Road Trip Report

[hmp10]

We’re wrapping up a ~2,000 mile road trip with our car, which turned 7,000 miles along the way. Part of the reason for this trip was to vet the car in conditions we don’t encounter in everyday local driving. So . . . .

Driving and Riding

This car is a superb sports / grand touring sedan. The balance of power, handling, suspension compliance, and body solidity is the best I have ever encountered, including the Mercedes, Audis, BMWs, and Tesla Model S’s I have owned and driven. The seating comfort, though inevitably compromised by the accommodation of the battery pack, is remarkable after hours on end, and the visual openness of the canopy makes one forget the thick roof rails and high belt line. Despite bright sunshine and temperatures reaching 108, the cabin never became uncomfortable.

Range and Charging

We averaged about 81% of EPA range in highway driving without cruise control and hovering around 80 mph, both frequently dropping below and accelerating quickly above that to avoid traffic snarls. In fact, our range was better than I had planned for, and we were able to skip a couple of charging stops I had planned, including one on the long climb from Columbia, SC into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Electrify America situation was spotty. While there were charging stations everywhere we needed them and we were never unable to charge, there were several episodes of authorization failures and other equipment malfunctions that required us to try a second charging spot and even a third spot on one occasion. While we were seldom alone at a charging station, there was always at least one functioning spot available. Another issue was that some of the EA stations are in the remote reaches of huge Walmart parking lots with no eating or bathroom venues nearby in the brutally hot, humid, and sometimes rainy weather. So several times we had to add eating and bathroom break times on top of the charging times, contributing to lengthy charging stops.

Software

This continues to be the Achilles heel of an otherwise phenomenal car. We had one occasion where the car failed to recognize that charging had been stopped and required us to use the emergency manual release to free the charging cable. We started the trip on software version 1.2.1 and ended up using our phones for navigation due to the comically bad (in a black comedy sort of way) performance of the Nav system and Alexa’s inability to locate chargers using the charger addresses on the EA website. Halfway through the trip we got the 1.2.6 update, and the Nav system began to operate better. But this morning it all went to hell in a hand basket. We started the morning with Alexa accepting the correct charge station address, plotting the route accurately, and tracking our progress properly. Then we made the mistake of taking a bathroom break. When we got back in the car, the Nav system had lost the route (an issue which was supposedly fixed with 1.2.6 and had functioned properly the prior day). When we tried to voice input the address again, we got all kinds of weird guesses from Alexa which kept trying to take us to, among other places, some bistro, none remotely like the address we were giving it. An attempt to input the address manually only worked after several tries. When we started moving, Alexa told us to drive 0.2 miles and then make a turn. (We had already joined an interstate from a state-run rest area, and there were no turns called for in over a hundred miles.). The Glass Cockpit was displaying an odd symbol in the Nav system that we had never seen before, and after a couple of miles we noticed that the position arrows were not moving and that the screens were frozen. A couple of minutes later, the right side of the Glass Cockpit and the Pilot Screen went black.

I called Lucid Customer Service and was told I would have to get off the highway, park the car, and leave it for at least 15 minutes while it went into sleep mode for a hard reset. So . . . a very annoying unplanned stop when we finally got to a convenient stopover point after miles of driving with two black control screens.

Conclusion

This is a car engineered and built by world-class automotive engineers with user-interfacing software apparently developed as a trade school project by the students who were sentenced to summer school.

 

[DeaneG]

With all due respect to the world-class automotive engineers, in my opinion software is the most complex thing humans have ever built. It's common for a complex electromechanical product to require 2-5x as many software engineers as the sum total of mechanical and electrical engineers.

 

[Pete44]

We’re wrapping up a ~2,000 mile road trip with our car, which turned 7,000 miles along the way. Part of the reason for this trip was to vet the car in conditions we don’t encounter in everyday local driving. So . . . .

Driving and Riding

This car is a superb sports / grand touring sedan. The balance of power, handling, suspension compliance, and body solidity is the best I have ever encountered, including the Mercedes, Audis, BMWs, and Tesla Model S’s I have owned and driven. The seating comfort, though inevitably compromised by the accommodation of the battery pack, is remarkable after hours on end, and the visual openness of the canopy makes one forget the thick roof rails and high belt line. Despite bright sunshine and temperatures reaching 108, the cabin never became uncomfortable.

Range and Charging

We averaged about 81% of EPA range in highway driving without cruise control and hovering around 80 mph, both frequently dropping below and accelerating quickly above that to avoid traffic snarls. In fact, our range was better than I had planned for, and we were able to skip a couple of charging stops I had planned, including one on the long climb from Columbia, SC into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Electrify America situation was spotty. While there were charging stations everywhere we needed them and we were never unable to charge, there were several episodes of authorization failures and other equipment malfunctions that required us to try a second charging spot and even a third spot on one occasion. While we were seldom alone at a charging station, there was always at least one functioning spot available. Another issue was that some of the EA stations are in the remote reaches of huge Walmart parking lots with no eating or bathroom venues nearby in the brutally hot, humid, and sometimes rainy weather. So several times we had to add eating and bathroom break times on top of the charging times, contributing to lengthy charging stops.

Software

This continues to be the Achilles heel of an otherwise phenomenal car. We had one occasion where the car failed to recognize that charging had been stopped and required us to use the emergency manual release to free the charging cable. We started the trip on software version 1.2.1 and ended up using our phones for navigation due to the comically bad (in a black comedy sort of way) performance of the Nav system and Alexa’s inability to locate chargers using the charger addresses on the EA website. Halfway through the trip we got the 1.2.6 update, and the Nav system began to operate better. But this morning it all went to hell in a hand basket. We started the morning with Alexa accepting the correct charge station address, plotting the route accurately, and tracking our progress properly. Then we made the mistake of taking a bathroom break. When we got back in the car, the Nav system had lost the route (an issue which was supposedly fixed with 1.2.6 and had functioned properly the prior day). When we tried to voice input the address again, we got all kinds of weird guesses from Alexa which kept trying to take us to, among other places, some bistro, none remotely like the address we were giving it. An attempt to input the address manually only worked after several tries. When we started moving, Alexa told us to drive 0.2 miles and then make a turn. (We had already joined an interstate from a state-run rest area, and there were no turns called for in over a hundred miles.). The Glass Cockpit was displaying an odd symbol in the Nav system that we had never seen before, and after a couple of miles we noticed that the position arrows were not moving and that the screens were frozen. A couple of minutes later, the right side of the Glass Cockpit and the Pilot Screen went black.

I called Lucid Customer Service and was told I would have to get off the highway, park the car, and leave it for at least 15 minutes while it went into sleep mode for a hard reset. So . . . a very annoying unplanned stop when we finally got to a convenient stopover point after miles of driving with two black control screens.

Conclusion

This is a car engineered and built by world-class automotive engineers with user-interfacing software apparently developed as a trade school project by the students who were sentenced to summer school.

Thanks for the as always thoughtful and balanced write up, especially since it seems you haven't made it back to Naples yet. So much for the cool air of the North Carolina mountains!

 

[HC_79]

This is a car engineered and built by world-class automotive engineers with user-interfacing software apparently developed as a trade school project by the students who were sentenced to summer school.

 

[DBV]

Great write-up. The software issues on this car are really too bad. Good thing, they are not building many of these right now, as this could crush them if there were lots more owners and the EV market getting so competitive. Hopefully, they get it right soon. If I was Lucid, I would get CarPlay out asap.

 

[hmp10]

With all due respect to the world-class automotive engineers, in my opinion software is the most complex thing humans have ever built. It's common for a complex electromechanical product to require 2-5x as many software engineers as the sum total of mechanical and electrical engineers.

That may be. But since premium carmakers now sell products that can only be operated largely through software, it’s on them to hire as much good talent as is required to make the car reliably operable.

 

[HC_79]

That may be. But since premium carmakers now sell products that can only be operated largely through software, it’s on them to hire as much good talent as is required to make the car reliably operable.

I agree. Look at Rivians software compared to Lucids. Both companies have a similar startup path and Rivian seemed to do a way better job when it came to software. For Lucid, it seemed like it was an afterthought and took the "don't worry, we'll fix it via OTA". The problem is, it's not a cheap brand and people have certain expectations when it comes to a purchase of this value. Lucid are the ones that sold themselves as a "Luxury" brand and somehow thought the software they've delivered is worthy of a "Luxury" car.

 

[joec]

I agree. Look at Rivians software compared to Lucids. Both companies have a similar startup path and Rivian seemed to do a way better job when it came to software. For Lucid, it seemed like it was an afterthought and took the "don't worry, we'll fix it via OTA". The problem is, it's not a cheap brand and people have certain expectations when it comes to a purchase of this value. Lucid are the ones that sold themselves as a "Luxury" brand and somehow thought the software they've delivered is worthy of a "Luxury" car.

I still feel like there's a story to tell with Lucid's software. The design seems to have been done right, visually, UX and such. But I still get the feeling someone overpromised and underdelivered on the actual code. It feels like they are playing catchup with basic functionality, which has all the hallmarks of either overly ambitious aims, or a "start all over from scratch" moment that happened way too late in the process to wait for before shipping the first cars. They probably figured they could get a handle on it in a few months, which they sort of have done, but not quite.

I don't envy that team. My guess is they know exactly how much work is cut out for them.

 

[hmp10]

So much for the cool air of the North Carolina mountains!

Being so hill- and curve-deprived from living in south Florida, the high point of the trip was the day we spent driving the Blue Ridge Parkway (where the temperatures were 20 degrees lower than in Asheville). We also explored all the switchback side roads that climbed up the mountainsides from the Parkway.

Driving the Lucid on the Parkway and up and down the switchbacks was almost otherworldly. The endless pull of the car, the seamless regenerative braking, and the chassis solidity and suspension precision on the banked curves, coupled with the eerie silence of the drivetrain, was mesmerizing. It’s been years since I’ve so enjoyed driving a car.

 

[DaveyBoyGT]

Being so hill- and curve-deprived from living in south Florida, the high point of the trip was the day we spent driving the Blue Ridge Parkway (where the temperatures were 20 degrees lower than in Asheville). We also explored all the switchback side roads that climbed up the mountainsides from the Parkway.

Driving the Lucid on the Parkway and up and down the switchbacks was almost otherworldly. The endless pull of the car, the seamless regenerative braking, and the chassis solidity and suspension precision on the banked curves, coupled with the eerie silence of the drivetrain, was mesmerizing. It’s been years since I’ve so enjoyed driving a car.

Being so hill- and curve-deprived from living in south Florida, the high point of the trip was the day we spent driving the Blue Ridge Parkway (where the temperatures were 20 degrees lower than in Asheville). We also explored all the switchback side roads that climbed up the mountainsides from the Parkway.

Driving the Lucid on the Parkway and up and down the switchbacks was almost otherworldly. The endless pull of the car, the seamless regenerative braking, and the chassis solidity and suspension precision on the banked curves, coupled with the eerie silence of the drivetrain, was mesmerizing. It’s been years since I’ve so enjoyed driving a car.

Glad to see you enjoyed your drive on the BR parkway in NC/SC. I have driven those roads often and enjoy the cruising time on them. That being said, if you really want to have a spectacular road ride you should take highway 221(Blowing Rock Hwy) from Linville NC to Blowing Rock NC. It is about a 15Mi stretch that generally parallels the BR Pkwy. But after driving that road, driving the BR Pkwy seems like an interstate highway. Haha. It is exhilarating, scary, and exhausting. Can't wait until I get my Lucid to try the out the road.

 

[hmp10]

Glad to see you enjoyed your drive on the BR parkway in NC/SC. I have driven those roads often and enjoy the cruising time on them. That being said, if you really want to have a spectacular road ride you should take highway 221(Blowing Rock Hwy) from Linville NC to Blowing Rock NC. It is about a 15Mi stretch that generally parallels the BR Pkwy. But after driving that road, driving the BR Pkwy seems like an interstate highway. Haha. It is exhilarating, scary, and exhausting. Can't wait until I get my Lucid to try the out the road.

We have friends who have a house in Blowing Rock, and that was part of our original plan. However, events kept them at another house longer than expected, so we missed seeing the Blowing Rock area. Next time, though.

 

[hmp10]

We're home after six days in the Lucid Air. The car was a blast to drive, very comfortable, and consistently beat our anticipated range. (We never arrived at an EA charger with less than 30% charge on the car, despite my estimates of 20% based on the range we experienced in local driving on mostly open roadways. Our car, EPA rated at 3.9 m/kWh, regularly got 3.1-3.2 on the interstates with steady 80-mph cruising.) However, software and charging issues really began to get under our skin before the trip was over. On our last day we encountered yet another Electrify America station where two of the chargers were out of service. In fact, although we were always able to charge, only once did we hit a station where we did not have to change charge cables at least once.

On the software side, we got one full day of problem-free software behavior in the 6-day trip, that being the day following the night that version 1.2.6 downloaded. After the mess with the Nav system yesterday that I reported on in the opening post on this thread, we had a series of small glitches today on the final leg home. The car kept losing the bluetooth connection to my iPhone. The Nav system terminated route guidance at every stop for a food or bathroom break, although 1.2.6 supposedly fixed this and had done so in our car that first day after the download. Alexa was unable to find our home address, although it was entered in the system as our home address. I had to type the address in the search bar manually. At two stops today, the car failed to lock the doors, even though we were careful to take both cell phones, both key cards, and the key fob with us when we left the car. At other stops, the doors locked automatically, as they should.

During today's drive, my partner mentioned that he was thinking of taking his kids on a road trip to New Orleans when they visit from Poland this fall. I asked him which car he planned to take. He said that, although he much preferred driving and riding in the Lucid, he was going to take either the Tesla or the Honda Odyssey, as he was just fed up with wondering from moment to moment which software failure he'd be confronting.

I then asked him how he'd feel driving the Tesla yoke for several days, and he grimaced. This led to a discussion about what the Tesla with its yoke would have been like on the switchbacks in the Blue Ridge mountains. This time he groaned. Personally, I would not even have attempted those roads with the yoke.

It's just such a shame that a car that gets so many things so beautifully right as does the Lucid is still grappling with such dodgy software. I soldier on in faith that time will produce the cure, but the wait is starting to get exasperating, especially as much-touted updates fall flat.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

That may be. But since premium carmakers now sell products that can only be operated largely through software, it’s on them to hire as much good talent as is required to make the car reliably operable.

Did your right screen and pilot panel go black black, or just go into the Lucid boot up screen with the night time scene and it just says Lucid? Mine did the crash to Lucid boot up screen after I installed 1.2.6 while I was driving and using the navigation, and a normal reboot fixed it.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Being so hill- and curve-deprived from living in south Florida, the high point of the trip was the day we spent driving the Blue Ridge Parkway (where the temperatures were 20 degrees lower than in Asheville). We also explored all the switchback side roads that climbed up the mountainsides from the Parkway.

Driving the Lucid on the Parkway and up and down the switchbacks was almost otherworldly. The endless pull of the car, the seamless regenerative braking, and the chassis solidity and suspension precision on the banked curves, coupled with the eerie silence of the drivetrain, was mesmerizing. It’s been years since I’ve so enjoyed driving a car.

I took an Audi S4 on the BR parkway a few years back and got hit by a freak snow storm once we got to the top in the middle of April. We were the only car on the road up there and it was fantastic even though terrifying, the Audi AWD kept me in control the whole way down. I would LOVE to take the Lucid on that road in any conditions, gotta make plans for that once my kid gets old enough to handle a longer road trip, and by then Lucid will have either figured out their software or will have actually gone bankrupt because they didn’t figure out their software haha.

 

[hmp10]

Did your right screen and pilot panel go black black, or just go into the Lucid boot up screen with the night time scene and it just says Lucid? Mine did the crash to Lucid boot up screen after I installed 1.2.6 while I was driving and using the navigation, and a normal reboot fixed it.

The right side of the Glass Cockpit went totally black. The Pilot Screen showed the Lucid logo with the night sky background. We tried the soft reboot at the rest area at the direction of Lucid Customer Care, but it did not resolve the issue of the Nav system freezing. As we needed to get back on the road, we just decided to proceed with the navigation on our cell phones. But once the screens blacked out while we were underway on the interstate, we had no choice but to get off the highway and do the longer hard reboot.

 

[n8236]

We’re wrapping up a ~2,000 mile road trip with our car, which turned 7,000 miles along the way. Part of the reason for this trip was to vet the car in conditions we don’t encounter in everyday local driving. So . . . .

Driving and Riding

This car is a superb sports / grand touring sedan. The balance of power, handling, suspension compliance, and body solidity is the best I have ever encountered, including the Mercedes, Audis, BMWs, and Tesla Model S’s I have owned and driven. The seating comfort, though inevitably compromised by the accommodation of the battery pack, is remarkable after hours on end, and the visual openness of the canopy makes one forget the thick roof rails and high belt line. Despite bright sunshine and temperatures reaching 108, the cabin never became uncomfortable.

Range and Charging

We averaged about 81% of EPA range in highway driving without cruise control and hovering around 80 mph, both frequently dropping below and accelerating quickly above that to avoid traffic snarls. In fact, our range was better than I had planned for, and we were able to skip a couple of charging stops I had planned, including one on the long climb from Columbia, SC into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Electrify America situation was spotty. While there were charging stations everywhere we needed them and we were never unable to charge, there were several episodes of authorization failures and other equipment malfunctions that required us to try a second charging spot and even a third spot on one occasion. While we were seldom alone at a charging station, there was always at least one functioning spot available. Another issue was that some of the EA stations are in the remote reaches of huge Walmart parking lots with no eating or bathroom venues nearby in the brutally hot, humid, and sometimes rainy weather. So several times we had to add eating and bathroom break times on top of the charging times, contributing to lengthy charging stops.

Software

This continues to be the Achilles heel of an otherwise phenomenal car. We had one occasion where the car failed to recognize that charging had been stopped and required us to use the emergency manual release to free the charging cable. We started the trip on software version 1.2.1 and ended up using our phones for navigation due to the comically bad (in a black comedy sort of way) performance of the Nav system and Alexa’s inability to locate chargers using the charger addresses on the EA website. Halfway through the trip we got the 1.2.6 update, and the Nav system began to operate better. But this morning it all went to hell in a hand basket. We started the morning with Alexa accepting the correct charge station address, plotting the route accurately, and tracking our progress properly. Then we made the mistake of taking a bathroom break. When we got back in the car, the Nav system had lost the route (an issue which was supposedly fixed with 1.2.6 and had functioned properly the prior day). When we tried to voice input the address again, we got all kinds of weird guesses from Alexa which kept trying to take us to, among other places, some bistro, none remotely like the address we were giving it. An attempt to input the address manually only worked after several tries. When we started moving, Alexa told us to drive 0.2 miles and then make a turn. (We had already joined an interstate from a state-run rest area, and there were no turns called for in over a hundred miles.). The Glass Cockpit was displaying an odd symbol in the Nav system that we had never seen before, and after a couple of miles we noticed that the position arrows were not moving and that the screens were frozen. A couple of minutes later, the right side of the Glass Cockpit and the Pilot Screen went black.

I called Lucid Customer Service and was told I would have to get off the highway, park the car, and leave it for at least 15 minutes while it went into sleep mode for a hard reset. So . . . a very annoying unplanned stop when we finally got to a convenient stopover point after miles of driving with two black control screens.

Conclusion

This is a car engineered and built by world-class automotive engineers with user-interfacing software apparently developed as a trade school project by the students who were sentenced to summer school.

Can you talk more about cockpit fitment, material feel, quality versus those of MB, BMW, and Audi.

I really fond of these brand’s interior so I’m trying to get an idea.

 

[n8236]

If was in charge of their software engineering team, I’d get CarPlay to work 100% before fixing the rest.

 

[MoniputerLM]

If was in charge of their software engineering team, I’d get CarPlay to work 100% before fixing the rest.

No, Android Auto first!!

 

[Sam6062]

Great write-up. The software issues on this car are really too bad. Good thing, they are not building many of these right now, as this could crush them if there were lots more owners and the EV market getting so competitive. Hopefully, they get it right soon. If I was Lucid, I would get CarPlay out asap.

I do think they are already understaffed based on the issues but they still seem to be very responsive. We shall see how long they keep it up. Hopefully through 2022

 

[hmp10]

Can you talk more about cockpit fitment, material feel, quality versus those of MB, BMW, and Audi.

I really fond of these brand’s interior so I’m trying to get an idea.

The last Mercedes I owned was a 2004 SL55. I abandoned the brand due to the slew of unending problems with that car. Its interior fit and finish was fine, although the body structure was nowhere near as robust as the three Audi R8's that followed. (In fairness, the MB was a convertible, but so was the last R8.)

As for the Lucid interior, I'd put it on a par with the five Audis I've owned, which had the best interior materials and finish of any of the German cars I've owned. The Lucid interior is very "tailored", with crisp but swooping lines and firm surfaces as opposed to the slightly softer lines and surfaces of the luxury German cars. The leathers, wool blends, Alcantara panels, and the beautiful silvered eucalyptus wood in the Air are top drawer and meticulously installed. I've only had two issues with the Lucid interior: the functionality (not the materials or fit) of the center console is subpar, especially the wireless phone charging; and the driver-side floor mat will not stay anchored to the floor.

Compared to the misaligned panels and blunt lines of our 2021 Tesla Model S Plaid interior there is, well . . . no comparison.