Engineering Explained. This is bad.

[Buffalo Bob]

As some others have pointed out... While software remains a huge issue, and while the OP raises a number of valid ones, it seems to me that the most frustration he voices was unnecessarily brought upon himself. Number 1 - Who on earth told him to do a Factory Reset to solve a software glitch? How many of you have been instructed by a Lucid support service or manual to do that... or have even contemplated it for that matter? Of course that would be nightmarishly disruptive! Number 2 - As for the profile issues he goes on an on about... It's not like the guy is four or eight feet tall. Is it hard to find a comfortable driving spot where you can adequately (not ideally) see the dashboard while the face monitoring system can still see you? Yes, but he has pretty much deemed it impossible in his case, settles for a position where the camera cannot see him, and then complains about the outcome. Again, I'm not saying that profiling works great, but can't he at least try to let the camera see his face, and then talk about the issues that remain? Numbers 3-? - Don't get me started about stuff like how hard you have to push to manually open the charging port door, or his dog and the rear seat heater. Auto lock not working when he walks away??? What?

For all the angst this video is causing everyone, I suggest you rewatch it and see how many of the issues you can really identify with, and how many are either rooted in problems he brought upon himself, or nitpicks. God forbid the voice recognition system won't open my glovebox for me.

 

[GTinCT]

I’m very concerned that Lucid does not know how bad this is for the brand. I sure hope they will post here to let us know how they are responding. They should send a senior team out to take the car and Jason back to the factory to show him what went wrong and how they will fix the things that can be fixed. If they don’t take steps to remedy this, my hopes for the brand will be dimmed.

When they sell cars to a person with 4.2 million subscribers, they should assign a PR person to manage that relationship. This is far more damaging to their brand than anything a celebrity sponsorship can counter.

 

[9point81]

I have comments that I've tried hard not to post, but the moderators are bored and need something to do.

Advice for the reviewer:

Get rid of anything Steve Jobs
Get rid of the dog
Get rid of the wife
Get off your high horse: you are too tall for a sport car
Get a cyber truck if you believe Musk-ware is so cutting edge
View attachment 34858

If you watch one of his earlier videos (which I doubt you'd want To, but I'll just summarize) he sold his Tesla which he loved, bc his wife worked for park services and bc of Felon and his doge crew shenanigans, she directly lost her job bc of it. He responded in a scathing video of his hate for Felon and Tesla and trolled him by getting rid of the Tesla and buying an Air. Now, 4 months later, it's sounding like he's regretting that decision, with some of the valid reasons you and others have listed. He basically should have done a bit more research before choosing a new vahicle, but he's of course not wrong for calling Lucid out on the true software issues they have.

 

[LVAGT]

Here's his response to some of the major comments.

*Let's address the most common comments!*

1) "You said this was a brilliantly engineered vehicle, clearly this isn't true." I disagree. I really do think these are brilliant cars, for the many reasons I've shown in previous videos. Lucid created the most efficient vehicle sold in the United States. That doesn't happen without extraordinarily clever engineering. The car is packed with innovation: the radiator intakes, the headlights, the frunk, the battery, the vehicle shape, the motors, the inverters, the onboard charging equipment, and a total vehicle packaging that is unmatched in the industry. That said, in my experience, the software sucks.

2) "Jason, you're an idiot." Yes.

3) "Don't you feel dumb now for bashing Tesla?" Huh? This one seems to be a very common comment, which is unfortunate that so many of y'all seem to have as poor of a memory as I do. Because if you go back and watch, you'll hear me consistently say Tesla makes great cars. I have, again and again, said the Model 3 is one of the best daily drivers out there. I've continued to say they're great cars, including in the video where I discussed selling my Model 3.

4) "You didn't do your research, this is your fault." This is a particular favorite haha. I've spent at least 10 days driving numerous versions of these cars before buying one. I've met the engineering teams. I've read the forums, and seen people have had both good and bad experiences. I could not have imagined the software was going to be this poor, as I had not experienced it anywhere near the level I've had with my car, in the many times I've tested these cars. Generally speaking, it seems silly to blame the buyer of a product for a product's problems. But, if you want to call me an idiot, see #2 above! There's a lot of tribal fighting in the comments, which is unfortunate but expected. People love choosing teams and saying "my car is better, my team wins." Lol, okay! Great! But for those who think this way, know that competition in the automotive space is a good thing. It's what pushes companies to do better, and improve their products. Collectively, we should want a wide variety of car companies and products out there to be successful. We all have different preferences, and a market with healthy competition is a great thing for user choice. I really do hope Lucid is successful, as they make a very impressive car. Unfortunately, my experience living with one has not been pleasant, but I'm hopeful they're able to address the issues. Not downplaying the flaws either, they have a lot of work to do.

 

[GTinCT]

I’m very concerned that Lucid does not know how bad this is for the brand. I sure hope they will keep this forum updated to let us know how they are responding.
They should send a senior team out to take the car and Jason back to the factory to show him what went wrong and how they will fix the things that can be fixed. And have him film that process. If they don’t take steps to remedy this, my hopes for the brand will be dimmed.
When they sell a car to a person with 4.2 million subscribers, they should assign a PR person to manage that relationship. This is far more damaging to their brand than anything a celebrity sponsorship can counter.

 

[FathomBlueStealt]

I like EE, watched him over the years and I was very excited when he got the Air Touring, since that's great publicity for Lucid, and I want Lucid to succeed. To this day I'm still very impressed with the Air's hardware, engineering, and performance.


I watched his entire video, while some of his concerns were nitpicky (cup holder etc), the larger points about software glitches, I can relate to, as can many on this forum.

I don't know much about software development, but software is Lucid's Achilles heel as far as I can tell (financials, PIF funding is another), and while I'm sure building a solid, reliable, intuitive and user-friendly software is no easy feat, other car companies have been able to do that, and the optimist in me hopes that lucid will as well.

I remember early in model 3's rollout they had a lot of quality issues, poor fitment, production delays etc the whole "production hell" phase. While I'm not a fan of Elon at all, I give him tons of credit for how he personally became involved in troubleshooting the production issues, and if I recall correctly, he slept at the factory for weeks etc, as resolving this issue was critical for Tesla's financial future.

Imho, I think Lucid needs an all hands on deck, unified focus on the software front. Objectively, lucid makes excellent cars, beautifully designed, well-engineered, excellent range, advanced technology etc etc, the software is the weak link in the chain.

For the software experts out there, an earlier poster mentioned Claude code, and I'm genuinely curious whether tools like this are being used to improve software reliability, debugging or help flag potential issues during quality control testing before a new update release.

I'm also curious whether simulation tools like Monte Carlo have any utility in the testing/quality control stage to help identify bugs pre-release?

 

[hmp10]

We seem to regularly see that reviewers don't fully understand how the software works. To a degree, that's on them. On the other hand, part of good product design is making a product intuitive to use.

I think we regulars on this forum often forget how much more informed about our Lucids we are than typical owners, and we tend to discount how important it is for an automaker to make vehicle operation more intuitive, especially as the number of features explodes. And some (not me, sadly) are considerably more adept at slogging through software issues than many car owners.

As people here were learning how to operate their Gravities, at one point I tried to make a list of the tricks people had to learn to overcome the software glitches their cars were throwing at them. It reached almost a full page before I just gave up. The list of "try-this-if-the-car-does-that" workarounds was simply mind boggling.

As Lucid moves more into mass markets, putting cars into customers' hands that require anything like the number of workarounds it takes to get some Gravities to behave as intended is going to escalate the risk to the company exponentially.

I think we all know that few people read the manual for their car. Failing in that regard is on Lucid.

It would help if the Lucid owners manual had a search feature, especially as it's available only in computer format. As it stands it can be very tedious to find what you need.

For example, my profile got corrupted in our Gravity. Yesterday I tried to delete it to create a new one but couldn't find anything under the profile settings that did so. So I had to resort to the owners manual. But there was no way to search the term "delete profile" or "remove profile" or even just "profile". So I had to guess whether information about profiles was under "Vehicle Overview" or "Driving & Operating" or some other heading.

I finally found it under "Infotainment". But why would it be there, as profiles also control seat settings, mirror and steering wheel settings, etc.? As most people depend on the profile first to put their seats and steering wheel into preferred positions for driving, why wouldn't profile information be under "Seating & Safety Restraints" or "Driving & Operating"? Personally, I don't think of a driver profile as an Infotainment feature.

It's just one other reason a Lucid can be a very tricky and tedious car to operate.

 

[MILucid]

I have had many of the same issues that are mentioned in the video, for example my frunk was 'fixed', but still does the same thing, won't open on the first try. Same software issues as the video.

 

[Gravitas]

I hope you are wrong.

But if this indeed is the case, Lucid cannot re-organize incompetence away. They need to eliminate the weak links. Not hard to find. You will find them in Lucid’s Confluence and Jira.

Big fat LOL!
I literally just took a break from reprioritizing my Jira Kanban Board to catch up on this thread.

 

[tarator]

I watched his entire video, while some of his concerns were nitpicky (cup holder etc), the larger points about software glitches, I can relate to, as can many on this forum.

It's the nitpicky issues that you encounter every day that make or break a car success.

 

[tarator]

@nicktwork has also responded on Facebook groups in the past, fwiw, and exists here as well.

I do hope they formulate a proper response at some point. And I agree it would be better to do it proactively.

Aside: I really, really like Nick.

I don't know Nick, he might be a great person. But being the head of communication and knowing how well Lucid communicates, he is clearly not very good at his job.

 

[Dr Chill]

Every brand of car has lemons. My 2023 AT has been problem free for 45,000 miles with exception of a couple of resets in year 1. Seems like people have had more issues with the 24 and 25 cars. Maybe it's just the ramp up in production or a false impression on my part since there are far greater numbers of these on the road now compared to 22-23.

 

[Halodde]

I didn’t think it was about me. It was, however, about the tenor of the forum, and was, imho, inaccurate. Thus, to make a statement like that (everyone here just dismisses everything by calling it “user error”), you’d have to back it up.

That’s all.

It also was not about the tenor of the forum. It was a general comment based on a few things that I have read here. It was not and is not a reflection of the forum in general, nor is it a reflection of you, me, or how the moderators take care of business here. I am not, however, going to go back through the forum to find examples. Read some of the comments regarding whether or not there was a change to regen at some point or another. It is undeniable that some members are saying that others are flat out wrong (on both sides of the discussion). That's all I was referring to. You say my statement was inaccurate. I disagree. Respectfully. Moving on. Chacun a son gout.

 

[hmp10]

One day after this video went up:

 

[Smorgasbord]

It’s like Harley vs Yamaha, Yamaha is better bikes but more people buy Harley.

Actually, Yamaha outsells Harley handily when you consider all motorcycle offerings. More importantly, Harley's customers are literally dying off and new customers aren't coming into the fold.

In terms of Lucid's market, Tesla has essentially stopped trying to compete there. Sales of Model S and X are down from their heyday, and Tesla really isn't giving those models the attention they need. Back in 2020, Tesla upped Model S's range after Lucid Air came out with a 400 mile range. Back then, Tesla would make performance versions and run them on The Ring for bragging rights. They now instead put most of their efforts into the 3/Y, with new engineering going into the CyberTruck (steer by wire, 4 wheel steering, 48 volt architecture, etc.), with no indication of that tech moving into the S/X supposed flagships.

What I don't get is why Lucid feels the need to spend big bucks on advertising with famous movie stars when they not only don't make cars that many people in this price range will tolerate, they actually don't make enough cars for the demand they do have already. I've been waiting almost 3 months now for my build - with the only news being that if Lucid doesn't make my car in time I lose the deal they promised me when I ordered it.

This is no way to run a car company. Lucid's lucky my wife hates Elon as much as she does.

 

[socktucker]

Actually, Yamaha outsells Harley handily when you consider all motorcycle offerings. More importantly, Harley's customers are literally dying off and new customers aren't coming into the fold.

In terms of Lucid's market, Tesla has essentially stopped trying to compete there. Sales of Model S and X are down from their heyday, and Tesla really isn't giving those models the attention they need. Back in 2020, Tesla upped Model S's range after Lucid Air came out with a 400 mile range. Back then, Tesla would make performance versions and run them on The Ring for bragging rights. They now instead put most of their efforts into the 3/Y, with new engineering going into the CyberTruck (steer by wire, 4 wheel steering, 48 volt architecture, etc.), with no indication of that tech moving into the S/X supposed flagships.

What I don't get is why Lucid feels the need to spend big bucks on advertising with famous movie stars when they not only don't make cars that many people in this price range will tolerate, they actually don't make enough cars for the demand they do have already. I've been waiting almost 3 months now for my build - with the only news being that if Lucid doesn't make my car in time I lose the deal they promised me when I ordered it.

This is no way to run a car company. Lucid's lucky my wife hates Elon as much as she does.

I actually watched that commercial and thought “he would just get stuck there when it wouldn’t recognize the key and have to call customer service”

 

[Smorgasbord]

For the software experts out there, an earlier poster mentioned Claude code, and I'm genuinely curious whether tools like this are being used to improve software reliability, debugging or help flag potential issues during quality control testing before a new update release.

I forget the name of the Tier 2, but Lucid's key card and fob software is done by a third-party company. The question is whether the bugs are that company's fault, or in Lucid's integration of that company's product (which is probably delivered as an ECU).

The Lucid software team is probably getting pressure from both sides: Do they fix bugs or do they work on features they need to sell more cars (like CarPlay)? They probably are doing both, and that's the most difficult to achieve. They may think they have the new features isolated from the bug fixing in terms of who's doing what, but car software is pretty complicated with all the different modules communicating with one another and the real-time constraints on performance with probably not-super-high spec hardware.

I believe their infotainment OS is QNX, which is a good, solid operating system and was designed for real-time operation like in cars and lasic (eye surgery) machines. However, there aren't many developers experienced with it, so often you have to train new hires on the system.

FWIW, I spoke with Vince Nakayama back in 2020, and he was complaining (in a nice way) about Rawlinson not understanding software development.

 

[Bdr100]

I think we regulars on this forum often forget how much more informed about our Lucids we are than typical owners, and we tend to discount how important it is for an automaker to make vehicle operation more intuitive, especially as the number of features explodes. And some (not me, sadly) are considerably more adept at slogging through software issues than many car owners.

As people here were learning how to operate their Gravities, at one point I tried to make a list of the tricks people had to learn to overcome the software glitches their cars were throwing at them. It reached almost a full page before I just gave up. The list of "try-this-if-the-car-does-that" workarounds was simply mind boggling.

As Lucid moves more into mass markets, putting cars into customers' hands that require anything like the number of workarounds it takes to get some Gravities to behave as intended is going to escalate the risk to the company exponentially.




It would help if the Lucid owners manual had a search feature, especially as it's available only in computer format. As it stands it can be very tedious to find what you need.

For example, my profile got corrupted in our Gravity. Yesterday I tried to delete it to create a new one but couldn't find anything under the profile settings that did so. So I had to resort to the owners manual. But there was no way to search the term "delete profile" or "remove profile" or even just "profile". So I had to guess whether information about profiles was under "Vehicle Overview" or "Driving & Operating" or some other heading.

I finally found it under "Infotainment". But why would it be there, as profiles also control seat settings, mirror and steering wheel settings, etc.? As most people depend on the profile first to put their seats and steering wheel into preferred positions for driving, why wouldn't profile information be under "Seating & Safety Restraints" or "Driving & Operating"? Personally, I don't think of a driver profile as an Infotainment feature.

It's just one other reason a Lucid can be a very tricky and tedious car to operate.

I call this the rental car test. A car should be designed (as much as possible) to be an acceptable rental car. You roll in to Avis and rent a car, you jump into it, look around and evaluate the various controls and within 5 minutes you have a good handle on how everything works, start the car and drive off. No need to pull the manual from glove box (if there even is one).

 

[Smorgasbord]

Their European sales will be non-existent...unless their software is perfect. They can't compete with China in Europe.

The Marques Browning video on Xiaomi is, I believe, a true foreshadowing of how the future will play out. Here's a new car company, with its first model released not even 2 years ago, and the software is fast, on point, and apparently almost bug-free. "A $42,000 car that feels like a $75,000 car."

The Xiaomi SU7 shows that automotive software can be done quickly and efficiently and relatively bug-free.

Sure, the car doesn't compete in Lucid's market, but that's only because Xiaomi doesn't want to play in that market - at least not yet. The market is pretty small, after all.

Ironically, the greatness of Xiaomi and other Chinese automakers is, I think, why Elon pivoted Tesla to concentrate on FSD, robotaxis, and robotics. He correctly saw that Tesla couldn't compete in the low end of the market, and probably not even in the mid-market for long. He gave up on the high end of the market years ago and instead put all those engineering marbles into pickups (what could be more American and non-Chinese?), but blew it not just with the vehicle design, but with his own reputation. He once thought Tesla would sell 250,000 CyberTrucks in 2025, but they'll be lucky to sell 20,000. But, that's for another forum.

As far as Lucid goes, the high end of the automotive market is tough. Is Lucid competing with Mercedes or Mayback? With Aston Martin or Lambo (who now makes an SUV - the Urus - too)?

 

[tarator]

I believe their infotainment OS is QNX, which is a good, solid operating system and was designed for real-time operation like in cars and lasic (eye surgery) machines. However, there aren't many developers experienced with it, so often you have to train new hires on the system.

If they are really using QNX, that is a major mistake, IMHO. There are many ways to achieve soft real-time with normal OSes like Linux that are much easier to program.