I am a new GT owner. I am not sure where it would best to post this so I decided to write a review of my thoughts driving this.
Background: I live in Vancouver, BC (the big one, not the one in Washington:
. We used to only get 3 seasons but nowadays I'd say we regularly get 3.5 or 4 as our winter can get down to 0 or occassionaly below. I like cars. I am coming from one of the first Tesla Model X 90D delivered in Canada and have owned it since new. What I loved about the car was the ability for it to be upgraded OTA so I didn't feel the need to change cars as often because Tesla gave me a new car several times over. For that I am gratfeful to them. However, I have found the efficiency/range of my model X left me wanting so I excitedly purchased the Lucid GT. Now my thoughts in no particular order:
- power is as expected from a high performance electric car. If you've driven a tesla it will feel similar in the real world. There is no real world use case for accelerating to 60mph in 3 sec, at least not in my opinion. My model X got there in 4.4 sec and never once in 6 years that I owned it did I wish I had more acceleration as I only accelerated hard when trying to take over another car or merging onto hwy. I find fast acceleration desirable on a track but why would I want to drive a sedan on a track? I'd prefer to get a track car + a sedan
- Range is much worse than I expected. I am averaging about 4 km/kwh (that's kms not miles! or 2.5mi/kwh). That's driving very gently with max regen, 50% hwy @ 100-110 km/h with ambient temp about 3-5 degrees celcius, heat on, of course as it's winter here. Minor hills on 19" wheels (aftermarket as my car had 21" with summer tires) + bridgestone Blizaak LM005 winter tires. Range was even worse with the 21" with temp of 10-11 degrees celcius at 3-3.5 km/kwh or 1.9-2.2 mi/kwh. For reference, my 6 year old model X (heavier and bigger car) with 150k kms/95k miles, gets 3.5 km/kwh in the same winter conditions driven 90% city, with 20" wheels and Nokian winter tires. Needless to say I am unhappy. My local service team is taking a look at the car this week to see if there is something wrong
- Regen is great. So much better than tesla as I can come to a full stop.
- Interior is far superior to Tesla. $50k superior (i.e. the price difference between the a GT and a model S long range in Canada), no but nonetheless way better. EQS is more luxurious though
- Software was initially very poor but not with 2.0.33 is much better but still leagues behind what I'm used with Tesla. Alexa is barely useable vs Tesla's was quite good esp with Navi, Navi/Maps is terrible, music navigation needs plenty of work (e.g. why can't I save my favourite stations from Spotify and Tidal and AM and FM to one "hot list" and then choose from there...BMW introduced this years ago when you could save AM and FM stations onto fav buttons without having to change from AM/FM), still quite buggy (won't read text messages no matter how long I wait - even after 5 min!), cameras seem either odd dimensions or low res as my backup camera on my 6yo model X seemed sharper (hopefully this will be fixed with software updates)
- the car sits really low and it is a bit of a challenge getting in and out of the car as the door openings are that large. I'd say it sits almost as low as my R8, which for me isn't bad but my wife, she likes to get into her cars more laterally (i.e. "regular" sized SUVs not Escalade/Yukon big)
- ride quality is far superior to Tesla
- handling is good but I don't drive this car through canyons (none here) so it's not that important to me as a daily driver
- Quality is what I'd expect from a start up - my car was in the service station with 350km/210 miles on it to address a squeeking rear shelf, which btw is better but still present
- Sound system is good. I'm a bit of an audiophile (full Wilson Audio in my home theatre) so I care about this. I think I still prefer Burmester in porsches more but it's close
- Service is great but then again so was Tesla when I first bought, which I worry is more a function of the lack of Lucids in Vancouver at this time
- OTA experience is similar to Tesla's
- Overall features I think is subpar for this price point. Today I tried to program my mirrors to tilt down when I reverse and I couldn't do that. I'm not sure if maybe I don't know how to do it? Vanity mirror is pretty pathetic the way it opens and is held open, if it works at all. Homelink operation is so challenging to use that I store a garage door opener in the car
- Charging is not great, just ok. I purposefully went to 2 different 350kw chargers just to see how fast I could charge my car. 1st time it was 3 degrees outside and I had 18% SOC. I tried to precondition my car but it only took me 8min to get to the charger. Max charging speed 125kwh (this one was only a 200 kwh charger) for 4 min and the last 2 min was 94 kwh. Second experience was 5% SOC, also 3 degrees, preconditioned my car for 15min (which is how long it too me to get to the charger) and max charge was 136kwh for 8 min and didn't increase appreciably throughout.
- Biggest gripe though is that it is winter here, with snow/ice actually on the road and I cannot safely drive with P-Zero summer tires on the 21" wheels. So I purchased a set with TPMS from Tirerack (after entering my vehicle) and then I find out that in order to change wheels I need a software flash at the service centre, it will take the whole day, and they want to charge me $185 to do it!!! I told them that I thought that was ridiculous and that I'd simply drive with the TPMS sensors fault on my dash as principally, I thought it was wrong to sell me a car with summer tires only and then charge me to change to winter wheels when no other manufacturer I know would do this!
I realize this is a very long review but I wanted to share my experience with a community of owners and potential owners as I think this type of information would have been useful for me to have known before I bought the car! I'm not complaining per se but simply wanted to share a real life take on what 1 person's ownership looks like.
BTW: In BC, the total cost of the GT is just under $300k with taxes (about $296k due to federal and provincial taxes of about 38%) so at that price people are looking at lots of different cars. I've also attached a pic of where my GT lives (the ones that can fit in my garage at least).
I'd love to hear thoughts/experience/advice
