Dream drive pro and autonomy subscription

[DrJBell]

Has anyone heard how this is actually going to be implemented?

Can you imagine paying $6,500 for DreamDrive Pro/sensors back in 2022 or whenever and then, years later, being told you need a subscription to fully use the advanced features those sensors were purchased for? I really hope Lucid plans to grandfather existing owners who paid thousands upfront into some type of non-subscription access to the capabilities of the hardware they already paid for.

I understand that software development and ongoing ADAS improvements cost money, and I don’t necessarily have a problem with Lucid charging for future, substantially more advanced capabilities. But there needs to be some distinction between someone who paid thousands upfront for the hardware and someone who gets the hardware today at a much lower cost with the expectation of paying a recurring subscription.

To me, it should be one or the other: either charge a higher upfront price and give owners access to the capabilities of the hardware they purchased, or make the hardware much cheaper and use a subscription model for the advanced software.

I honestly don’t know how other automakers are handling this, so I’m curious what people think. But I’d be pretty disappointed if someone who spent $6,500 on DreamDrive Pro ends up paying another recurring fee just to finally get the full use of the sensors they’ve had sitting in the car for a few years.

 

[DeaneG]

....But I’d be pretty disappointed if someone who spent $6,500 on DreamDrive Pro ends up paying another recurring fee just to finally get the full use of the sensors they’ve had sitting in the car for a few years.

With Tesla, you either pay the one-time fee, or the subscription, not both.
There's probably not a lot to be gained by speculating what Lucid might do for Cosmos, or even for the anticipated emerging capability for Gravity.
Time will tell.

 

[DrJBell]

With Tesla, you either pay the one-time fee, or the subscription, not both. There's probably not a lot to be gained by speculating what Lucid might do for Cosmos, or even for the anticipated emerging capability for Gravity. Time will tell.

With Tesla, you either pay the one-time fee, or the subscription, not both. There's probably not a lot to be gained by speculating what Lucid might do for Cosmos, or even for the anticipated emerging capability for Gravity. Time will tell.

Fair I was thinking of Air when I wrote this, for tesla i assume they don’t charge separately for the cameras they need for FSD because all their cars have them is that correct?

 

[DeaneG]

Fair I was thinking of Air when I wrote this, for tesla i assume they don’t charge separately for the cameras they need for FSD because all their cars have them is that correct?

That's correct.

 

[Buffalo Bob]

The sad fact is that Lucid telegraphs little intent to ever deliver early Air owners anything even close to what we paid $10,000 for. A little less of a miss for those who paid only $6,500. Now, having noted this, a bunch of revisionists with other vested interests will protest that Lucid never promised anything of the sort, that we were absolute fools to shell out hard money for a promise, and that the right thing for Lucid to do is to forget about honoring commitments (at least as best as possible) to their early adopters, and instead focus of them and their interests.... Of course, unless and until it's their turn in the barrel.

 

[DrJBell]

That's correct.

The sad fact is that Lucid telegraphs little intent to ever deliver early Air owners anything even close to what we paid $10,000 for. A little less of a miss for those who paid only $6,500. Now, having noted this, a bunch of revisionists with other vested interests will protest that Lucid never promised anything of the sort, that we were absolute fools to shell out hard money for a promise, and that the right thing for Lucid to do is to forget about honoring commitments (at least as best as possible) to their early adopters, and instead focus of them and their interests.... Of course, unless and until it's their turn in the barrel.

wow 10k, what did you believe was going to be future capabilities? I am curious because even now the website just says: future-capable advanced driver assistance system hardware available, and this is so vague they can essentially say anything satisfies this requirement. It would be nice if they just say L2++ or some other more specific thing. That said I love my lucid I just think in this time of focusing on customers and trying to rebuild they really need to be a little more transparent on these points and be crystal clear on what the car can actually do right now and what they truly believe the car will be able to do in the future if you pay for something that isn't available at purchase.

 

[erigion]

Lucid announced something during the Investor presentation in March. From pg 107:

"DreamDrive Pro $69 –199 / mo. Tiered by ADAS level (L2++ to L4) H1 2027"

This was made under the previous management team so take these prices and timeline with a grain of salt.

This presentation also made it clear that hands free city driving would not be coming to this generation of Air. Again, made under the previous management team but the Air's hardware makes it difficult to see any kind of supervised point to point ADAS.

 

[bcjenkins]

the Air's hardware makes it difficult to see any kind of supervised point to point ADAS.

I don’t understand this statement. Can you explain?

I’m asking out of ignorance of the full capabilities of DDP; not asking to challenge you.

 

[erigion]

I don’t understand this statement. Can you explain?

I’m asking out of ignorance of the full capabilities of DDP; not asking to challenge you.

Lucid Air runs on a nvidia Orin SoC. This chip is rated for 256 INT8 TOPS (trillion operations per second). TOPS is a measure of how powerful the chip is.

The Gravity uses 2x Orin SoCs or about 500 TOPS.

Midsize uses 2x nvidia Thor SoCs. These are the latest generation of chips from nvidia and can do ~1000 TOPS each so about 2k total. The self-driving Gravitys for Nuro/Uber also use this setup.

Funny thing is, Tesla's current gen HW4/AI4 is estimated at 150-175 TOPS but their software is completely custom. It's also probably not capable of full unsupervised driving but Cybercabs are launching on AI4 so who knows. Maybe that's why the rollout/testing has been so slow. Their next gen AI5 hardware is rumored to have 2000-2500 TOPS.

Lucid uses Nvidia's alphamayo as the base for their ADAS systems. Unlike Tesla, Nvidia has no real reason to make their model efficient. Maybe the Air could do it if Lucid spent a lot of money on it but they don't have the money to spare. Gravity sounds like it will be able to do supervised point-to-point eventually (and they had hands-free city driving as coming in 2027 in the investor presentation) but who knows when.

Another comparison point is Rivian Gen2 (R1T, R1S, and launch edition R2s). They use the same setup as Gravity (2x Orin). Unlike Lucid, they are going the Tesla route and building their own custom ADAS software. They have stated that supervised point-to-point ADAS is coming to Gen2 vehicles. Unsupervised P2P is supposed to come to Gen3 models. This generation will use custom designed chips capable of 1600 TOPS. Gen1 Rivians are essentially done. They use some old Mobileye hardware that is nowhere near capable enough.

The guts of the Air are outdated, and the Gravity will soon be outdated. This isn't even taking into account the number of ECUs used in these models. Midsize is going to run on 3 chips. Gravity has 13 and Air has 30ish?. Lucid can't just slap the latest gen chips into these two models. It would take complete redesigns to bring them up to date. This is probably why Tesla discontinued the S and X. They did not think spending the money redesigning the internals for AI5 would be worth it with how few they sell every year.

If I owned an Air, I would not hold my breath for new ADAS capabilities beyond a self-parking feature that is slated for 2027.

 

[bcjenkins]

Lucid Air runs on a nvidia Orin SoC. …

Very informative. Thank you.

 

[socktucker]

would not hold my breath for new ADAS capabilities

That’s what I thought about UX 3.0 but they’re doing a demo in Newark of it so wtf do I know. Nobody knows right now.

 

[borski]

That’s what I thought about UX 3.0 but they’re doing a demo in Newark of it so wtf do I know. Nobody knows right now.

The infotainment is a single ECU, and you can buy the latest version of the CCC to run it. ADAS is quite a bit more complex and does not run on the CCC.

 

[Buffalo Bob]

wow 10k, what did you believe was going to be future capabilities? I am curious because even now the website just says: future-capable advanced driver assistance system hardware available, and this is so vague they can essentially say anything satisfies this requirement. It would be nice if they just say L2++ or some other more specific thing. That said I love my lucid I just think in this time of focusing on customers and trying to rebuild they really need to be a little more transparent on these points and be crystal clear on what the car can actually do right now and what they truly believe the car will be able to do in the future if you pay for something that isn't available at purchase.

Sorry for the delayed reply... My $10,000 figure was incorrect, as it turns out that we *only* paid $9,000 for DreamDrive Pro. As for what was expected, you might want to listen around the 4:20 point of the DreamDrive Pro release, where hands-off / eyes-off driving is clearly promised. Other similar presentations exist. The level of autonomy of Waymo or Tesla FSD was never promised, and Lucid has quietly diluted DDP's capabilities from presentation to presentation... to the point that I wonder if any further improvements are coming. For that matter, I wonder if they can even get hands-on / eyes-on driving to work properly. We just returned from a 300 mile trip, and hands-off driving is little more than an exercise in frustration, with incessant pay attention and take control warnings despite having my eyes all but nailed to the road. Ugh!

 

[DrJBell]

Sorry for the delayed reply... My $10,000 figure was incorrect, as it turns out that we *only* paid $9,000 for DreamDrive Pro. As for what was expected, you might want to listen around the 4:20 point of the DreamDrive Pro release, where hands-off / eyes-off driving is clearly promised. Other similar presentations exist. The level of autonomy of Waymo or Tesla FSD was never promised, and Lucid has quietly diluted DDP's capabilities from presentation to presentation... to the point that I wonder if any further improvements are coming. For that matter, I wonder if they can even get hands-on / eyes-on driving to work properly. We just returned from a 300 mile trip, and hands-off driving is little more than an exercise in frustration, with incessant pay attention and take control warnings despite having my eyes all but nailed to the road. Ugh!

That was clear as day hands off eyes off! I have DD premium since I was leasing and didn’t see the value in the pro since most of the features weren’t there but I have enjoyed multiple road trips in the air because it’s so awesome to drive. Sorry you had issues on your recent trip. Will be interesting to see how they handle this. I think they will have to just give this to people without a subscription and charge a subscription for future purchases because otherwise they will easily have a lawsuit on their hands.

 

[socktucker]

Sorry for the delayed reply... My $10,000 figure was incorrect, as it turns out that we *only* paid $9,000 for DreamDrive Pro. As for what was expected, you might want to listen around the 4:20 point of the DreamDrive Pro release, where hands-off / eyes-off driving is clearly promised. Other similar presentations exist. The level of autonomy of Waymo or Tesla FSD was never promised, and Lucid has quietly diluted DDP's capabilities from presentation to presentation... to the point that I wonder if any further improvements are coming. For that matter, I wonder if they can even get hands-on / eyes-on driving to work properly. We just returned from a 300 mile trip, and hands-off driving is little more than an exercise in frustration, with incessant pay attention and take control warnings despite having my eyes all but nailed to the road. Ugh!

The parking assist they show doesn’t even work like that either. Has to have a car on BOTH sides.

 

[DrJBell]

I noticed that and was surprised by it, but I do know during investor day they did show it on the roadmap. The only is i don’t remember if that was only for gravity or if it also included air.

 

[Buffalo Bob]

That was clear as day hands off eyes off! I have DD premium since I was leasing and didn’t see the value in the pro since most of the features weren’t there but I have enjoyed multiple road trips in the air because it’s so awesome to drive. Sorry you had issues on your recent trip. Will be interesting to see how they handle this. I think they will have to just give this to people without a subscription and charge a subscription for future purchases because otherwise they will easily have a lawsuit on their hands.

I could tolerate the current level of hands-on / eyes-on Highway Assist if the hands-on part was based on galvanic skin response. With it being torque based, I cannot help but torque the wheel in the direction I want to go, so it ends up just about indistinguishable from driving the car myself in Adaptive Mode.

Hands-off attention monitoring is even more baffling. I can drive the car in hands-on / eyes-on mode for hours and only get a 'pay attention' warning if I do something stupid like fiddling with music selections too long. Just the way it should be! If I switch to hands-off / eyes-on mode, I can't get five minutes at peace. Why would the 'pay attention' bar be set lower for hands-on mode than it is for hands-off mode? To me, that makes no sense at all.

As far as wondering how Lucid is going to handle the massive deliverable shortfalls from hands-off / eyes-off.... I hate to say it, but it looks they are going to stick with a case of selective amnesia... Perhaps from staring too long at the Lidar/Radar/Sensor arrays while wondering how the hell Tesla beat them so badly with nothing more than a few crappy cameras.

 

[Buffalo Bob]

The parking assist they show doesn’t even work like that either. Has to have a car on BOTH sides.

That's why I have never even tried to use it! I'm not about to squeeze my nice car between two other cars in the typically tight US parking spaces, where door dings are practically assured, so I end up parking in the south forty anyway.

 

[illopp00]

The Air's steering column design is a bit finicky, because the eye tracker is mounted to the dash and you have to get it just right to get it to behave. I personally have never had excessive warnings with hand-free but it does need a certain person height and seating and steering position....

 

[socktucker]

That's why I have never even tried to use it! I'm not about to squeeze my nice car between two other cars in the typically tight US parking spaces, where door dings are practically assured, so I end up parking in the south forty anyway.

Literally the last place I want to park is between two cars