A New Adventure Starts

DJL

Active Member
Verified Owner
Joined
May 6, 2022
Messages
643
Location
Blaine, WA
Yesterday, our adventure with the Lucid Air GT (range) began. I was driven 2 hours down to the Seattle Service Center by Lucid’s Lyft driver and was greeted by both the Service Center’s manager, Christine, and my DA, Zaid. Actually, the DA I have been interfacing with, Joshua, was off today, so he asked Zaid to work with me during the delivery. Just a brief shout out to Zaid because he was great: very patient, working closely with me as at times he had to repeat an instruction simply because this car is just so complex and complicated compared to what this old fart is used to. You younger “Gen whatevers” will have no problem because you grew up living with things that can be so complex compared to us “wiser ones”.

I spent over two hours there, crawling in, around, and under the vehicle. At times, Chrintine and I were lying on the floor, looking at the clearance of the aero tabs which are in front of the front wheels or inspecting the lift points where I may need to place the car jack, or pulling out the little right cubby in the truck so I could see where one of the 12V batteries was located (the other is located under the right, rear seat).

By the time we were through, I felt a lot more comfortable regarding my basic knowledge of the car. However, I will be spending much of today, sitting in the car which is now in our garage, playing with the various settings and features and getting everything just the way I like it. When it is your turn to pick up your car, you will be treated to a unique and wonderful experience. It is nothing like dealing with a traditional dealership.
 
I really like all the Seattle area staff, they have been great to me on all the times I've interacted with them (Joshua, Summer, Zaid, Derek, and Sophea)
 
Also, what range are you getting with the aero covers removed on the 19 inch wheels? I'm getting the exact same thing done before taking delivery in a few days
 
Also, what range are you getting with the aero covers removed on the 19 inch wheels? I'm getting the exact same thing done before taking delivery in a few days
I only have about 400 miles on the car but am consistantly getting 3.6 miles per kilowatt in combined 50% city and 50% highway driving. I thought I may drive down to Mt. Vernon and back today to get a better idea of highway range. We are planning on driving to Denver and back (about 3000 miles) for Thanksgiving and I would like to have a fair idea of what to expect. I am looking forward to the trip as it should stress the batteries a bit going over the Rockies in cold weather and we may hit some snow also.
 
For those of you who wish to see how much storage space the Lucid AGT packs, here is a photo of what I could pack into the truck and frunk. It includes: 2 full size suitcases, 5 carry on size luggages, a full size cooler and my golf clubs. Furthermore, I had additional space left over for smaller things to be stuffed into. Also, in a previous post, I showed how I was able to drive a full size pallet to the recylcer carried in the truck. Now to do that, I did have to drop the back seats down. Here is that photo again.
 

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Alright, I just finished my Lucid AGT’s (19” wheels) battery efficiency mini test. I drove from my house in Blaine, WA over to Mt. Vernon and back. It is a total distance of 99.1 miles. Those miles consisted of about 12 miles of country roads with speed limits between 40 and 50 mph and 87 miles of freeway with speed limits between 60 and 70 mph. For the country roads, I maintained the respective speed limit and on the freeway, I keep the speed at 68 mph for the lower speed limit and 70 mph for the higher one.
I have had my AGT for only 6 days and when I started, I only had 376 miles on it. The battery was charged to just 80%. The winds were mostly light (under 10 kts.) and were on my tail headed to south to Mt. Vernon and in most in my face on the return leg north. The temperature was 67 degrees.
The results were very interesting. What shocked me was the battery efficiency meter show 6.2 Mi/kWH for the first leg (6 miles) which was from my house to the freeway, all on country roads. Wow! Now, I know that I dropped about 200 feet of elevation as I came off of the peninsula we live on during that leg but, nevertheless, I was not expecting that result.
For the 49.5 miles from my house to Mt. Vernon, the battery efficiency was 4.0 Mi/kW. The complete trip of 99.1 miles was also 4.0 Mi/kW . Now the photo I am posting showing the post trip results actually shows 3.9 Mi/kW but it flipped from 4.0 to 3.9 while I was fumbling for my phone camera sitting in the garage. Grrrr! However, since it was 4.0 when I arrived, I am logging it as 4.0 Mi/kW.
The trip is not on flat terrain since the route I took goe over rolling hills which make up the flanks of hills and mountains that lie between the Salish Sea to the west and the Cascades to the east. There were a few 2 - 3 miles grades of about 5 or so percent. However, I believe the impact of going up and down these grades mostly even out since it was a round trip.
I will try this trip again next month to see if there is any change with the more miles I will have on the car then..
 

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Looks like your freeway efficiency pretty much exactly matched the Out-Of-Spec range test.

Your comment on the initial downhill country road section leads me to wonder what efficiency would display if you were to start a trip at the top of a steep hill and end at the bottom (i.e. a lot of regen braking)…. ∞ mi/kwh :)
 
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Here is the route and it shows the topography between my house and Mt. Vernon. The elevation changes are probably much greater than what Kyle had so I believe I was actually doing much better than what he did. Regarding the country roads battery efficiency, the downhill part wasless than a mile from my house. At the bottom of the hill, the battery effeciency was 6.5. For the other 5 miles, it varied between 5.5 and 6.5 depending on the two stops and starting up again. By the time I reached the freeway, I was once again at 6.5. Go figure!
 

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Alright, I just finished my Lucid AGT’s (19” wheels) battery efficiency mini test. I drove from my house in Blaine, WA over to Mt. Vernon and back. It is a total distance of 99.1 miles. Those miles consisted of about 12 miles of country roads with speed limits between 40 and 50 mph and 87 miles of freeway with speed limits between 60 and 70 mph. For the country roads, I maintained the respective speed limit and on the freeway, I keep the speed at 68 mph for the lower speed limit and 70 mph for the higher one.
I have had my AGT for only 6 days and when I started, I only had 376 miles on it. The battery was charged to just 80%. The winds were mostly light (under 10 kts.) and were on my tail headed to south to Mt. Vernon and in most in my face on the return leg north. The temperature was 67 degrees.
The results were very interesting. What shocked me was the battery efficiency meter show 6.2 Mi/kWH for the first leg (6 miles) which was from my house to the freeway, all on country roads. Wow! Now, I know that I dropped about 200 feet of elevation as I came off of the peninsula we live on during that leg but, nevertheless, I was not expecting that result.
For the 49.5 miles from my house to Mt. Vernon, the battery efficiency was 4.0 Mi/kW. The complete trip of 99.1 miles was also 4.0 Mi/kW . Now the photo I am posting showing the post trip results actually shows 3.9 Mi/kW but it flipped from 4.0 to 3.9 while I was fumbling for my phone camera sitting in the garage. Grrrr! However, since it was 4.0 when I arrived, I am logging it as 4.0 Mi/kW.
The trip is not on flat terrain since the route I took goe over rolling hills which make up the flanks of hills and mountains that lie between the Salish Sea to the west and the Cascades to the east. There were a few 2 - 3 miles grades of about 5 or so percent. However, I believe the impact of going up and down these grades mostly even out since it was a round trip.
I will try this trip again next month to see if there is any change with the more miles I will have on the car then..
Just a little update. I went into the garage and hopped into the car to program our Thanksgiving trip to Denver to evaluate the various EV stations that the trip was recommending. The result will be another story for another day. What I want to share now is that I looked at the battery effeciency and it was now reading 4.1! At first I was baffled but then remembered that regular batteries draw off just their surface charge and if you let them rest, the battery reequalibrates and the surface charge goes up. My thinking is these lithium batteries must work in the same way. Here is the photo showing this.
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I have been learning alot about our Lucid as I plan our Thanksgiving trip to the Denver area. One of things that I learned is that we will not be getting very good range mileage. This is because of two basic reasons. FIrst, most of the trip getting to Denver will be uphill since we are at just about sea level and Denver is over 5,000 feet in elevation. The peak elevation we will be at during this trip is almost 8,000 feet. Second, I am anticipating low temperature during most of our trip. It is hard to predict the actual temperatures we will experience but I have decided to use an average of 35 degrees for the trip. It should be lower during the higher elevations but a bit higher on our way to Salt Lake City. Combined, that puts a real hurt on the expanded range we will be getting. I am using a 50% range reduction due to just these two factors. We are expecting the trip to take three long days of driving with overnight stops at Baker City, OR and Spanish Fork, UT. The trip is expected to take a bit over 24 hours with 4 hours and 40 minutes spent driving to and charging at 11 (yes, that is right), 11 EA stations. The attached map shows the route and the location of each of the charging stations. I set the minium charge state for arrival at each station as 20% since it will be cold and I will want a safety factor to find an alternative charging station if the one we arrive at is down. If you have any advice or insights on this, I welcome you comments.
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By that map it appears you're using I70 in CO. You'll hit just over 11,000 feet, but then it's 6,000 ft downhill from there. :)
 
By that map it appears you're using I70 in CO. You'll hit just over 11,000 feet, but then it's 6,000 ft downhill from there. :)
Good Grief! You are absolutey right! Thanks for the info. I better bring a O2 bottle. LOL
 
Good Grief! You are absolutey right! Thanks for the info. I better bring a O2 bottle. LOL
11,000 is no joke, even for folks like me who live at 5,600 and regularly drive up to 8,000. Take your time and pull over to collect your wits if you feel yourself getting light headed.
 
11,000 is no joke, even for folks like me who live at 5,600 and regularly drive up to 8,000. Take your time and pull over to collect your wits if you feel yourself getting light headed.
No, you are correct and that is great advice. I remember as a 14 year old kid, bushwacking over the Cascades with my family, waking up in the middle of the night at the base of a high mountain pass, which was over 7000 feet. I was having a hard time catching my breath. Go figure. Back then hiking was not popular and there were few trails. Fortunately, my dad had grown up in there area and we were always able to find a trail after the one we were following ran out. Such fond memories!
 
As our Lucid adventure continues to grow, we are becoming more and more enamored with this amazing vehicle. We have just completed our Thanksgiving trip from Blaine, Washington to Centennial, Colorado (a suburb of Denver). It was a 4-day trip of about 1500 miles traversing the Rocky Mountains in temperatures that were basically in the low teens to mid-20’s. From this drive, we learned a lot about our Lucid AGT and I am writing to share this information with those who are on a steep EV learning curve like I am.
First, the car seems to have almost infinite power, literally cruising up and over the steepest grades (over 20% in some places) without any problems. In fact, the car just sails over mountains and then leaps down off them. I left all of the other car struggling to get up the mountains way back in my rearview mirror.
A case in point, on a steep curvy two-lane mountain road between Spanish Fork, UT and Green River, I reached a short, straight passing lane and was able to blast by everyone, reaching 105 mph almost instantly. The car did not feel the steep grade at all and I felt like I had infinite power that was still untapped.
I don’t wish to jam up this forum post with a detailed write-up of what we learned and the data that I logged regarded range impacts due to low temperatures, headwinds, mountain grades, etc. But for those that are interested in these details, I have attached a PDF document that more fully describes our trip and the data I collected.
As an aside, we stopped at 10 EA charging stations and each one worked fine. Only one started out above 300 kW and the rest of them started out between 125 and 195 kW. I would say our average charging time was around35 - 40 minutes to add 300 miles but I think that was because I kept forgetting to precondition the batteries until we were just 5 to 10 minutes from the charging station and it was very cold outside (about 10 to 20 degrees).
 

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As our Lucid adventure continues to grow, we are becoming more and more enamored with this amazing vehicle. We have just completed our Thanksgiving trip from Blaine, Washington to Centennial, Colorado (a suburb of Denver). It was a 4-day trip of about 1500 miles traversing the Rocky Mountains in temperatures that were basically in the low teens to mid-20’s. From this drive, we learned a lot about our Lucid AGT and I am writing to share this information with those who are on a steep EV learning curve like I am.
First, the car seems to have almost infinite power, literally cruising up and over the steepest grades (over 20% in some places) without any problems. In fact, the car just sails over mountains and then leaps down off them. I left all of the other car struggling to get up the mountains way back in my rearview mirror.
A case in point, on a steep curvy two-lane mountain road between Spanish Fork, UT and Green River, I reached a short, straight passing lane and was able to blast by everyone, reaching 105 mph almost instantly. The car did not feel the steep grade at all and I felt like I had infinite power that was still untapped.
I don’t wish to jam up this forum post with a detailed write-up of what we learned and the data that I logged regarded range impacts due to low temperatures, headwinds, mountain grades, etc. But for those that are interested in these details, I have attached a PDF document that more fully describes our trip and the data I collected.
As an aside, we stopped at 10 EA charging stations and each one worked fine. Only one started out above 300 kW and the rest of them started out between 125 and 195 kW. I would say our average charging time was around35 - 40 minutes to add 300 miles but I think that was because I kept forgetting to precondition the batteries until we were just 5 to 10 minutes from the charging station and it was very cold outside (about 10 to 20 degrees).
Nice trip report! So, should we expect to see another report for the return home?
Hope you had a good holiday with your daughter.
 
As our Lucid adventure continues to grow, we are becoming more and more enamored with this amazing vehicle. We have just completed our Thanksgiving trip from Blaine, Washington to Centennial, Colorado (a suburb of Denver). It was a 4-day trip of about 1500 miles traversing the Rocky Mountains in temperatures that were basically in the low teens to mid-20’s. From this drive, we learned a lot about our Lucid AGT and I am writing to share this information with those who are on a steep EV learning curve like I am.....
Wow, outstanding trip report, thank you! Experiences like yours make me more confident to try road-tripping our Air again.
 
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As an aside, we stopped at 10 EA charging stations and each one worked fine. Only one started out above 300 kW and the rest of them started out between 125 and 195 kW. I would say our average charging time was around35 - 40 minutes
Your experience with EA is more like mine. I know there a locations with serious problems but I think many owners have the perception that the problems are worse than they are because people are more likely to post about negative experiences rather than positive experiences. Your experience should tell us to go enjoy a road trip in our Lucid Airs.
 
As our Lucid adventure continues to grow, we are becoming more and more enamored with this amazing vehicle. We have just completed our Thanksgiving trip from Blaine, Washington to Centennial, Colorado (a suburb of Denver). It was a 4-day trip of about 1500 miles traversing the Rocky Mountains in temperatures that were basically in the low teens to mid-20’s. From this drive, we learned a lot about our Lucid AGT and I am writing to share this information with those who are on a steep EV learning curve like I am.
First, the car seems to have almost infinite power, literally cruising up and over the steepest grades (over 20% in some places) without any problems. In fact, the car just sails over mountains and then leaps down off them. I left all of the other car struggling to get up the mountains way back in my rearview mirror.
A case in point, on a steep curvy two-lane mountain road between Spanish Fork, UT and Green River, I reached a short, straight passing lane and was able to blast by everyone, reaching 105 mph almost instantly. The car did not feel the steep grade at all and I felt like I had infinite power that was still untapped.
I don’t wish to jam up this forum post with a detailed write-up of what we learned and the data that I logged regarded range impacts due to low temperatures, headwinds, mountain grades, etc. But for those that are interested in these details, I have attached a PDF document that more fully describes our trip and the data I collected.
As an aside, we stopped at 10 EA charging stations and each one worked fine. Only one started out above 300 kW and the rest of them started out between 125 and 195 kW. I would say our average charging time was around35 - 40 minutes to add 300 miles but I think that was because I kept forgetting to precondition the batteries until we were just 5 to 10 minutes from the charging station and it was very cold outside (about 10 to 20 degrees).
Fantastic writeup. Does Abrp report all the elevation data and the graphs? I do plan a SF Bay Area to Washington DC Area round trip in Sep next year in spring or fall to avoid extreme weather in Air Pure AWD. I wanted to stop at Chicago one way on 80 and 40 on the other way with stops every 2.5 hrs for a break or charge. I assume that you did not use lucid navigation. By next spring I hope abrp android integration to work on Lucid.
 
As our Lucid adventure continues to grow, we are becoming more and more enamored with this amazing vehicle. We have just completed our Thanksgiving trip from Blaine, Washington to Centennial, Colorado (a suburb of Denver). It was a 4-day trip of about 1500 miles traversing the Rocky Mountains in temperatures that were basically in the low teens to mid-20’s. From this drive, we learned a lot about our Lucid AGT and I am writing to share this information with those who are on a steep EV learning curve like I am.
First, the car seems to have almost infinite power, literally cruising up and over the steepest grades (over 20% in some places) without any problems. In fact, the car just sails over mountains and then leaps down off them. I left all of the other car struggling to get up the mountains way back in my rearview mirror.
A case in point, on a steep curvy two-lane mountain road between Spanish Fork, UT and Green River, I reached a short, straight passing lane and was able to blast by everyone, reaching 105 mph almost instantly. The car did not feel the steep grade at all and I felt like I had infinite power that was still untapped.
I don’t wish to jam up this forum post with a detailed write-up of what we learned and the data that I logged regarded range impacts due to low temperatures, headwinds, mountain grades, etc. But for those that are interested in these details, I have attached a PDF document that more fully describes our trip and the data I collected.
As an aside, we stopped at 10 EA charging stations and each one worked fine. Only one started out above 300 kW and the rest of them started out between 125 and 195 kW. I would say our average charging time was around35 - 40 minutes to add 300 miles but I think that was because I kept forgetting to precondition the batteries until we were just 5 to 10 minutes from the charging station and it was very cold outside (about 10 to 20 degrees).
Amazing write up! I enjoyed it very much.
 
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