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First road trip EPIC fail

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bmincey

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Joined
Apr 15, 2025
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Location
San Diego, CA
Cars
Lucid GDE #87
Took the wife to Palm Desert on our anniversary and about 50 miles out from the hotel.

Got an error message saying a drive unit has an error, performance is degraded and stability control is gone. Car wouldnt go beyond 50 mph and we had to limp in to the hotel parking lot. This is after being stranded multiple times with the key and blank screen issues and the car not opening the other doors frequently..

such a frustrating experience. Now I have to contact Lucid Customer care tomorrow and see if they can troubleshoot or pickup my GDE and give me a loaner to get back to San Diego.

I am seriously thinking about just telling them to take the car back as a lemon and buying the porsche taycan I should have bought.
 
While that does very much suck, and I'm sorry you've had a bad experience, the car most definitely would not qualify as a lemon at this point:
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bmincey said:
...i am very frustrated right now but hopefully Lucid can iron it out.
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Please let us know how how they do in taking care of you. It'll help others.
 
interesting.
 
I think a few people have had this issue and the drive unit needs to be replaced.
 
hwy17er said:
Hmmmm...if you ask me being limited to 50mph could easily cause death on hwy 280!!
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Sure, but Lucid hasn't tried to fix this new issue twice already, so it won't qualify yet. The 3 weeks already in service doesn't make it qualify yet either, but the OP is certainly on his way to potentially making a lemon claim, unfortunately.
 
NoseyReporter said:
Another DE with a drive unit issue. I don't follow the forum that closely, but it feels like the DE drive units seem to have a slightly abnormal failure rate.
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I'm starting to wonder about that. A point of pride of Lucid engineering, especially under Peter Rawlinson, was the small size and light weight of the drive unit.

Perhaps in and effort to make their DUs as light and as efficient as possible, Lucid have also succeeded in making them too fragile.

Just "spit-balling" here. Not a mechanical or electrical engineer here.
 
Bus Driver said:
I'm starting to wonder about that. A point of pride of Lucid engineering, especially under Peter Rawlinson, was the small size and light weight of the drive unit.

Perhaps in and effort to make their DUs as light and as efficient as possible, Lucid have also succeeded in making them too fragile.

Just "spit-balling" here. Not a mechanical or electrical engineer here.
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I don't think its a mechanical fragility problem. Otherwise the cars wouldn't be drive-able in a limp mode function.

My uneducated guess is that it has something to do with squeezing out the extra power from the GDE PU over the GGT PU. The motors are clearly capable of the power and are mechanically sound. Maybe its something electrical that is failing or intermittent, perhaps a new component that they've sourced that was not used in the Air.

I see your spit ball, I match your spit ball.
 
Bus Driver said:
I'm starting to wonder about that. A point of pride of Lucid engineering, especially under Peter Rawlinson, was the small size and light weight of the drive unit.

Perhaps in and effort to make their DUs as light and as efficient as possible, Lucid have also succeeded in making them too fragile.

Just "spit-balling" here. Not a mechanical or electrical engineer here.
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It’s limited to 1st year production models…..Lucid drivetrain is a feat of engineering
 
I think it was @hmp10 who shared that it appeared it had something to do with the motor controller when he had his replaced.
 
bmincey said:
Took the wife to Palm Desert on our anniversary and about 50 miles out from the hotel.

Got an error message saying a drive unit has an error, performance is degraded and stability control is gone. Car wouldnt go beyond 50 mph and we had to limp in to the hotel parking lot. This is after being stranded multiple times with the key and blank screen issues and the car not opening the other doors frequently..

such a frustrating experience. Now I have to contact Lucid Customer care tomorrow and see if they can troubleshoot or pickup my GDE and give me a loaner to get back to San Diego.

I am seriously thinking about just telling them to take the car back as a lemon and buying the porsche taycan I should have bought.
Click to expand...
I had odd issues on a road trip to. Car is in the shop now, and the HVAC / chiller are being replaced. Explore this avenue, when the chiller fails, the battery output is limited, I hope that is a solution for me. They gave me a loaner, so I'm not put out too much. Otherwise, love the car.
 
Quick update. Lucid is going to come flatbed tow the vehicle from Palm Springs to the Costa Mesa Service center, replace the FDU and then flatbed it back to me in San Diego. They said 1-2 weeks in shop. Hopefully I can make sure my key fobs and SW get updated to 3.3.5 as well. They are providing me a gas SUV rental from Enterprise until I get the gravity back. I need a bigger car family wise and the Air isnt a good fit. They did say they received an alert last evening when the FDU failed. No one contacted me, I had to call them but apparently they did get some kind of alert or log event because it was always in my profile when I called Customer Care.
 
socktucker said:
Nobody here has enough information to even try and guess.
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I think it's clear that Lucid has a quality problem with the drive units. We've had enough reports of drive unit replacements being necessary to raise eyebrows, considering how early in the production ramp we still are. @borski posts that early failure is more likely than mid-life problems, and I have no reason to doubt that. But I'd be very surprised if Lucid engineering is happy about the number of infant mortality incidents that have been seen. I'm not overly concerned, as I imagine the engineering team is analyzing the replaced drive units and identifying improvements that need to be made.
 
bmincey said:
The GDE was picked up by the towing company today (took 3 days) and its on its way to the Service Center in Costa Mesa.
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Gotta say, one of the nice things about driving a Toyota Highlander is the ease of repairs. Last year I was stranded on the highway, fairly late at night. I identified a well reviewed local mechanic, had a tow truck driver come get us and the SUV, drop us at a hotel, and drop the vehicle in the mechanic's lot. Spoke to them first thing the next morning, Toyota parts are available for same-day delivery, and they vehicle was up and running again just before 5 PM.

I know that an EV startup cannot be expected to match the availability of mechanics and parts. But part of the proposition is that there's much less to catastrophically fail, and we seem to have quite a few reports of owners with vehicles requiring long (often multi-week) stays at a service center.
 
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