consumption only helps you if you have a smart meter that bills depending on the time of consumption, and you would have to offset this with wear on your car's battery pack. So I have lots of questions here about the actual Lucid implementation. I have a whole bunch of questions about how this functionality is planned to work, the impact on battery pack life, and the intended use cases - hopefully, all will get answered as we get closer to availability.
I will be purchasing a red vehicle, so a big part of this trip for me was to figure out which interior and which wheels look and function best. I didn't love the "Santa Cruz" white / beige interior on the test drive car - I didn't think the white fabric under the dash, in particular, looked that great and on the test drive car it very much showed the dirt. I had been thinking the "Tahoe" tan / brown interior would look great with Zenith Red, but Emory thinks the "Mojave" black and grey interior goes best with their red car. Would love the opinion of the brain trust here as it's a bit hard to figure out what the final combinations look like in real life. The EQS 580 has an AMG black interior with red stitching that looks pretty killer with red exterior. I also greatly prefer the Mercedes use of leather vs the AGT fabric on the underside of the dash - I do realize this is a design choice, but leather is just easier to keep clean and I prefer the look. Hey Lucid - how about a black interior with red contrast stitching to go with your red exterior paint! Another marketing recommendation would be to stop branding the interior color combinations - it is just confusing - and simply call out the color combinations.
I'm also not sure which AGT wheel to purchase - all three choices will be available by the time my build completes - I prefer the looks of the 20 or 21-inch wheels, but I am not sure of the tradeoffs between handling and range and ride comfort between them and how big of a deal this decision is - so more research to do. It would be great for a Lucid product manager to write up a FAQ for what the exact impacts are of your wheel choice on range, handling and ride comfort. I know that the handling and ride comfort tradeoffs are the same as for an ICE vehicle, but there isn't any data I could find on the Lucid website about how much range you would lose by choosing 20 or 21s - so it's hard to make a data-driven decision. Update: According to Lucid, you will see a 5% range penalty for 20-inch wheels, and a 10% range penalty for 21's. I think I will go with the 21's - not a terrible range hit, they look better, and they are available so won't slow down delivery.
I have a pretty hard time comparing the EQS 580 to the AGT - they just seem like very different vehicles. The EQS exterior is butt ugly to me, but it feels roomier inside with better visibility other than the high dash. The AGT looks vastly cooler on the outside and is a much better driver - amazingly good for the weight of the vehicle. Both had more power than I need, and both are smooth on the road. The hyperscreen and the AGT screens are very different - the hyperscreen hardware is amazing, but the AGT fonts and UX look much better. I do prefer the Mercedes interior finishes - I think Mercedes just have this nailed - but I note many reviewers think the EQS is a big step down from the S class.
My only nit / complaint about the AGT ordering process so far is that Lucid Air doesn't provide any information to help you understand where you sit in the pecking order. They clearly know how many people are in front of you, and how many cars they are making (and planning to make) per week - so they should be able to give you a reasonable estimate of when you will come off of the reservation to order waitlist, and how long it is currently taking (or planned to take) from order to delivery. Mercedes is awful at this, but the dealers are in the middle, and shipping from Germany is a huge issue and they are having horrible parts shortages and the dealer sales reps have no insight. I would expect Lucid Air to do better - they are trying to be a "better kind of company" - they clearly could give you a wait time estimate with the proper caveats rather than no information at all as they do today. When I purchased my F150 hybrid earlier this year, I was amazed that Ford actually has a pretty good system for tracking your order through the entire process - as soon as you commit to an order, their website shows you where your truck is at every step throughout planning, manufacturing and delivery, even down to the rail car it is traveling on from the factory to your door. With a small investment, Lucid could set a new bar here for transparency - and it's soooo much more exciting for a new car buyer to have visibility into what's going on with their new baby than to be left in the dark.
Emory said he has led more than 100 test drives, and he said he has a great sense of what various types of Lucid Air prospective buyers love and like and dislike about the vehicle. I probed him for whether Lucid Air management speaks with him to gather intelligence based on this, and while he didn't really want to tell me, it sounded like the answer was no. With Mercedes EQS it was similar - there was zero opportunity for the teams running test drives to provide any feedback to Mercedes product management or exec staff. I find this extremely puzzling for a brand new vehicle - the folks running the test drives have more data than anyone on out-of-the-box customer experience - I don't understand why this wouldn't be tapped into by company product management or execs.
I started a mirror of this thread over on the Mercedes EQS forum - I think it's also quite interested to see what the Mercedes crowd thinks of this discussion - it already has more than 6,000 views. https://mbworld.org/forums/eqs/832762-eqs-vs-lucid-air.html
That's all off the top of my head. I hope this helps!
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