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ZR1X vs. Sapphire (TL;DW: Sapphire takes the win)

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Takeshi

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ZR1X vs. Sapphire (TL;DW: Sapphire stays ahead.)


When you factor in the curb weight, the Sapphire carries at least a 1,200-pound penalty compared to the ZR1X. By all metrics, it should be at a slight disadvantage. Yet, seeing it consistently stay ahead makes me think Lucid is heavily sandbagging the Sapphire's performance figures. Curious to hear what everyone else thinks!

Dear Lucid may we know the real horsepower numbers?
 
I doubt if we will ever know, but it is a little fun to keep them hidden.

One Emad interview had him saying the motors are good for 675hp *sustained* because of careful thermal design on the inverter.
So, lots of headroom if they ever need a few more ponies... :p
 
Takeshi said:
makes me think Lucid is heavily sandbagging the Sapphire's performance figures
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They are. DE too.

I don’t know what they actually are, but I do know they’re higher.
 
One of the recent magazine articles (Youtube) wanted to compare a Sapphire to a Plaid and went to Tesla for a test vehicle; I believe they already had a Sapphire.

I had no idea that Tesla so carefully curated those performance numbers. They had to give pre-approval for the drag strip (turned down at least one) and have their engineers present to confirm things like VHT sticky, other favorable factors. They work very hard to keep the 0-60 below 2 seconds and are quite conscious of optics, which I actually understand. (Maybe someone will remember the video and post the link.) Also, Tesla seems to optimize the initial jump (cheetah style) while Lucid goes for a long sustained power delivery.

So while the Plaid is super-quick, they always make sure of good rubber, track conditions, optimal settings. Lucid just cheerfully tosses the keys. The upshot is that under the right conditions probably there is a lot more Air performance lurking (and I am thinking all models). The insane jump in 0-60 time by -0.32 seconds by the Sapphire just by switching to Trofero tires is a hint.

Takeshi (Tam) knows I am interested in determining how much traction control is dialing back the power delivery--stay tuned! :eek:
 
Huge advantage for EVs in AZ at high temp and any elevation as well...You can watch the ZR1X 8.7s run that GM posted. It was perfect conditions everywhere, prepped drag strip, fall temps with low humidity, whole army of engineers on the computers tweaking setting after every run. I love that its part of their dev and validate process, but the car is not running that time at any other condition....
 
illopp00 said:
Huge advantage for EVs in AZ at high temp and any elevation as well...You can watch the ZR1X 8.7s run that GM posted. It was perfect conditions everywhere, prepped drag strip, fall temps with low humidity, whole army of engineers on the computers tweaking setting after every run. I love that its part of their dev and validate process, but the car is not running that time at any other condition....
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Exactly--great observations.
 
borski said:
They are. DE too.

I don’t know what they actually are, but I do know they’re higher.
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Not altogether sure where Lucid got it's tongue-in-cheek numbers:


1234 hp -- Somebody here more conversant that me observed this is possibly an Elon troll based upon a Spaceballs reference
1111 hp -- No idea, maybe because Plaid was dyno'ed at 1101 so 10 better (https://insideevs.com/news/562863/tesla-models-plaid-dyno-tests/) or just 90% of Sapphire
1050 hp -- Plaid advertised plus an arbitrary 30 hp better just to troll, or 95% of DE
933 hp -- God only knows, but ~90% of GTP

At any rate, the above numbers seem to come more from the marketing department than engineering, and they seem to be having great fun.
 
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We know the Zeus motor is capable of 670 HP. With a tri-motor vehicle like the Sapphire, it wouldn't surprise me if they were getting closer to 1,500 HP combined.
 
The_Don said:
We know the Zeus motor is capable of 670 HP. With a tri-motor vehicle like the Sapphire, it wouldn't surprise me if they were getting closer to 1,500 HP combined.
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Yes you could figure it out from some 1/4 mi calculators, or looking at the battery math details (cell voltage, series arrangement, C rates) to figure out the discharge power..
 
illopp00 said:
Yes you could figure it out from some 1/4 mi calculators, or looking at the battery math details (cell voltage, series arrangement, C rates) to figure out the discharge power..
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Well, kinda not which is the point.

With traction control active, the instant (1/1000 sec) slip is detected, the inverter limits current until traction is restored so we do not know using 1/4 times and mass.
If TC is disabled, the wheels simply spin so no calculations work in that case. So maximum theoretical current is unknown to us (Lucid engineers do know).

Calculating the C-rate (or actually over-rate most likely) does not work since the motor current-limiting does not let full power flow. There is also the factor of asymmetric delivery since, due to weight shift, the rear can absorb more power, which is why dual rear motors work. It is possible they compute sum total current and share fore and aft appropriately. In the case of dual motors, you likely hit the rear motor limit.

The only true way to extract this number is to keep improving traction (ie wider tires, better compound) until a plateau is reached which gives a rough estimate. This is why the switch to better compound had such a dramatic effect. But there may be more beyond what the Sapphire is demonstrating on 295 tires today.

On my Model Y I have access to all of these numbers on the CAN bus, and my assumption was perfect delivery to the wheels. So approximately 550 hp out of the pack delivery to a shared 475 hp or so at the ground (from my often-wrong memory). No CAN bus visible on Lucids.
 
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Takeshi said:
ZR1X vs. Sapphire (TL;DW: Sapphire stays ahead.)


When you factor in the curb weight, the Sapphire carries at least a 1,200-pound penalty compared to the ZR1X. By all metrics, it should be at a slight disadvantage. Yet, seeing it consistently stay ahead makes me think Lucid is heavily sandbagging the Sapphire's performance figures. Curious to hear what everyone else thinks!

Dear Lucid may we know the real horsepower numbers?
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Keep in mind that HP is a lousy way to characterize motor performance, as it's just reported as a peak number. I assume both vehicle's stats are accurate, but that still leaves a lot of room for different performance as they accelerate through rising RPMs and gear shifts.
 
As they've said on the Haggerty videos electric motors have maximum torque at zero RPM (so from the instant you apply power, no need to rev the motors) and the traction control on an electric car can adjust the power to a motor 1000 times per second to each motor while the ICE car has a tough time doing a few times per second. Thus you get better power application to the wheels with an electric car (or you can get better power application if things are programmed well in the EV)
 
drb3333 said:
... It is possible they compute sum total current and share fore and aft appropriately. In the case of dual motors, you likely hit the rear motor limit.
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Sorry to extend this posting, but I can now confirm that Lucid vectors torque front and back on the dual motors (!) as well as laterally on the tri-motor Sapphire.

This comes from Eric Bach Inverter Tech Talk minute 22:00, which I find personally find interesting.

Potentially, if your vehicle needs 60-70% more power at the rear wheels, it can proportion the maximum allocated with the front, I think.
(Ke2, thanks for the comment on kW vs hp as a metric. I also prefer to refer the 670 hp motor as 500kW but it is most useful in comparing to ICE to stick with hp, sometimes.)

 
From the limited amount that I understand, any hp beyond what spins the wheels is actually irrelevant. I learned a while ago that the primary limiting factor in straight-line acceleration for current vehicles is not hp. It's the tires keeping grip. So you could theoretically put a top-fuel drag engine in a car and get the exact same 1/4 mile time because when the computer senses the tires starting to slip, it's gonna dial back the hp to what the tires can handle. Is this accurate from what you know?
 
Halodde said:
From the limited amount that I understand, any hp beyond what spins the wheels is actually irrelevant. I learned a while ago that the primary limiting factor in straight-line acceleration for current vehicles is not hp. It's the tires keeping grip. So you could theoretically put a top-fuel drag engine in a car and get the exact same 1/4 mile time because when the computer senses the tires starting to slip, it's gonna dial back the hp to what the tires can handle. Is this accurate from what you know?
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Yes, that's largely accurate. There are caveats, in that you can select tires that can handle more power, and (as a prior post notes) a very rapidly adjusting traction control system can do amazing things to adapt to the little imperfections in the road and lay down maximum power.
 
TahoeMichael said:
Yes, that's largely accurate. There are caveats, in that you can select tires that can handle more power, and (as a prior post notes) a very rapidly adjusting traction control system can do amazing things to adapt to the little imperfections in the road and lay down maximum power.
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Yeah that's consistent. But it still boils down to the fact that once the tires slip, any more hp doesn't matter. There's obviously things you can do to prevent them from slipping and that's exactly what the traction control and tire manufacturing engineers are trying to figure out. What are the optimal traction control settings and adjustments, tire size, tire compound etc...? If it's a marketable feature, you know they're working on it.

They probably spend significantly less time on marketing ambient temperature 😂
 
martinjlm said:
Probably don't want to get into a public tit-for-tat. There is a Jason Cammisa video where ZR1X gets the win. Jason Cammisa is super credible in the auto and media world.

ZR1X vs Sapphire vs BMW M2 CS vs Golf R
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I get it but they need to take the wins when they get them. We always talk about marketing here and their failures. Seems to me they don’t maximize on the viral stuff when it goes positive.
 
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