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Rear Seating

sjlaube said:
We travel with our two beagles and their two cages (which fold flat) We need the relatively flat space to fit everything in. I am very disappointed that Lucid decided to ignore rear passenger comfort just so they could claim the 500 mile range.
On the positive side I did get my deposit back in days. When I cancelled my deposit on the Tesla Roadster it took almost 10 phone calls and 3 months to get them to finally give me back the money.
In the meantime I am thinking about ordering a Taycan Turbo and if Lucid gets its act together I can also switch then.
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Just received my deposit back as well. Only took three days.
 
Hallelujah!!! Lucid finally changed the pic of the rear seat area on the configurator. The rear seat pic now clearly shows the correct variant without the rear footwells. However, the Santa Monica interior pic on the options side panel has still not been corrected.

Rear leg room dimension in Specs is still the same - 35.8"

The glass canopy also appears to be more heavily tinted than it was before?
 
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Thanks for pointing this out.

I wonder if this is the final word on the rear footwells? If so, it appears that Lucid decided not to cup out the bottom of the front seats to allow for stretching the legs more forward to help lower the knee position. I wonder if they altered the rake of the rear seats?

I guess there's nothing to do for it but wait for this version of the car to show up at a Design Studio and see if it actually works for those worried about rear seat comfort.
 
I emailed my sales associate to ask those very questions. I'll let you know if he has anything useful to say.
 
I sent this to Lucid Sales today with a request for the specific dimensions indicated. I don't doubt the Air will have plenty of longitudinal room between the front and back seats. I'm more concerned about long periods of unsupported thighs, which was the issue that appeared in the two videos of reviewers sitting in the back seat with their knees jacked up. I'll post any response I get.
Screen Shot 2020-10-21 at 2.08.42 PM.webp
 
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I just had a wide-ranging discussion about the Lucid Air with Zak Edson, the head of Marketing and Sales at Lucid. He was laudably forthcoming with information about what is and isn't yet determined about the Air. Here's a synopsis of the discussion:

The rear floorboard in cars with the larger battery pack will be 3.15" higher than in cars with the smaller battery pack. The 1.6" legroom difference between the packs shown on the Specs page of the Lucid website is due to a difference in measurement methods. The Dream Edition will be available only with the larger battery pack. While the Grand Touring will premiere with only the larger battery pack, the smaller pack will become available later. However, the power output with the smaller pack will be less than the 800 hp output with the larger pack due to voltage differences.

For others such as I who have been confused by conflicting video shots and comments about rear legroom from video reviewers, here's the story. The configuration of cars at press events does not necessarily track the production versions. At the September 9 reveal, the white car had the larger battery pack, and the gold car (though a Dream Edition) had the smaller pack. At the Manhattan press event, the Zenith red car had the smaller battery pack (though billed by the reviewer as being the 517-mile-range version).

The front seats will leave toe room for rear seat passengers, the height of which will diminish slightly as the front seat is run further backward. However, a key measure of leg comfort is the angle at the knee joint. A Tesla Model S has a knee angle of 89.8º and the Lucid an angle of 95.2º with the larger battery pack. Though nominally small, the difference actually contributes significantly to seating comfort. Combined with the greater length of the Air cabin compared to the Model S, the rear seating position with the larger battery pack should be comfortable for even tall passengers.

Some other questions Zak answered:

The Air will have regenerative braking set up for one-pedal driving (like Tesla and unlike the Porsche Taycan).

The rear seat will have a fold-down center armrest, although the cars initially on display at Design Studios probably will not have them.

Although the Air will have soft-close doors at the start of production, the full power-operated doors will not be available initially, due to delays in the supply chain.

The car will not have full-spectrum active noise cancellation mentioned in early promotional material. This is due to the hardware and software complexity of such systems in a car environment. However, the Air was benchmarked against the Mercedes S Class for NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness), and the Air numbers are better.

Closing impressions:

While I have been as frustrated as anyone by internally-inconsistent information on the Lucid website and elsewhere about the Air, I am convinced this is the result of an organization running in a hundred directions at once as it tries to communicate with the market about a car still undergoing development. My conversation with Zak Edson today, as well as the frequent contacts I've had with his Sales organization, signals to me a company that is extraordinarily attuned to the customer. While they can't give everyone everything they want in a car, they're putting Herculean effort into understanding those desires.

I don't know what I'll finally decide once I try on a Dream Edition for size at a Design Studio, but I truly want the Air to work for me. I think the Air is a technological tour de force, and I think the organization is determined to put a quality product on the road.
 
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hmp10 said:
I just had a wide-ranging discussion about the Lucid Air with Zak Edson, the head of Marketing and Sales at Lucid. He was laudably forthcoming with information about what is and isn't yet determined about the Air. Here's a synopsis of the discussion:

The rear floorboard in cars with the larger battery pack will be 3.15" higher than in cars with the smaller battery pack. The 1.6" legroom difference between the packs shown on the Specs page of the Lucid website is due to a difference in measurement methods. The Dream Edition will be available only with the larger battery pack. While the Grand Touring will premiere with only the larger battery pack, the smaller pack will become available later. However, the power output with the smaller pack will be less than the 800 hp output with the larger pack due to voltage differences.

For others such as I who have been confused by conflicting video shots and comments about rear legroom from video reviewers, here's the story. The configuration of cars at press events does not necessarily track the production versions. At the September 9 reveal, the white car had the larger battery pack, and the gold car (though a Dream Edition) had the smaller pack. At the Manhattan press event, the Zenith red car had the smaller battery pack (though billed by the reviewer as being the 517-mile-range version).

The front seats will leave toe room for rear seat passengers, the height of which will diminish slightly as the front seat is run further backward. However, a key measure of leg comfort is the angle at the knee joint. A Tesla Model S has a knee angle of 89.8º and the Lucid an angle of 95.2º with the larger battery pack. Though nominally small, the difference actually contributes significantly to seating comfort. Combined with the greater length of the Air cabin compared to the Model S, the rear seating position with the larger battery pack should be comfortable for even tall passengers.

Some other questions Zak answered:

The Air will have regenerative braking set up for one-pedal driving (like Tesla and unlike the Porsche Taycan).

The rear seat will have a fold-down center armrest, although the cars initially on display at Design Studios probably will not have them.

Although the Air will have soft-close doors at the start of production, the full power-operated doors will not be available initially, due to delays in the supply chain.

The car will not have full-spectrum active noise cancellation mentioned in early promotional material. This is due to the hardware and software complexity of such systems in a car environment. However, the Air was benchmarked against the Mercedes S Class for NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness), and the Air numbers are better.

Closing impressions:

While I have been as frustrated as anyone by internally-inconsistent information on the Lucid website and elsewhere about the Air, I am convinced this is the result of an organization running in a hundred directions at once as it tries to communicate with the market about a car still undergoing development. My conversation with Zak Edson today, as well as the frequent contacts I've had with his Sales organization, signals to me a company that is extraordinarily attuned to the customer. While they can't give everyone everything they want in a car, they're putting Herculean effort into understanding those desires.

I don't know what I'll finally decide once I try on a Dream Edition for size at a Design Studio, but I truly want the Air to work for me. I think the Air is a technological tour de force, and I think the organization is determined to put a quality product on the road.
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Thank you for keeping the Lucid community informed with such well-written and informative posts. You are a real asset to this forum.
 
hmp10 said:
The real question for me is do I want to pay $169,000 for a sedan that will not comfortably transport older friends on our numerous day trips and dinner outings. One of the reasons I was planning to switch from Tesla, which I have really enjoyed, is that I want to use an EV for these trips instead of my Honda Odyssey minivan.

As I posted earlier, I rode home in a Honda Accord Uber a couple of weeks ago. As the Lucid has been on my mind a lot lately, I paid careful attention to my rear seating position and the placement of my knees, which was quite comfortable. As near as I can tell from yesterday's video, I am about the same height as Ben Sullins (and many of my friends are taller). Looking at him in the back seat of the Lucid suggested considerably less comfort than he would experience in a Honda Accord.

It seems that the Dream Edition (and the Grand Touring, as well) will leave me right back where I am in terms of taking friends along.

If all I care about is blinding performance and long range, I might as well replace my P90D with a Plaid. I'd be getting a car with a more proven production record and a more developed charging infrastructure that will cost $20K less.

Perhaps I'm not a typical prospect for Lucid, with my heightened emphasis on rear seating comfort along with a desire for stellar road performance. The large German sedans fill that bill with the Mercedes S63, the BMW M760, and the Audi S8. Lucid had billed itself as the EV answer to those cars. Sadly, it seems to be missing the mark.
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If your rear passengers can’t get comfortable in a lucid air gt then I’d say they should not get in a rear seat of any car
 
jlongii said:
If your rear passengers can’t get comfortable in a lucid air gt then I’d say they should not get in a rear seat of any car
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We’ve had our Air Dream P for over four and a half years now and still love to drive it. But anytime we take adult rear-seat passengers we use one of our two Gravity Dream Editions.

Our Air certainly outclassed our 2021 Model S Plaid in terms of rear seat room. With the drivers seat of both sedans set to our preferred driving position, the Air had 9.5” more fore/aft legroom than the Model S — an extraordinary feat when considering that both cars were almost identical in exterior dimensions. However, the Air had no more floor depth than the Model S. Both cars jacked your thighs up above the bottom seat cushion support. The Air was more comfortable because you could partially offset that by forward leg stretch. But it still was no competitor in back seat comfort to an MB S-Class or a BMW 7 Series.

The Air with the smaller battery pack, though, was every bit as comfortable in the rear as the big German sedans. The fact is that several luxury sedans had more comfortable rear seats than the Air with the larger battery pack.
 
The Air GT was a non starter for me due to the height of the rear floor and the fact that I pretty much always have 3 passengers in the rear, otherwise I’m all for the extra range. The Air Touring I have is much more comfortable in that regard.
 
When I visited my local Studio and sat in the rear seat of an Air Touring, the Studio Associate opined that most people won’t notice much difference in floor height between the AT and AGT. I gather from this thread that rear seat comfort between the AT and AGT actually can be significant.

I don’t anticipate long-haul trips with any rear passengers. Local driving with rear passengers is another story, however, and I hope those passengers will be comfortable in the AGT.
 
bcjenkins said:
I don’t anticipate long-haul trips with any rear passengers. Local driving with rear passengers is another story, however, and I hope those passengers will be comfortable in the AGT.
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Hit the go pedal and take a turn 20 mph faster than most other sedans and they'll forget about their feet! 😮
 
Nice thread revival! When my wife and I were looking at either a touring or grand touring for our road trip car she sat in both rear seats. She's 5'2" and actually preferred the AGT, which was fine with me!
 
bcjenkins said:
When I visited my local Studio and sat in the rear seat of an Air Touring, the Studio Associate opined that most people won’t notice much difference in floor height between the AT and AGT. I gather from this thread that rear seat comfort between the AT and AGT actually can be significant.

I don’t anticipate long-haul trips with any rear passengers. Local driving with rear passengers is another story, however, and I hope those passengers will be comfortable in the AGT.
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The height of the floorboard differs by 3.15” between the larger and smaller battery pack. If you can’t try out both versions back to back, try an experiment. Start by finding a low seat (the rear seat cushions are low in the Air) and then put a little over 3” of books under your feet. See how the difference feels. It’s definitely noticeable. Whether it actually bothers you is an individual thing . . . and a function of how long you’ll be sitting in that position.
 
I have a 2025 AGT. I'm not very tall at 5'10", but my 6'2" and 6'3" sons have said there's a ton of comfortable room even wwhen the front seats are pretty far back.

I test drove and sat in an AT and have to admit, I don't feel the difference. YMMV.
 
djeuch said:
I have a 2025 AGT. I'm not very tall at 5'10", but my 6'2" and 6'3" sons have said there's a ton of comfortable room even wwhen the front seats are pretty far back.

I test drove and sat in an AT and have to admit, I don't feel the difference. YMMV.
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The foreward legroom in a Lucid Air is extraordinary, especially for a car of its relatively modest size. (An Air is actually a smidge smaller than the far more cramped Porsche Taycan and generally aligns with the mid-size German sedans such as the E-class MB and the 5 series BMW although its interior space rivals that of the S-class and 7 series.)

However, there is another metric that is relevant to the question of rear seat comfort: knee bend angle. Car designers view something around 120º of bend angle optimal for rear seat passengers and something around 100-105º as the minimum for a natural seating position which helps the rear seat cushion take some of the weight load off the tailbone. The bend angle in an Air with the larger battery pack is 95.2º. By comparison, a Model S is 89.8º, which is one of the reasons I hated the rear seat of our Tesla compared to our Air. Worst of all was the early MB EQS, which had such an extraordinarily sharp bend angle that MB tried to address the problem in later models by increasing the incline of the rear seat back — a solution that just made the seating position more odd.

When getting into the back seat of our Gravities, you notice a lot of differences from the Air, as you would expect from its different form factor. But the thing that I notice most is the very natural drop from the seat bottom cushion to the floorboard. Both and Air and the Gravity have plenty of forward leg room, but the way the Gravity seats support the thigh makes a significant difference. Perhaps I notice this more than most would because I have had both knees and my left hip replaced. In the run up to these surgeries when the joints were riddled with arthritis I found sitting in the rear seat of our Tesla almost imossible. The Air was certainly more comfortable, but still well short of sitting in our friends’ large German sedans.

Both the Miami and the West Palm Beach showrooms debuted pre-production Airs, and we went to see both. The West Palm Beach studio had an Air GT that had been built with the smaller battery pack that did not make it into production. The Miami studio had a GT with the larger battery pack. I had my heart set on a Dream Edition but was thrown almost into despair when I tried out the two back seats. The West Palm Beach car rivaled any large German sedan in rear seat comfort . . . but the Miami car came up short.
 
I don't see how you can say there is a single knee bend value, since you can move your feet as far forward and tucked as far back as you want when seated in the rear. I find this whole argument about the rear seats in the AGT to be specious.
 
The means for measuring knee been angles in a car seat are specified by engineering standards contained in SAE J1100 and J826 which specify the position of the feet for such measurements. Thus bend angles can be compared consistently across cars. (I got both the 95.2º bend angle and the 3.15” difference in floor height from a Lucid engineer back when I was first exploring this issue.)
 
I have considered buying an Air instead of a Gravity. I only carry humans in the back seat occasionally, for short trips (e.g. going out to dinner). My dog is the more consistent passenger. I asked her if the raised floor in the back of an AGT was a problem, and she just stared at me until I threw a ball. I guess she thinks it'd be fine. :p
 
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