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steveairgt

steveairgt

Active Member

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Location
Atlanta, GA
Cars
Lucid Air Grand Touring
Referral Code
83YOVHQD
Hi,
I’ve been a huge Lucid supporter for years. I own a 2022 AGT, stockholder, and run a large Lucid facebook group. I’ve people for years that Lucid won’t go bankrupt. They have tons of PIF funding. Saudis are building Lucid factory and a tech city around it.

I’m thinking of trading for the Gravity.

Now I’m starting to have second thoughts. Sales aren’t there. The future seems to be Cosmos. Could Lucid go the way of Tesla and eventually abandon the high end and just produce model 3/Y type cars.?

Will the Gravity be their last luxury car?

Thoughts?
 
My thinking is that no one can tell the future. Gravity is a great car now, and I'm glad I own it.
 
Hope that they keep both lines. The Gravity has a wonderful set of capabilities that align with the quiet, space and features of its 3-row SUV. Glad to have it.
 
I do not think that Lucid will abandon Air or Gravity (especially not Gravity since it is just ramping). I feel that Napoli is the right leader for Lucid at this time. It is clear that Lucid launched both the Air and Gravity too early. I also have a 2022 AGT and the cars software was marginal when it first shipped. Would have been better if Air launched from day 1 with what is now the 2.X.X software.

Same can be said of Gravity. It was really destructive in my view to ship handful of Gravities to "friends and family" between Christmas and New Year in 2024. The April 2025 first real customer deliveries were too problematic from what I have read on this forum.

If the Gravity first sales were delayed a year until the end of 2025 the Gravity discussion would likely have been more positive. Now Lucid has to catch up. My view is the few Gravity sold between the last week of December 2024 and the end of 2025 did more harm than good to the on-the-street reputation for Gravity. There was little meaningful revenue impact. In hindsight a delayed launch of a more finished product would have been wiser -- in my OPINION.

For Cosmos, as an owner of an AGT and investor, I am disappointed that the launch has been delayed approximately 1 year from the original (and likely unrealistic) "by end of 2026" aspirations. I would advocate that Lucid get Cosmos RIGHT from DAY ONE rather than forcing "day one" into a particular calendar year, as was done with Air in 2021 and repeated as a mistake with Gravity in 2024. Getting it "right" in my view is solid UI software with a largely complete feature set from day one. This would be in addition to the car mechanically and electically being solid as well (less of a problem with Air and Gravity launches). Just my view.
 
Cosmos is delayed until at least 2027 so hopefully they keep selling the air for cash flow if nothing else.
 
If Cosmos sales are what they expect (in line with or better than Model 3/Y), would they continue to sell the Air/Gravity.? There’s a serious monetary reason Tesla dropped the S/X.

As much as we love it, the market hasn’t really accepted it unless with huge discounts.
 
Just because Tesla abandoned their flagships does not mean every other EV company will suffer the same fate. I see the same concern with the R1S in the Rivian forums. The R2 and R3 will be the money makers but abandoning the aspirational flagship is not good for the brand overall. The S and X fell off due to lack of any meaningful updates. If Tesla wanted to, they definitely could have kept them interesting. 800v architecture, rear wheel steering, exterior update, massaging chairs, etc. Instead they chose to focus on self driving almost exclusively.

I don't foresee Rivian and Lucid doing the same. They need proof of concept in the flagships and need their midsize platform to make money. I don't think Lucid is going anywhere currently - however - they really need to steer their ship away from the bankruptcy iceberg, and hard. They still have plenty of sore spots that can be seen from an outside perspective (financials, service and software - probably in that order) that they need to solve yesterday if they want to exist long enough for a meaningful update to their current lineup.

Can they do it? That is the part that is keeping me on the outside as well. I hope that they do but indications that they can seem to cascade into a spiral of bad news week after week for them. It all comes down to if you have faith in the company if the Gravity is worth it. Objectively, it is the one of the best SUVs around, EV or otherwise. If you are willing to bet on it, then I'd say go for it. My concerns are more with Lucid than the Gravity being abandoned altogether. Also, see the deal with Uber. They have to keep the Gravity around for a bit for that to have any meaningful future, for what it's worth.
 
steveairgt said:
If Cosmos sales are what they expect (in line with or better than Model 3/Y), would they continue to sell the Air/Gravity.? There’s a serious monetary reason Tesla dropped the S/X.

As much as we love it, the market hasn’t really accepted it unless with huge discounts.
Click to expand...
There is zero chance that Cosmos sells as many as the Model Y - that’s the best selling car in the world. If you are expecting that to happen you are setting yourself up for major disappointment.
 
Leftlane said:
There is zero chance that Cosmos sells as many as the Model Y - that’s the best selling car in the world. If you are expecting that to happen you are setting yourself up for major disappointment.
Click to expand...
I agree that Cosmos will not outsell Tesla Y initially. The Model Y sells over 1 million per year. However, for Cosmos to be a success for Lucid and have a meaningful positive impact on Lucid's financial condition with hopefully positive free cash flow, it would only have to sell about 1/10th as many copies as the Tesla Y. If Lucid manages to sell 100,000 Cosmos per year while Tesla ships 1 million Model Y, that would be fine with me for this first year or two. Then I would like to see Cosmos (and the derivatives such as "Earth") take the annual sales to 350,000+, which would still be 1/3 of Tesla Y, but Lucid would be well on its way to financial independence at that point.
 
Spaceship said:
Just because Tesla abandoned their flagships does not mean every other EV company will suffer the same fate. I see the same concern with the R1S in the Rivian forums. The R2 and R3 will be the money makers but abandoning the aspirational flagship is not good for the brand overall. The S and X fell off due to lack of any meaningful updates. If Tesla wanted to, they definitely could have kept them interesting. 800v architecture, rear wheel steering, exterior update, massaging chairs, etc. Instead they chose to focus on self driving almost exclusively.

I don't foresee Rivian and Lucid doing the same. They need proof of concept in the flagships and need their midsize platform to make money. I don't think Lucid is going anywhere currently - however - they really need to steer their ship away from the bankruptcy iceberg, and hard. They still have plenty of sore spots that can be seen from an outside perspective (financials, service and software - probably in that order) that they need to solve yesterday if they want to exist long enough for a meaningful update to their current lineup.

Can they do it? That is the part that is keeping me on the outside as well. I hope that they do but indications that they can seem to cascade into a spiral of bad news week after week for them. It all comes down to if you have faith in the company if the Gravity is worth it. Objectively, it is the one of the best SUVs around, EV or otherwise. If you are willing to bet on it, then I'd say go for it. My concerns are more with Lucid than the Gravity being abandoned altogether. Also, see the deal with Uber. They have to keep the Gravity around for a bit for that to have any meaningful future, for what it's worth.
Click to expand...
Adding to this, the flagship is a means for them to focus sweating the details in R&D and then take those learnings into downstream products. For example, the prior marketing material for Gravity mentioned that they took inspirations from the Sapphire program in learning traction. In addition, the Air Sapphire was developed in parallel with the Air Pure, and those learnings fed off of each other.

The experiences from the Air and Gravity programs then fed into the development of midsize. I wouldn't be surprised if the learnings from midsize then feed themselves back up towards the Air and Gravity programs to free up the costs and budget to then funnel those funds into other areas for those vehicles. Even Lucid's investor day presentation mentioned how Gravity's improvement in cost and scaling will be building off of midsize's scaling (see page 15)

Besides, we have not received any explicit information from Lucid that they intend to end the Air and Gravity programs.
 
Spaceship said:
Just because Tesla abandoned their flagships does not mean every other EV company will suffer the same fate. I see the same concern with the R1S in the Rivian forums. The R2 and R3 will be the money makers but abandoning the aspirational flagship is not good for the brand overall. The S and X fell off due to lack of any meaningful updates. If Tesla wanted to, they definitely could have kept them interesting. 800v architecture, rear wheel steering, exterior update, massaging chairs, etc. Instead they chose to focus on self driving almost exclusively.

I don't foresee Rivian and Lucid doing the same. They need proof of concept in the flagships and need their midsize platform to make money. I don't think Lucid is going anywhere currently - however - they really need to steer their ship away from the bankruptcy iceberg, and hard. They still have plenty of sore spots that can be seen from an outside perspective (financials, service and software - probably in that order) that they need to solve yesterday if they want to exist long enough for a meaningful update to their current lineup.

Can they do it? That is the part that is keeping me on the outside as well. I hope that they do but indications that they can seem to cascade into a spiral of bad news week after week for them. It all comes down to if you have faith in the company if the Gravity is worth it. Objectively, it is the one of the best SUVs around, EV or otherwise. If you are willing to bet on it, then I'd say go for it. My concerns are more with Lucid than the Gravity being abandoned altogether. Also, see the deal with Uber. They have to keep the Gravity around for a bit for that to have any meaningful future, for what it's worth.
Click to expand...
Yes but its still clear all the investment in technology and engineering went into the Cybertruck which is Tesla's 'flagship' product....Just because one can, and the theoretical market is large, does not mean EV is the best current solution for that market.. For luxury cars and SUVs like Lucid has it is clearly a superior solution to expensive ICE, Hybrid and PHEV....
 
I wouldn’t read too much into Tesla’s decision to drop the S and X. These are two different companies with different goals and objectives. And even if Lucid were to drop the Air and/or Gravity, those decisions will likely happen several years after the launch of Cosmos and Earth while production scales and matures.
 
Spaceship said:
Also, see the deal with Uber. They have to keep the Gravity around for a bit for that to have any meaningful future, for what it's worth.
Click to expand...
I understand we've seen Uber Gravity, however for cost reasons and city taxis, I'm inclined to think the Lucid Taxi will be the actual vehicle used, with the technology we're seeing on top of Gravity. Perhaps one of the Cosmos as well.

You're not going to see me buying a fancy taxi for my personal use - I wouldn't have bought a Checker for a daily driver, either.

🤣
 
tmichael said:
I understand we've seen Uber Gravity, however for cost reasons and city taxis, I'm inclined to think the Lucid Taxi will be the actual vehicle used, with the technology we're seeing on top of Gravity. Perhaps one of the Cosmos as well.

You're not going to see me buying a fancy taxi for my personal use - I wouldn't have bought a Checker for a daily driver, either.

🤣
Click to expand...
Same, happy to subscribe to a affordable service for robotaxi, but I want my garage space free of robots. Have other toys I found...

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Forgive my tinfoil hat, but I personally think there will be massive consolidation in the industry to just a few manufacturers once consumer L4 starts to roll out. Right now, it's difficult for companies to justify investing in low-volume platforms like the Gravity and Air, but with reduced competition there will eventually be increased sales, and thus increased development, for the few remaining companies in the space.

Whether Lucid will be one of those companies is anyone's guess, but I think the Gravity and Air are both the best products in their respective classes, so it wouldn't be far-fetched to assume their coming midsize products will be at or near the top of their class as well. That bodes well for their long term prospects.
 
The_Don said:
Forgive my tinfoil hat, but I personally think there will be massive consolidation in the industry to just a few manufacturers once consumer L4 starts to roll out. Right now, it's difficult for companies to justify investing in low-volume platforms like the Gravity and Air, but with reduced competition there will eventually be increased sales, and thus increased development, for the few remaining companies in the space.

Whether Lucid will be one of those companies is anyone's guess, but I think the Gravity and Air are both the best products in their respective classes, so it wouldn't be far-fetched to assume their coming midsize products will be at or near the top of their class as well. That bodes well for their long term prospects.
Click to expand...
If it's worth anything, Lucid's investor day presentation has shown they can retrofit L4 hardware on to the existing Gravity and midsize, and that the midsize platform is modular enough for a dedicated robotaxi implementation. I recall another Lucid presentation a while back mentioned that the Nuro/Uber Gravities are using the existing Gravity line, and I'm assuming a retrofit autonomous midsize can do the same.

Off the top of my head, I can only recall Rivian who also has a signed deal with a company like Uber for robotaxis.
 
Spaceship said:
Just because Tesla abandoned their flagships does not mean every other EV company will suffer the same fate. I see the same concern with the R1S in the Rivian forums. The R2 and R3 will be the money makers but abandoning the aspirational flagship is not good for the brand overall. The S and X fell off due to lack of any meaningful updates. If Tesla wanted to, they definitely could have kept them interesting. 800v architecture, rear wheel steering, exterior update, massaging chairs, etc. Instead they chose to focus on self driving almost exclusively.

I don't foresee Rivian and Lucid doing the same. They need proof of concept in the flagships and need their midsize platform to make money. I don't think Lucid is going anywhere currently - however - they really need to steer their ship away from the bankruptcy iceberg, and hard. They still have plenty of sore spots that can be seen from an outside perspective (financials, service and software - probably in that order) that they need to solve yesterday if they want to exist long enough for a meaningful update to their current lineup.

Can they do it? That is the part that is keeping me on the outside as well. I hope that they do but indications that they can seem to cascade into a spiral of bad news week after week for them. It all comes down to if you have faith in the company if the Gravity is worth it. Objectively, it is the one of the best SUVs around, EV or otherwise. If you are willing to bet on it, then I'd say go for it. My concerns are more with Lucid than the Gravity being abandoned altogether. Also, see the deal with Uber. They have to keep the Gravity around for a bit for that to have any meaningful future, for what it's worth.
Click to expand...
I test drove an R2 yesterday. Have test driven Gen 1/2 R1S also. I’m more concerned about Rivian than I am Lucid at this point. The product quality isn’t even close. The R2 ride and interior quality were abysmal. Seats were terrible. You could tell it was tossed together on the cheap.
 
mike1121 said:
I test drove an R2 yesterday. Have test driven Gen 1/2 R1S also. I’m more concerned about Rivian than I am Lucid at this point. The product quality isn’t even close. The R2 ride and interior quality were abysmal. Seats were terrible. You could tell it was tossed together on the cheap.
Click to expand...
That's an interesting take, very different from all the reviews I have seen and read. Maybe you have to put it in the context of the Performance R2 being half the price of a GGT?
 
prgarg said:
That's an interesting take, very different from all the reviews I have seen and read. Maybe you have to put it in the context of the Performance R2 being half the price of a GGT?
Click to expand...
Price is definitely a factor. My wife uses our 23 MY to commute to work. The gravity is my daily and roadtrip with the dog vehicle. I was curious about the R2 as a potential commuter replacement for her. The suspension is still terrible (as it was on the R1S G1/2). You either feel like you are floating and wobbling all over or you feel every single bump while still not feeling planted. The seats were tiny and very uncomfortable. Leg room was terrible. (I’m 6’3 and I can roadtrip our MY without an issue). The driver screen was minuscule and the wheel blocked the view (like on a Model X). The wheel was also oversized for the cockpit space. The entire thing just felt cheap and plastic. If I want cheap and plastic, I can get another MY that I know will last years issue free and has a service network I can count on. I was honestly shocked by how bad the R2 was. I thought for sure it would blow my MY out of the water and it didn’t even come close. Say what you want about Tesla, they have created a phenomenal product. I hope Lucid can replicate that success with the Cosmos.

Edited to add: the wife has floated an Air to replace her Tesla down the road as a commuter. Lady has good taste. 😂
 
mike1121 said:
Price is definitely a factor. My wife uses our 23 MY to commute to work. The gravity is my daily and roadtrip with the dog vehicle. I was curious about the R2 as a potential commuter replacement for her. The suspension is still terrible (as it was on the R1S G1/2). You either feel like you are floating and wobbling all over or you feel every single bump while still not feeling planted. The seats were tiny and very uncomfortable. Leg room was terrible. (I’m 6’3 and I can roadtrip our MY without an issue). The driver screen was minuscule and the wheel blocked the view (like on a Model X). The wheel was also oversized for the cockpit space. The entire thing just felt cheap and plastic. If I want cheap and plastic, I can get another MY that I know will last years issue free and has a service network I can count on. I was honestly shocked by how bad the R2 was. I thought for sure it would blow my MY out of the water and it didn’t even come close. Say what you want about Tesla, they have created a phenomenal product. I hope Lucid can replicate that success with the Cosmos.

Edited to add: the wife has floated an Air to replace her Tesla down the road as a commuter. Lady has good taste. 😂
Click to expand...
Gotcha, that makes sense. As for the driver's screen, the R2's is still bigger than MY's (measuring a whooping zero inches) 😂
 
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