I’m fine with calling a spade a spade. Lucid sucks at key access for their cars and I have no idea why, but they usually figure things out well enough to where you’ve got workarounds if there’s a failure, and the rest of the car is so remarkable you’re willing to put up with it. I’ve yet to find a car that didn’t piss me off in some way. Do I wish it was something less significant than the most basic thing, opening the door and getting the car to drive? Yeah but as long as there’s workarounds until there’s iron clad reliability for that then I’m ride or die with Lucid.
This will work for some people, especially early-adopters, car nuts, and at least some of the people who follow this forum closely.
But the workarounds themselves seem to be moving targets with Lucid. The original workaround was to keep the key card as backup. Then several posters here reported the key cards ceased to work. And the mobile key, such as the Air has, is not yet available for the Gravity.
The Gravity is not the high-performance sports sedan the Air is. It's an SUV (although certainly a high-performance one) that is targeted more to the larger family-duty market. If you're shopping for an SUV for, say, your wife to use for running errands, shopping, and hauling the kids around, how would you feel about walking her through this:
1. Use the key fob, but make sure it's not set to auto lock and unlock even though the menu provides it.
2. Get the key fob out of your purse or pocket and press the button on the key fob to unlock the car, no matter what else you have in your hands.
3. If that doesn't work, press the door handles in and grab them when they extend. (If it's raining, best to put the umbrella down while you try all this.)
4. If that doesn't work, take your key card out of your wallet and rub it against the B-pillar sensor.
5. If you still can't get in the car, call Lucid Customer Care if it's during their open hours. (If it's raining, try to get somewhere dry, because you'll be on the phone a while.)
6. If you can get in the car with the key fob but can't get it into gear, then rub the key card over the phone charger pad.
7. If you get a "key not detected" alert, gently shake the fob as instructed. It won't work, but be a good soldier, anyway.
8. Be sure to remember all this . . . and check periodically for new workarounds as new problems crop up.
No matter how great a vehicle otherwise is, there's a large cohort of buyers who wouldn't touch a car if they knew about this beforehand. And if they find about it only after the purchase, it's a phenomenally efficient way to destroy customer goodwill.