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Is Lucid styling the problem?

exxxviii said:
He's not wrong. The way I view the Gravity is that Lucid created a car that is 99% amazing and 1% annoying. But their problem is that 1% greatly impacts the regular, everyday use of the vehicle.

For example, what if they invested their leadership and energy a little differently, and the car was a little bit less efficient, a little bit less quick, a little bit less packaged, a little bit less handling, etc. I would happily trade that for a car that the fobs work, fob batteries that last years, has PaaK, has a good HUD, the frunk opens, has integrated SXM station controls, has a better audio system, etc. That is the problem and how Lucid's past decisions are pushing me away, because if I am going to spend $120K on a car, I want the day-to-day interactions flawless.

I think people were more willing to spend premium money 10 years ago on Teslas when they were emerging and had lots of rough edges. But that market moved and I would likely compromise in other areas before operating a work in progress.

GM made the same mistake with their Ultifi and Ultium platforms. Their software was an absolute dumpster fire, and it cost them thousands of sales and a couple years lost in the market.
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Exactly….,,
 
borski said:
Ah yes, that’s “all they had to do.” Because nothing else about the car mattered. It’s not like it’s an engineering marvel or anything.

I think you mean “all they had to do, in addition to everything else they did, was get the software right.” Fixed it for you.

Also, railing on past marketing stunts is cool and all, but sometimes they work. When they do, they’re called genius. When they don’t, they’re called a waste of money.
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"No bro you don't get it, all you gotta do is upload the entire codebase to Claude and add 'do not make any mistakes' to the prompt! It's as easy as that!"

"What do you mean I need to run simulations and do physical validation, that'll slow me down! I'm an ideas guy, a big picture guy. I don't need to get my hands dirty, only poor peasants do that! I'll just send out a thousand AI agents to do all of that for me and token-max, I'll fix all of this in one commit!"

"...Hey can I get a bigger token budget? ...What do you mean production is broken?"

Anything else I'm missing? I almost burst a blood vessel writing all that 😂
 
exxxviii said:
He's not wrong. The way I view the Gravity is that Lucid created a car that is 99% amazing and 1% annoying. But their problem is that 1% greatly impacts the regular, everyday use of the vehicle.

For example, what if they invested their leadership and energy a little differently, and the car was a little bit less efficient, a little bit less quick, a little bit less packaged, a little bit less handling, etc. I would happily trade that for a car that the fobs work, fob batteries that last years, has PaaK, has a good HUD, the frunk opens, has integrated SXM station controls, has a better audio system, etc. That is the problem and how Lucid's past decisions are pushing me away, because if I am going to spend $120K on a car, I want the day-to-day interactions flawless.

I think people were more willing to spend premium money 10 years ago on Teslas when they were emerging and had lots of rough edges. But that market moved and I would likely compromise in other areas before operating a work in progress.

GM made the same mistake with their Ultifi and Ultium platforms. Their software was an absolute dumpster fire, and it cost them thousands of sales and a couple years lost in the market.
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Somewhat related to my test drive of a Macan EV yesterday (last minute competitor comparison). The salesman was constantly touting the "legendary reputation" of the car and was constantly having to apologize for lacking some basic modern-day features. "No, it doesn't have OPD, do you even want a Porsche? It's legendary!" "No, it doesn't have any driving automation features, do you even want a Porsche? It's legendary!" (On that last point he was wrong, it has a fairly decent highway automation package for actually not a lot of money considering, but the fact that he didn't even know that they had that option was mind-boggling. But, did I even want a Porsche? OMG, it's legendary!)

Talk about cults. I mean, yes, it had an amazing driving feel, but it really didn't have a chance to shine on a 4 mile loop on a back road. There was one curve where he told me that they could normally take that at about 80 if there wasn't a car in front of me. Ummm, I don't want to drive around a side road curve at 80 ... ever. Was I offered a test drive on a mountain road where I could have really felt the ability of the car? No. I was asking too many questions such as "Does it have this basic amenity that pretty much every modern car has?".
 
flarbear said:
Somewhat related to my test drive of a Macan EV yesterday (last minute competitor comparison). The salesman was constantly touting the "legendary reputation" of the car and was constantly having to apologize for lacking some basic modern-day features. "No, it doesn't have OPD, do you even want a Porsche? It's legendary!" "No, it doesn't have any driving automation features, do you even want a Porsche? It's legendary!" (On that last point he was wrong, it has a fairly decent highway automation package for actually not a lot of money considering, but the fact that he didn't even know that they had that option was mind-boggling. But, did I even want a Porsche? OMG, it's legendary!)

Talk about cults. I mean, yes, it had an amazing driving feel, but it really didn't have a chance to shine on a 4 mile loop on a back road. There was one curve where he told me that they could normally take that at about 80 if there wasn't a car in front of me. Ummm, I don't want to drive around a side road curve at 80 ... ever. Was I offered a test drive on a mountain road where I could have really felt the ability of the car? No. I was asking too many questions such as "Does it have this basic amenity that pretty much every modern car has?".
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I mean do you even want a Porsche?!! It’s legendary!
 
The best looking porsche by far is the TAYCAN
 
flarbear said:
Somewhat related to my test drive of a Macan EV yesterday (last minute competitor comparison). The salesman was constantly touting the "legendary reputation" of the car and was constantly having to apologize for lacking some basic modern-day features. "No, it doesn't have OPD, do you even want a Porsche? It's legendary!" "No, it doesn't have any driving automation features, do you even want a Porsche? It's legendary!" (On that last point he was wrong, it has a fairly decent highway automation package for actually not a lot of money considering, but the fact that he didn't even know that they had that option was mind-boggling. But, did I even want a Porsche? OMG, it's legendary!)

Talk about cults. I mean, yes, it had an amazing driving feel, but it really didn't have a chance to shine on a 4 mile loop on a back road. There was one curve where he told me that they could normally take that at about 80 if there wasn't a car in front of me. Ummm, I don't want to drive around a side road curve at 80 ... ever. Was I offered a test drive on a mountain road where I could have really felt the ability of the car? No. I was asking too many questions such as "Does it have this basic amenity that pretty much every modern car has?".
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My Macan EV test drive a couple months ago was similar. I think the Macan is beautiful. And its handling is by far the very best. But it is a huge step backwards from an electric vehicle point of view. I mostly deleted it from my interest list. (Though it did get PaaK a couple weeks ago.)
 
exxxviii said:
GM made the same mistake with their Ultifi and Ultium platforms. Their software was an absolute dumpster fire, and it cost them thousands of sales and a couple years lost in the market.
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It's funny that the industry seems to be unable to learn these lessons. Ford learned that lesson the hard way 15 years ago with Microsoft Sync, which was a fiasco, riddled with class action lawsuits. I got my $50 bucks out of one of those.

Software is at the center of everything these days. Nobody wants to deal with glitchy interfaces, when the baseline is your phone, that usually just works these days.

These small EV companies trying to compete with Tesla with stupid glitchy software are all delusional.
 
exxxviii said:
He's not wrong. The way I view the Gravity is that Lucid created a car that is 99% amazing and 1% annoying. But their problem is that 1% greatly impacts the regular, everyday use of the vehicle.

For example, what if they invested their leadership and energy a little differently, and the car was a little bit less efficient, a little bit less quick, a little bit less packaged, a little bit less handling, etc. I would happily trade that for a car that the fobs work, fob batteries that last years, has PaaK, has a good HUD, the frunk opens, has integrated SXM station controls, has a better audio system, etc. That is the problem and how Lucid's past decisions are pushing me away, because if I am going to spend $120K on a car, I want the day-to-day interactions flawless.

I think people were more willing to spend premium money 10 years ago on Teslas when they were emerging and had lots of rough edges. But that market moved and I would likely compromise in other areas before operating a work in progress.

GM made the same mistake with their Ultifi and Ultium platforms. Their software was an absolute dumpster fire, and it cost them thousands of sales and a couple years lost in the market.
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I am in no way suggesting they invested enough in software or cared about it enough, when they were building the cars.

I am suggesting that the idea that “all they had to do was get the software right” is easy to say in hindsight, because you have, well, hindsight.

But all of the things their cars *did* get right also mattered, and people tend to treat those as “table stakes” when they were anything but.

So yes, I agree they needed to have invested more time and effort into the software. I disagree that that was “the only” thing they had to get right, as they had a *ton* of things they had to get right.

Also, none of this takes into account how much the market has changed since 2019; remember when we had EV credits? When EVs were selling like hotcakes? When we were investing in EVs?

In short: people often like to look back at decisions made with imperfect information and assume they’d have made different decisions, but they now have perfect information, as they know the past.

Maybe. Or maybe not. That’s the nature of working with imperfect information.
 
borski said:
So yes, I agree they needed to have invested more time and effort into the software. I disagree that that was “the only” thing they had to get right, as they had a *ton* of things they had to get right.
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And also consider that "software" vs "range, performance, handling, luxury appointments" aren't mix and matchable. You can't suddenly say "Oh boy, we need to focus more on the software, hey you textile engineers go start hacking up some reliable PaaK code". The decision about how much effort was needed was made a few years back and turned out to be insufficient. I'd say it was surprising, but I think nearly all of the new manufacturers aren't aware of how much time and effort it takes to get software more than 90% done. (And a certain ahead-of-the-times manufacturer hired all the good software engineers before many of them even got started.)
 
exxxviii said:
He's not wrong. The way I view the Gravity is that Lucid created a car that is 99% amazing and 1% annoying. But their problem is that 1% greatly impacts the regular, everyday use of the vehicle.

For example, what if they invested their leadership and energy a little differently, and the car was a little bit less efficient, a little bit less quick, a little bit less packaged, a little bit less handling, etc. I would happily trade that for a car that the fobs work, fob batteries that last years, has PaaK, has a good HUD, the frunk opens, has integrated SXM station controls, has a better audio system, etc. That is the problem and how Lucid's past decisions are pushing me away, because if I am going to spend $120K on a car, I want the day-to-day interactions flawless.

I think people were more willing to spend premium money 10 years ago on Teslas when they were emerging and had lots of rough edges. But that market moved and I would likely compromise in other areas before operating a work in progress.

GM made the same mistake with their Ultifi and Ultium platforms. Their software was an absolute dumpster fire, and it cost them thousands of sales and a couple years lost in the market.
Click to expand...
Okay, but that assumes that they under invested in software, and that they could have saved enough money from doing slightly less good engineering elsewhere in order to properly fund the software development effort. My impression is that the software development org wasn't well managed, not that it was underfunded, and not that they had too few people. Of course we're all outside looking in through windows with privacy film on them, so who really knows. But it seems far from certain that a little less attention on the things they excelled at would have made all the difference in software quality at launch. If they'd done as you suggest, it seems quite possible that everything you suggest they could have skimped on a bit would have gone from stellar to completely humdrum, and then a lot of us wouldn't care much whether the company succeeds or not.
 
flarbear said:
I think nearly all of the new manufacturers aren't aware of how much time and effort it takes to get software more than 90% done. (And a certain ahead-of-the-times manufacturer hired all the good software engineers before many of them even got started.)
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TahoeMichael said:
Okay, but that assumes that they under invested in software, and that they could have saved enough money from doing slightly less good engineering elsewhere in order to properly fund the software development effort. My impression is that the software development org wasn't well managed, not that it was underfunded, and not that they had too few people. Of course we're all outside looking in through windows with privacy film on them, so who really knows. But it seems far from certain that a little less attention on the things they excelled at would have made all the difference in software quality at launch. If they'd done as you suggest, it seems quite possible that everything you suggest they could have skimped on a bit would have gone from stellar to completely humdrum, and then a lot of us wouldn't care much whether the company succeeds or not.
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Several manufacturers seemed to get the software right, and it is showing. Tesla is a given here. BMW is very good. Hyundai is good enough (its not flashy, but everything works). Rivian seems to be solid. GM crapped the bed. VAG is below average but improving. The only major I have not researched much is M-B, and I probably should, as I am curious about their GLC EV coming.

The investments are not fungible. But, some automakers understood that the everyday interactions with a car are very important, and they prioritized that at the senior leadership level. If Lucid's software development was poorly managed, that reflects on the senior leadership priorities. (Pretty much everyone is gone now, so maybe it will improve. GM hired like two or three former senior Apple technology executives before they finally started showing improvements in their software.)

The Gravity is the car that I want to want more than any other out there right now. But it would also be the most annoying in everyday life in its present state. The Macan would be better for simple stuff like audio system, PaaK, fob dependability, etc.

Lucid is only selling like 800 of these a month. They need an exceptional total package to attract people to drop $120K, and the software is probably holding them back more than anything else is propelling them forward.
 
exxxviii said:
Several manufacturers seemed to get the software right, and it is showing. Tesla is a given here.
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Not initially. I drove a roadster. The software on it was of extremely questionable value. Same was true for the earliest iterations of the Model S. They improved it, of course, and now it’s great and stable.

The key is: it took them time.

exxxviii said:
BMW is very good. Hyundai is good enough (it’s not flashy, but everything works). Rivian seems to be solid. GM crapped the bed. VAG is below average but improving. The only major I have not researched much is M-B, and I probably should, as I am curious about their GLC EV coming.
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Of all of these examples, the only one I think “got it right” was Rivian.

As one example: Hyundai has many issues, and I faced many of them with my Ioniq5; that was a much more annoying car to live with than the Gravity, and they made lots of choices where “everyday interactions” were insanely annoying. Paddle shifters for regen? And no ability to set it to “I-Pedal” aka 1-pedal driving by default. You had to change it every time. The charging software was broken for us the entire time we owned it; they tried to replace the ICCU four times.

BMW is good *now* but again: that wasn’t always true.

I do think Rivian is impressive in that they got the software right the first time. But they also built a much, much simpler vehicle. They had different tradeoffs.

Launching a product is an exercise in tradeoffs. You (and me) think Lucid made too big of one for the other aspects of the vehicle over software. But we can say that because of the benefit of hindsight, and as long as it improves (like it did for other manufacturers), they’ll be fine.
 
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borski said:
Not initially. I drive a roadster. The software on it was of extremely questionable value. Same was true for the earliest iterations of the Model S. They improved it, of course, and now it’s great and stable.

The key is: it took them time.


Of all of these examples, the only one I think “got it right” was Rivian.

As one example: Hyundai has many issues, and I faced many of them with my Ioniq5; that was a much more annoying car to live with than the Gravity, and they made lots of choices where “everyday interactions” were insanely annoying. Paddle shifters for regen? And no ability to set it to “I-Pedal” aka 1-pedal driving by default. You had to change it every time. The charging software was broken for us the entire time we owned it; they tried to replace the ICCU four times.

BMW is good *now* but again: that wasn’t always true.

I do think Rivian is impressive in that they got the software right the first time. But they also built a much, much simpler vehicle. They had different tradeoffs.

Launching a product is an exercise in tradeoffs. You (and me) think Lucid made too big of one for the other aspects of the vehicle over software. But we can say that because of the benefit of hindsight, and as long as it improves (like it did for other manufacturers), they’ll be fine.
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And on the flip side of that, there are legacy manufacturers that are struggling with software. A look through the Polestar 3 / Volvo EX90 forums showed software issues as well. Volkswagen struggled with their software so much they decided to drop their division and get Rivian onboard.
 
borski said:
Not initially. I drive a roadster. The software on it was of extremely questionable value. Same was true for the earliest iterations of the Model S. They improved it, of course, and now it’s great and stable.
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I am talking about present day, not the state of software-defined cars over ten years ago. People were tolerant of early Teslas, because Tesla was offering a brand new experience to the market. But that was then; this is now. Tesla has been rock solid for a long time now. Today, many automakers have stabilized their software (BMW, Hyundai, Rivian, Polestar, GM-ish). Lucid's issues look way out of date and out of place compared to the marketplace right now. The Gravity would have been incredible ten years ago, but it is lagging in mid-2026, especially in a $120K car.

My dad had 3 Ioniq 5s, and loved them. They have a few interface design quirks that are user preference, but the software is stable and does all the right stuff right. BMW has been good for at least three years. Lucid has been selling cars for five years now. Rivian is pretty amazing and seems to have developed an advanced interface that is also stable, and they accomplished it a lot quicker than Tesla. (My dad ditched his 3rd I5 because of its ICCU failure and got a Tesla Model Y.)
borski said:
Launching a product is an exercise in tradeoffs. You (and me) think Lucid made too big of one for the other aspects of the vehicle over software. But we can say that because of the benefit of hindsight, and as long as it improves (like it did for other manufacturers), they’ll be fine.
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I am talking about present day, not hindsight here. I really do not care exactly how they got here. But Lucid seems to have prioritized vehicle performance above basic daily operations and fundamental stuff that has worked in the industry for decades.

I am an opportunity for a conquest customer that Lucid dearly needs. I have to buy something in six months, and I am super flexible on price - as long as there value. I am waiting to see if Lucid can make progress with the software, otherwise, I will probably spend half as much on a car that works better all-around as an interim to wait the market has to offer in 2027 or 2028. I will not own a car at any price that is not dependable to just do its one job: get in and drive. Oh, and I like to listen to music, so the person responsible for their audio system design and UI should be fired and never allowed to do that for anyone else, ever.
 
exxxviii said:
I am talking about present day, not the state of software-defined cars over ten years ago. People were tolerant of early Teslas, because Tesla was offering a brand new experience to the market. But that was then; this is now. Tesla has been rock solid for a long time now. Today, many automakers have stabilized their software (BMW, Hyundai, Rivian, Polestar, GM-ish). Lucid's issues look way out of date and out of place compared to the marketplace right now. The Gravity would have been incredible ten years ago, but it is lagging in mid-2026, especially in a $120K car.

My dad had 3 Ioniq 5s, and loved them. They have a few interface design quirks that are user preference, but the software is stable and does all the right stuff right. BMW has been good for at least three years. Lucid has been selling cars for five years now. Rivian is pretty amazing and seems to have developed an advanced interface that is also stable, and they accomplished it a lot quicker than Tesla. (My dad ditched his 3rd I5 because of its ICCU failure and got a Tesla Model Y.)

I am talking about present day, not hindsight here. I really do not care exactly how they got here. But Lucid seems to have prioritized vehicle performance above basic daily operations and fundamental stuff that has worked in the industry for decades.

I am an opportunity for a conquest customer that Lucid dearly needs. I have to buy something in six months, and I am super flexible on price - as long as there value. I am waiting to see if Lucid can make progress with the software, otherwise, I will probably spend half as much on a car that works better all-around as an interim to wait the market has to offer in 2027 or 2028. I will not own a car at any price that is not dependable to just do its one job: get in and drive. Oh, and I like to listen to music, so the person responsible for their audio system design and UI should be fired and never allowed to do that for anyone else, ever.
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If you're looking for present-day software experiences, NotchEV has some good regular coverage detailing his experience with the different software versions.
 
Need4Sleep said:
If you're looking for present-day software experiences, NotchEV has some good regular coverage detailing his experience with the different software versions.
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Thanks a ton. I was not aware of that YT site... 3.6 is a massive leap for sure. This is my remaining watch list before I need to pull the trigger on
  1. PaaK - I will not buy a car without PaaK
  2. Sirius XM App Integration - I listen to the "radio" a lot, and I scan through my favorites with the steering wheel controls. If Lucid cannot figure that out, it is a likely deal killer.
  3. Fob Battery Life - While I do not want to use a fob, we keep our fobs in a basket when someone else needs to drive. So, the battery cannot be dead when somebody goes to drive my car. While this is a high priority, this might be tough to determine in the next few months, because normal fob batteries last years.
  4. Fob & PaaK Dependability - This must be 100% perfect. In my lifetime, I have never had a fob or PaaK glitch. Not even once. I am looking to something in the forums to indicate this is largely resolved.
  5. HUD Presentation - Multiple posts here about wholly turning the HUD off or just living with visual distractions is a deal killer. I love my HUD, and it is one of the features I enjoy in a luxury car.
  6. UX Freezes & Reboots - I could probably live with this, as long as they are infrequent and easy to recover. (I have only had one UX reboot in 4 years across 2 cars, and that one probably was not necessary.)
  7. Hands-free Highway ADAS - It looks like Lucid hit this out of the park with 3.6.
  8. Surreal Sound Pro - I know that this is not fixable, but it is one of the major annoyances that holds me back. When other automakers offer a $4K audio upgrade option, those systems are sublime. They typically have ~1,500W, true subwoofers, and crystal clear audio at almost any listening level. The SSP is just a mid-level system that other automakers often bundle with a package of popular minor features and don't even individually price.
 
L-Dude said:
Then Lucid is not for you.
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It may not be... I just created a ranking rubric for the cars on my list, and I was very surprised at how they sorted out. In my mind, I had the Gravity very high because it kills it in so many ways. And the car I had pushed out of my thinking was the iX3, mostly because of its janky audio system and the fact that I might have to pay a premium price to get one this year. The cars I am considering are small- to medium-sized SUVs with at least 300 miles EPA range and quick performance. The iX5 is on the list because it is possible, if I can get a long lease extension and then probably go a month or two without a lease.

The criteria I chose are the things that I considered differentiators and important to me. There is no weighting. I scored stuff on a 3-point scale and totaled each car. A big smile meant it was very good in that criteria and got 2 points. The mids got 1 point and were neutral or average. And then the frowns were detractors and got -1 points.

No huge shock that the Polestar is #1, because it checks most of my boxes. But they are exiting the US market, so they are out.
Next Car Ranking.webp
 
exxxviii said:
It may not be... I just created a ranking rubric for the cars on my list, and I was very surprised at how they sorted out. In my mind, I had the Gravity very high because it kills it in so many ways. And the car I had pushed out of my thinking was the iX3, mostly because of its janky audio system and the fact that I might have to pay a premium price to get one this year. The cars I am considering are small- to medium-sized SUVs with at least 300 miles EPA range and quick performance. The iX5 is on the list because it is possible, if I can get a long lease extension and then probably go a month or two without a lease.

The criteria I chose are the things that I considered differentiators and important to me. There is no weighting. I scored stuff on a 3-point scale and totaled each car. A big smile meant it was very good in that criteria and got 2 points. The mids got 1 point and were neutral or average. And then the frowns were detractors and got -1 points.

No huge shock that the Polestar is #1, because it checks most of my boxes. But they are exiting the US market, so they are out.
View attachment 39817
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And it's totally fair for you to decide that the Gravity isn't what best suits your needs. Members of this forum are more than happy to provide insights and answers, but at the end of the day, it's your life and it's important for you to get something that meets your priorities.
 
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