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Loss of power steering while driving

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pravaasi

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Cars
Lucid Air GT
This has been a scary issue for me. Took ownership of a fully loaded Gravity in December and in March after parking at a friends house for couple of hours for dinner, the steering wheel froze. Had to be towed away but Lucid did not find anything and returned the car. After less than a month this time it was really scary. The steering froze while driving and the error message showed up on the screen. Luckily it froze only for few seconds while driving and recovered but after I parked the car it permanently froze and had to be towed again. This time it was 2 hrs from the service center. Ruined my entire Easter Sunday.

However, service found some issue with something which according to them was not installed properly at the manufacturing time. Now I am supposed to pick the car up again today but I am really scared to do so. Its such a serious safety issue for me and my family. I have asked Lucid to cancel my lease. I can't take the risk.

Anyone had this issue before?
 
pravaasi said:
However, service found some issue with something which according to them was not installed properly at the manufacturing time.
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Service told me this once too, they seem very critical of the factory. Mine was with my Air and something else and it’s still broken. But something really went wrong with their product quality control the last few years it seems.

All you can do is hope they fix it. But that is a scary one. Keep track of days in service and get ready for lemon law.
 
There’s no reason to assume they won’t have fixed it; I understand how scary it can be, though.

What do you mean by “it froze”? I haven’t run into that here before. What was the error message?

Ignore the pessimism of @socktucker, imho; while he’s had a negative experience with service for his Air, most people don’t, and he has never owned a Gravity nor has he ever had this problem.
 
borski said:
There’s no reason to assume they won’t have fixed it; I understand how scary it can be, though.

What do you mean by “it froze”? I haven’t run into that here before. What was the error message?

Ignore the pessimism of @socktucker, imho; while he’s had a negative experience with service for his Air, most people don’t, and he has never owned a Gravity nor has he ever had this problem.
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I said I don't own a Gravity, but related on two levels, as follows:

1. Service critical of the factory. Shared experience.
2. He asked Lucid to cancel the lease. They cannot do this, he must track days in service and prepare lemon law request. Shared experience.
3. Literally all he can do is hope service fixes is. There is no cancelling a lease. Shared experience.

🫢
 
socktucker said:
I said I don't own a Gravity, but related on two levels, as follows:

1. Service critical of the factory. Shared experience.
2. He asked Lucid to cancel the lease. They cannot do this, he must track days in service and prepare lemon law request. Shared experience.
3. Literally all he can do is hope service fixes is. There is no cancelling a lease. Shared experience.

🫢
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Fair enough. 👍
 
borski said:
Fair enough. 👍
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I wouldn't feel like driving the car ever again if that happens... How do you manage to confidently trust it again?
 
prgarg said:
I wouldn't feel like driving the car ever again if that happens... How do you manage to confidently trust it again?
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well, you can't return a car. But safety issue repairs are also covered by consumer protection laws. But you have to give them a few attempts to fix it.
 
prgarg said:
I wouldn't feel like driving the car ever again if that happens... How do you manage to confidently trust it again?
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Happened to my Polestar. Still connected mechanically to the front wheels. It was a bear to drive home, but I managed. I still trust it - and, it was SOFTWARE related, so I'm not worried. New software, new Processing unit.

Car companies don't just throw safety-related issues back into the wild and hope they're fixed. Too much liability.
 
tmichael said:
Happened to my Polestar. Still connected mechanically to the front wheels. It was a bear to drive home, but I managed. I still trust it - and, it was SOFTWARE related, so I'm not worried. New software, new Processing unit.

Car companies don't just throw safety-related issues back into the wild and hope they're fixed. Too much liability.
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i the steering wheel still connected to the column? I seem to recall reading somewhere that in some cars the connection was taken car of by software (not sure about the Lucid cars). I kind of said "what could possibly go wrong?"! I know in F1 (and probably most racing cars) the steering wheel and column is connected to the front drive wheels and the connection is not taken care of in software.
 
ke2 said:
i the steering wheel still connected to the column? I seem to recall reading somewhere that in some cars the connection was taken car of by software (not sure about the Lucid cars). I kind of said "what could possibly go wrong?"! I know in F1 (and probably most racing cars) the steering wheel and column is connected to the front drive wheels and the connection is not taken care of in software.
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The Gravity does not have steer by wire as far as I know
 
I totally forgot, but one time I had a Range Rover and I was driving it, then entire steering column collapsed into my lap. Apparently RR designed it so that if the adjustment motor gears stripped out, the entire assembly just collapsed. That was exciting!
 
ke2 said:
i the steering wheel still connected to the column? I seem to recall reading somewhere that in some cars the connection was taken car of by software (not sure about the Lucid cars). I kind of said "what could possibly go wrong?"! I know in F1 (and probably most racing cars) the steering wheel and column is connected to the front drive wheels and the connection is not taken care of in software.
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Very few cars use steer by wire for front wheels. We're headed that way, but not many right now. Definitely not Lucid.
 
prgarg said:
I wouldn't feel like driving the car ever again if that happens... How do you manage to confidently trust it again?
Click to expand...
Our Kia Sorento's engine blew up, literally. Turns out there was a recall they never told us about; we got a new engine. Still trusted the car.

That's why service exists, imho.
 
borski said:
There’s no reason to assume they won’t have fixed it; I understand how scary it can be, though.

What do you mean by “it froze”? I haven’t run into that here before. What was the error message?

Ignore the pessimism of @socktucker, imho; while he’s had a negative experience with service for his Air, most people don’t, and he has never owned a Gravity nor has he ever had this problem.
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The steering wheel felt like 100 LBs and I really had to put 100% of my energy in it to move even one degree in either direction. Forget about taking a turn even going straight was a battle in the traffic. The car was driving fine just that it could only go straight in a line. When the tow truck came he was able to put it on the truck but it took him 20 mins to just bring the car out of parking spot and he was a well built man. I am not even half of him :)
 
borski said:
Our Kia Sorento's engine blew up, literally. Turns out there was a recall they never told us about; we got a new engine. Still trusted the car.

That's why service exists, imho.
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The problem is 2 fold: 1) Its a major safety issue since it has happened multiple times while driving. Imagine you are taking a turn and it decides to freeze at that moment and 2) After first twow away the SC did not find anything which was very disappointing and surprising thing to me because there were messages on the front screen about it so that must have logged somewhere so either they did not care to look or totally wrote me off since I did not have any proof. From then on I took a video of every time I got the warning so they had to look into it this time since I produced all those videos and sent to them.

So yes trust will build overtime but right now I can't take this car anywhere without a thought in my mind that it might have to be towed away.
 
socktucker said:
well, you can't return a car. But safety issue repairs are also covered by consumer protection laws. But you have to give them a few attempts to fix it.
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Agreed and I am going to give them a chance to fix this issue but as soon as Lemon law conditions are satisfied and if the issue is still there then I am hiring an attorney.
 
pravaasi said:
The problem is 2 fold: 1) Its a major safety issue since it has happened multiple times while driving. Imagine you are taking a turn and it decides to freeze at that moment and 2) After first twow away the SC did not find anything which was very disappointing and surprising thing to me because there were messages on the front screen about it so that must have logged somewhere so either they did not care to look or totally wrote me off since I did not have any proof. From then on I took a video of every time I got the warning so they had to look into it this time since I produced all those videos and sent to them.

So yes trust will build overtime but right now I can't take this car anywhere without a thought in my mind that it might have to be towed away.
Click to expand...
Oh, I understand the concern, don't get me wrong. But yeah, as you said, once they've identified and fixed the problem, trust will build over time.

But I understand being rattled, for sure.
 
I've read a lot of postings here and on Reddit. Steering wheel complaints have not been common. Last year several people got theirs replaced, thinking the failure of the left DPad to respond to clicks was a hardware issue. That was later determined to be a software problem and was fixed in the January OTA update. That's about it. Yours is the first post about the wheel freezing up (suddenly being very hard to turn), that I've heard of. Steering response is one of the joys of owning a Lucid. Hope they found the culprit and get it fixed for you.
 
This issue with the steering wheel is truly frightening, but it does appear to be unique with this particular Gravity.

Unfortunately, no car brand is immune from such hazardous issues. I had a Mercedes SL55 AMG that was the first Mercedes to use a brake-by-wire system. I was exiting a parking garage in Chicago. The car braked normally as I approached the exit arm at the pay booth, but when I then rolled down to the street-level exit, I had no brakes and rolled right into oncoming traffic on a downtown street. It was incredibly hairy, and I managed to stop the car only by steering it into a curb. Mercedes claimed the mechanical back-up system would still have responded to the brake pedal if I just put enough pressure on it. Believe me, I was standing on it for dear life.

It was never publicly announced, but Mercedes quietly took the system out of production in the next model year.

Less hair-raising was an incident with my Volvo 144 sedan some years earlier. I was entering an interstate exit ramp and went to downshift the manual transmission. The shift lever and its array of dangling linkages let go and came out of the console in my hand. I experienced something similar years later when the aforementioned Mercedes SL automatic shift lever failed.

Then there was my bedeviled 1998 Corvette that kept going into limp mode -- something that multiple shop visits had not resolved. The last time it happened I was cruising down the inside lane of I-95 in Connecticut, running alongside a concrete barrier wall. This was a 12-lane stretch of highway (6 each way) with heavy traffic averaging close to 80 mph. Suddenly my car was limited to 8 mph. There was no place to pull off to the left, and I had to get across 5 lanes to the right shoulder. I thought I was going to die. I got out of the car, walked down the nearest exit to a gas station, called a taxi, and never got back in the car. (It was a company car, and they took it off my hands.)
 
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