I have DE #305, and have put almost 500 miles on it. Here's my perspective:
I spent a weekend with a Taycan Turbo S, thinking I was going to buy one to replace my aging Model S P100D. By the end of the weekend, I was very ready to give back the Taycan and go back to my old Model S. The Taycan had painfully low range. With a "full" battery, a bit of aggressive driving resulted in the battery being down to 70-80 miles within a day and that felt scary because mostly I am accustomed to having 200+ miles in the Tesla at all times. The Taycan handled fine, but not great because it's just very heavy. (I also own Ferraris, so I'm a bit tainted as to what real handling is). The things that bothered me about the Taycan were 1) it is very cramped and not luxurious), 2) the user interface was overly simplistic, and 3) the mechanical feel bothered me...I could always feel/hear the motor "grinding" or making its fake sound, and the road noise was very obvious (very 911-like). The isolation from road noise, tire noise and drivetrain noise was shockingly bad compared even to the old P100D. Going back into the Tesla was just so smooth, it emphasized how gritty the Taycan was.
The Lucid is not like the Taycan. It's also not quite like the Model S. It's almost like a combination of the two. It has nearly the smoothness of the Tesla (about 80% of the Tesla), with a very slight mechanical feel (about 20% of the Taycan). The Lucid feels more like a Porsche than a Tesla -- it is very solid and heavy and stable feeling. There was a time when the Model S was considered a good handler...very flat and not much body roll. The Taycan is better, smaller feeling (although it isn't smaller) and much flatter and more precise cornering. The Lucid is similar to the Taycan (about 85-90% of the Taycan) in handling -- it is big, but handles precisely and corners flatter with much less body roll than the Model S. The Lucid feels much higher quality than both cars, in terms of the quality of the materials that you touch/feel and the quality of the displays on the two screens. The user interface on the Taycan felt like a 1980s Atari game to me. The Lucid is very modern and sleek in comparison. There are other beautiful small touches in the Air...for example, the seatbelt or door open reminder is not a buzzer or beep but a delicious electronic "whong whong". The speed limit sign on the dash slowly turns orange and then red as you get higher and higher above the speed limit.
Lucid still has some work to do on its user interface. It strangely does not allow music to remain as the main page on the large screen -- it goes away after 20 seconds and you have to drag it back down. If you select the climate or massage features, they stay on the main screen so I dont understand why music won't. Again, it's almost like the designer(s) don't drive cars and therefore don't know that having the radio easily accessible at all times is useful. The car goes to "sleep" too much and once it is asleep it is slow to wake up -- they need this fixed ASAP. It is baffling that they haven't addressed it yet...almost like they never bothered to take home one of their own cars and live with it for 24 hours. The lack of voice-dialing and/or Apple CarPlay is frustrating.
But overall, as all the magazines are saying, the Lucid is superior to the Taycan if you are looking for a fast, comfortable, unique luxurious EV. I find myself not driving my Model S anymore. I don't think that would be the case if I had purchased a Taycan.
