Crazy battery drain for Lucid app on iOS

[bakerjin]

I've been a proud owner of a 2024 Lucid Air Touring for a couple months now. It has its quirks but overall I'm extremely happy with the car, both in terms of driving and features. However, one thing that always bothers me is that the mobile app seems to drain a crazy amount of battery when I allow for Location Services enabled "always" instead of "while using". I searched these forums and seem to be in a small minority, many people say they are able to leave their Lucid app with location "always" and very little battery drain (2% of overall battery health).

I usually sleep with Youtube on due to some minor tinnitus and so I'm used to that app draining battery. What's crazy is that the Lucid app drains way more despite never being open! I am not particularly close to the car so it's not trying to communicate it and lock/unlock over and over. When I change the Location services back to "while using", the crazy battery drain disappears completely. I set it back to "Always" after 2.4.x OTA due to supposed mobile key improvements, but man this makes me second guess it.

 

[maractwin]

I have found the same thing. I finally turned off background processing on the app. I'm OK with not being able to use the phone as a mobile key, as that never worked very well for me any way. But it means every time I do open the app, I have to dismiss a dialog complaining about having these permissions switched off.

 

[lsbuffs]

Yep, I had to turn off background activity. Was by far the biggest battery consumer; no other app. even close.

 

[bakerjin]

I still hope to use the app as a mobile key, I think it works as long as you just open it up and leave Location services "while using". The nice thing is that OTA 2.4.x dramatically improved the speed the app wakes up the car - sometimes I felt it would take over a minute, but now it takes 10 seconds or so. So I guess I'll just have the app on my home screen and open it if I need mobile key. Not super convenient but until they fix the battery drain issue I can live with it.

(Whether or not they fix the battery drain remains to be seen - it seems like most people don't suffer this)

 

[scal_air]

That must be frustrating, however, I have location and background on always and my power drain is 7%, less than my weather widget...iPhone 13, iOS 17.6.1

 

[tonybot]

IOS 18 and iPhone 15 pro max. Lucid is using 3% of the battery. My power drain used to be much higher before IOS 18. Location is set to always.

 

[joec]

The Lucid mobile app on iOS in the past few versions definitely drains way more battery than it should. There's some sort of background activity bug that keeps the app alive and lets it run. I've seen it take 10-15% of my battery in a given day, which is preposterous when the app wasn't even on my screen for more than a few seconds, and I'm hundreds of feet from my car.

I hope this is on their todo list to address in a future release.

 

[sxates]

I've noticed this as well, 100% background usage that drains the battery quickly. Doesn't seem to do it all the time though. When I notice it, I'll hard close the lucid app and restart it. Then it'll stop whatever background process it gets stuck in for a while, often a day or two.

 

[borski]

3% last 10 days

 

[Sid432]

3% last 10 days

What are you doing and what settings you have?
31% since last charged which was yesterday

 

[borski]

What are you doing and what settings you have?
31% since last charged which was yesterday

Nothing special? It just exists in the background. I do have a detached garage though, so I have some distance from my car most of the day.

Otherwise all the typical settings: Location set to Always, Precise; Bluetooth on; Background Refresh on; Cellular data on; all other settings on.

 

[bakerjin]

3% last 10 days

Yeah I tried to search these forums if others had issues, but it did seem like you and many other reliable contributors have had no issues with the Lucid app. I'm in agreement that I'm in the minority, but I wish I knew what caused my battery drain to be so high. If it's some issue I need to fix I'm more than happy to address it.

I have an iphone 14 with iOS 18, but the battery drain issue existed in iOS 17 as well. Very odd how inconsistent this is.

 

[joec]

So I have to say, as an experiment, I launched the app again today, after many months of it draining pretty bad while I was using iOS 18.0 in beta and general release. But now I’m running Apples 18.1 beta, and it does seem to have made a difference.

I’m down to 1% background activity after several hours. Which is much more in line with normal behavior.

So it’s possible Lucid’s app was getting more background time than it should have on 18.0. And Apple squashed that in 18.1. The system is supposed to prevent apps from draining that much energy, which is why I found this whole situation so odd.

I’m going to keep an eye on it for the next several days, but it does seem that whenever 18.1 hits the general public (likely in a week or two) this problem will be resolved by the system. Doesn’t mean Lucid doesn’t still have a bug. But at least whatever Apple changed might mitigate the effect.

 

[Sid432]

So I have to say, as an experiment, I launched the app again today, after many months of it draining pretty bad while I was using iOS 18.0 in beta and general release. But now I’m running Apples 18.1 beta, and it does seem to have made a difference.

I’m down to 1% background activity after several hours. Which is much more in line with normal behavior.

So it’s possible Lucid’s app was getting more background time than it should have on 18.0. And Apple squashed that in 18.1. The system is supposed to prevent apps from draining that much energy, which is why I found this whole situation so odd.

I’m going to keep an eye on it for the next several days, but it does seem that whenever 18.1 hits the general public (likely in a week or two) this problem will be resolved by the system. Doesn’t mean Lucid doesn’t still have a bug. But at least whatever Apple changed might mitigate the effect.

Did it make any difference in mobile key functioning more promptly or irradiate behavior after upgrading to 18.1 ?

 

[joec]

Did it make any difference in mobile key functioning more promptly or irradiate behavior after upgrading to 18.1 ?

I use the fob, so I have no idea.

I do have mobile key set up, but I also carry the fob with me at all times.

 

[The Gun]

2002 Lucid Air GT IPhone 16 and IOS18.3
Use the mobile key and no issues w draining battery except during the cold freezing weather we have in Vancouver now - leave car plugged in overnight to keep it warm and topping up as we sleep.
Ultra cold temps are terrible for battery vehicles as I learned from my old Tesla Model S up at Whistler when overnight temps reached -20C and lost 50-70km of range every night as Tesla says the battery had to be above freezing.

 

[Zothor]

Noticed the other day that Lucid app was at 46% of my battery usage in the settings, which is bonkers.

Set location services to only when using and not only did this completely fix it (down to 3%), it didn't affect my ability to use mobile key at all. The App says location services are necessary for mobile key, but this doesn't seem to be true. Honestly, over the last few days, it feels like the car unlocks substantially faster since I've turned location services off, and I'm just leaving mobile key in the background. With location enabled, I used to have to open the app to bring it to the foreground to make it unlock at least a couple of times a week. Haven't had that problem since.

A buddy of mine who's been doing iOS dev for over a decade speculated that there might be some kind of metrics package running in the background in the app that's uploading the Bluetooth strength and location constantly. His presumption was that this was probably accidentally left in the code by some intern, although I suppose if you wanted to be cynical one could presume malice (I see no reason to; they can already track our cars if they wanted to spy on us). But there's definitely something that's causing it to constantly activate the GPS in the background on certain people's phones.

 

[Zothor]

I want to add a follow-up after a few weeks of testing having turning off always-on background location services: I highly suggest you do this if you're having any connectivity problems or battery issues. I realize some of this doesn't make sense, but since I disabled location services "always" access for my Lucid app and set it to only have location permissions when using the app, I have had the following substantial, noticeable improvements:

1. Mobile key unlock is faster - like, substantially faster. Used to be, before I disabled location services always on, I had to always push the handle on the car to make it check for the presence of the mobile key, that would take 5-10 seconds on a good day, and sometimes it also required I open the app to wake it up. Now 80-90% of the time, the car unlocks while I walk up like it should. I rarely have to wait at this point. It is now mostly behaving like the feature that was promised.
2. Inexplicably, it has almost entirely solved my Apple Carplay connectivity problem. I was at a point for months where (a) Carplay never connected automatically; I had to manually activate it in the connectivity/bluetooth tab each time I started the car, and (b) every week or so, even that would stop working until I deleted my phone from the car and my car from the phone, did a Bobby Reset or a logo reset in between, and re-connected them. Since I turned off location services always on access, I have had only had either of these problems once (temporarily), and this time a straightforward Bobby reset solved the problem and it hasn't come back. This doesn't make any damn sense, because the features don't seem like they should be interrelated, but I'm not an iOS dev; it certainly seems to me that whatever is locking up the Lucid App on background location is impeding its ability to properly connect to the car.
3. As previously noted, Lucid now uses negligible background battery. It was at 3% when I wrote my last post; it's at 1% now. This is a massive improvement.
4. Perhaps most importantly, the message the app gives you when you disable always-on-location permissions—that mobile key will not work without always on location—is totally false. Not only does it work, it works substantially better. Frankly, this message is misleading at best, deceptive at worse, and does lend some credence to any cynical theories people might have about how this could be a blatant data collection grab and not a legitimate need. My guess is it's an accident, because again I don't see any reason Lucid would have to scrap that data from our phones when it could get it from our cars without any deception, but the message is clearly untrue.

Moral of the story: I can't imagine Lucid app devs are reading this (Although if the handful of people from the company who do sometimes read these posts are reading it, hi! Please pass this on to your app dev team!) but if they are, cut this location service nonsense out. The app obviously doesn't need background location permissions so it shouldn't ask for them because that absolutely tanks people's phone battery life (and seems to be interfering with your other features). Setting it to have access only when-using-the-app seems to be just fine.

 

[RMSko]

1. Now 80-90% of the time, the car unlocks while I walk up like it should. I rarely have to wait at this point. It is now mostly behaving like the feature that was promised.

Do you need to open the app or unlock the phone in order for it to unlock the car or is it even working while the phone is locked and in your pocket?

 

[Zothor]

Do you need to open the app or unlock the phone in order for it to unlock the car or is it even working while the phone is locked and in your pocket?

Works perfectly in my pocket since I turned off always active location services. No idea why. But was real happy going to my car in the rain today that the handle was popped out when I got there