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3000+ Mile Air Touring Winter Road trip Diary

Update: Obviously the car hasn't gotten to a service center or gotten fixed yet, but the customer service support from Lucid has been excellent so far.

They are going to reimburse me for a rental, and/or flying back home if I choose to fly back instead of driving.

The car will be towed to the King of Prussia service center to be fixed, and once fixed, they will transport the car to my house in Texas.

Excellent customer service support far.
 
doubletwist said:
3000+ mile Air Touring Winter Road Trip - Day 4 Emergency Update...



It could probably have been worse though. The lucid nav AND Waze had routed me up a smaller highway along the coast of the lake, but there's winter storms. As I got on that highway I realized that it was not well traveled, completely covered in packed snow, and with wind blowing snow around making visibility difficult, and I realized on the map that it was talking me along the shoreline. My Spidey senses were tingling like mad and I know lake effect snow storms can be dangerous, so I turned around and went back to take I-90 instead. So we could have been stuck on a crappy little highway with no shoulder to speak of to pull off to, in the middle of blizzard conditions, in the middle of nowhere instead of on a major highway with nicely plowed shoulders where there's barely a snow flurry.
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Yeah, hope I didn't jinx you. That area S and E of the lakes, this time of year...dangerous at best. You can be driving in sun and without warning total white-out and 4 feet of snow. That's why you always carry food, water, blankets, light. Plan on being hit from behind a dozen times when you hit these sudden white-outs, even if you have the sense to get far off the roadway. People are stupid, even the locals are surprised when it happens. Lights on "Auto" means lights are OFF. TURN YOUR LIGHTS ON ALL THE WAY!

"Drive system fault" has been seen by several of us. Have you tried a reset? I was able to get home using a reset/reboot several times. All fault warnings disappeared and car behaved normally. I got pretty good at re-booting the car, then got mobile service out of King of Prussia and they diagnosed a faulty control module. It was replaced over 3 years ago and I haven't had a problem since. Every update has been trouble free.

I imagine the software defaults go "get to service" even when a reset fixes the problem temporary. One has to see this as a safety feature. Remember how good this car is when everything works. Don't give up.

I live about 10 miles from the King of Prussia service center. I have a 3-year + annual check-up 6 January. Not a single problem since faulty control module was replaced. I love my GT.

Many of us love your trip log and look forward to hearing the rest of your saga.
 
Cosmo Cruz said:
AMEM

We have the worst signage in the world. Even the locals get lost on the way to/from the airport.
Also, we have the worst roads. Hope you are on 19" wheels.
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Was on 20" wheels. I didn't notice any significant issues with the road surface quality, though I spent most of my time on the interstate, and I really don't find the 20" wheels on car to be bad at all. It's a way more forgiving suspension than my BMW X3 M40i's 20" wheels, possibly because they were run flats.
 
Leftlane said:
The number of new cars that are leaving people stranded on the side of the road is absolutely minuscule. The only time I have ever been totally stuck like this was in a 1976 Fiat when I was in high school, certainly not by any newer car I’ve owned in the last 30 years. There is really no reasonable excuse and unfortunately it seems to be not that unusual so far with Lucid. So now what - will they fix his car and transport it back to Texas for him, or does he get the pleasure of disrupting his life to deal with it now?

I guess my pain threshold is significantly lower than most Lucid owners - no way I could deal with this and then have any confidence in driving it in the future.
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Our 2012 Kia Sorento needed its entire engine replaced after it died on the highway - bricked, in-lane.

That happened in 2013.

Six months later there was a recall on them and they replaced *all* the Sorento engines.

With respect, your experience is not indicative of whether or not modern cars die; they do. And that wasn’t even an EV.
 
doubletwist said:
This isn't my first rodeo with this, even in the last 12 months!

The only reason I even have the Lucid is because my BMW engine cratered, leaving me stranded in a parking lot waiting for a tow last January. I was 1 month out of the CPO warranty.

If, BMW had stepped up (because the issue HAD to have been present when they had the car a few months prior for some other service), not lied repeatedly, not tried to blame me, and at the end of the day, not screwed me out of $12k, I'd still be diving it, or at least possible driving another BMW.

Taking care of your customers matters, especially for luxury brands.
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Man, we could be friends. <3
 
borski said:
Our 2012 Kia Sorento needed its entire engine replaced after it died on the highway - bricked, in-lane.

That happened in 2013.

Six months later there was a recall on them and they replaced *all* the Sorento engines.

With respect, your experience is not indicative of whether or not modern cars die; they do. And that wasn’t even an EV.
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Agreed - and with respect, your experience is just one also. You are comparing a $35k car from 2012 to a $100k+ car from 2025 - can we agree that car reliability has improved dramatically over the last few decades, to the point where one that is essentially brand new leaving you stranded anywhere (highway, driveway, wherever) is exceedingly rare? It doesn’t seem super rare on this forum though.
 
Leftlane said:
Agreed - and with respect, your experience is just one also. You are comparing a $35k car from 2012 to a $100k+ car from 2025 - can we agree that car reliability has improved dramatically over the last few decades, to the point where one that is essentially brand new leaving you stranded anywhere (highway, driveway, wherever) is exceedingly rare? It doesn’t seem super rare on this forum though.
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I mean, here is just EVs: https://www.autoguide.com/auto/featured-articles/10-of-ev-owners-have-been-left-stranded-44612296

10% is not rare.

ICE cars, which have even more components, break down at a high rate as well. I am not using only my experience as a guide, because I agree, of course, that my experience is anecdotal.

This was written this month: https://www.hagerty.com/media/maint...ng-is-piston-power-reaching-a-breaking-point/

“As reported last week by my colleague Richard Truett in the trade publication Automotive News, Toyota is replacing more than 100,000 twin-turbo V-6 units due to machining contamination. Honda is recalling 250,000 of its 3.5-liter V-6s for connecting rod seizures. Hyundai-Kia is on the hook for testing more than 3 million engines for possible recall, the cost estimated to run upward of $5 billion. And the GM L87 6.2-liter V-8, used in every full-size truck model the company makes, is under a microscope. Some 721,000 are being pulled in for testing to determine if they’re likely to blow up prematurely for a variety of manufacturing issues.

About 4.3 million engines installed from 2015 to the present are currently under recall for potentially catastrophic failures.”

…

“Given that it was way back around 1910 that the piston-driven internal-combustion engine pretty much won the war over which propulsion type would drive the automotive age, you would think all these problems would have been ironed out by now.

You’d be wrong. Despite more than a century of unsurpassed dominance by the suck-squeeze-bang-blows, new challenges keep cropping up as society pressures automakers to advance the art of internal combustion.”
 
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doubletwist said:
3000+ mile Air Touring Winter Road Trip - Day 4 Emergency Update...


Well shit. I got the dreaded Drive System Fault. So now my niece and I are sitting on the shoulder of I-90 in NY at 1am waiting for a tow truck from the NY State Thruway, because it's a restricted road and Lucid can't tow me until they tow me off of I-90.
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Unreal. how many miles on the car?
 
3000+ Mile Air Touring (kinda) Winter Road Trip - Days 5/6/7 Update


So I guess the second half of these road trip reports is not going to be about the Air, so I may not be quite as detailed, but I'll provide some information as it will provide a good contrast for how an ice vehicle does for the second half of the trip compared to the Lucid air on the first half. Also, in all the hubbub, I haven't been quite as diligent about taking down details, but for the remainder of my trip I will be able to do so.

It's been quite the few days, since the Air died on day 4, about 1.5hrs from my midpoint (farthest) destination, having driven 1984 miles since leaving the house on Saturday morning.

Lucid has been great so far, and will be transporting the vehicle to the King of Prussia service center to be fixed, then will transport it back to be in Texas once it's fixed.

And in the meantime time they will be reimbursing me for a rental. They would have initiated the rental themselves, but apparently they can only do that at non-airport locations, and that was the only one that was open on New Year's Eve.

I will also point out that they also offered to reimburse for for airline tickets flying home, if we chose not to drive. But I asked the kiddo, and she chose the option of completing the trip and driving home, so that's what we are going to do.

Initially in Rochester, New York I didn't have a lot of choice on New Year's Eve, and I needed an all-wheel drive vehicle because there was a lot of ice and snow so I got a RAV4, which as one might expect was basically a bare bones base model. The Toyota did okay, getting me around town and then we drove it down to Maryland on Day 6. But by the time we were an hour on our way, I knew there was no way I was going to make it all the way back home in the Toyota. It felt pretty janky, and was really quite uncomfortable.

This morning I returned it and traded it for a Mercedes GLE 350, so that I could complete the rest of my trip and something at least comparable in comfort, and cargo and passenger space.

On my way to returning the Toyota, of course I had to stop for gas, to be honest, I can't say that the experience was particularly better than a charging stop.

I followed the sign off the interstate that said there was gas available at whatever exit I was at. And then proceeded to have to drive more than a mile to actually get to a gas station.

Once there, the first pump I pulled up to, the card reader was broken so I had to move to another pump. Once I finished pumping gas (which stinks to high heaven) the receipt printer was broken, so I couldn't get a receipt, since there's also no way to get a digital receipt emailed. So in a lot of ways really the experience was worse than an EV charging stop.

Unfortunately my picture of the instrument cluster failed to catch the odometer so I don't know exactly how far I went total, but it should be in the realm of just under 400 mi.

But I averaged around 29mpg and spent $44.07 in gas.

Tomorrow morning on day 8:00 we will be starting our return trip from the Baltimore Maryland area back to DFW. I will return to our normal reporting and data collecting in the ice vehicle and see how it does with 2 days of driving.
 
3000+ Mile Air Touring Winter Road Trip - Service Update


I don't have the detailed data ready from the portion of the trip I was able to complete in the Air because I just finally received my notebook I had been collecting the data in. It had to be mailed back to me because I accidentally left it in the tow truck when my car died in NY.

But I do have some updates about my vehicle from the service center in King of Prussia, PA.

The main issue seems to have been with the front drive unit, so they ordered one and started installing it this week.

They are also replacing 4 cooling pumps for both front and rear drive units, the battery, and the cabin.

And the most recent update, when working on the front drive unit, they saw that the front tie rod end was bent. It sounds like they think this was likely caused by the transport company in the process of getting it down from NY, so they are working with them to get that replaced as well.

Ever since the end of the holiday week, Dana from the service center has been reliably providing excellent, timely updates via email and answering any questions I've had.

Sadly, the service near me in Texas still didn't have any loaners I can use, but I needed to get out of the horrible ICE Mercedes GLE 350 I had driven for the return leg of the road trip (~24mpg).

Once again, unfortunately, Enterprise doesn't seem to carry EVs at all (at least not in Baltimore or Texas.).

Thankfully, Lucid gave me the okay to rent one from Avis that they will reimburse me for. Probably better for them anyway as the rates seem to be significantly cheaper.

So for the last week, and likely until my car is returned to me, I'm driving a 2023 Ford Mach-E Premium Extended Range with 50k miles on it.

In most ways, it's a noticeable upgrade from the Mercedes, at least in driving feel. Though I don't know what moron thought that exterior door mechanism was a good idea. It's absolutely horrible.

But over all, while it's not nearly as nice as the Air, it's better than I expected from a Ford that's almost half the price.

But every time I drive it there's a million little things that leave me desperately yearning for the day I get my baby back.
 
socktucker said:
You guys would hate me then cuz I say when the warranty is over-its over! They don't ask me to pay more than I owe, why would they extend the warranty for free with a guaranteed claim?!?
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Even if the problem is one that they should have seen the last time they had the car while it WAS under warranty?

And really I was far more upset about their lies, like claiming they kept all old oil filters, labelled with what vehicle it came from, for a week. They used that lie to claim that I had used a non-oem oil filter for the one oil change I had done somewhere else, despite me providing the invoice (from a highly reputable 3rd party repair shop) showing that an OEM filter had been used.

And then they had the gall to tell me that the trade in on my car with a dead engine was $12k and if I paid the $20k+ to have them put in a new engine, then they'd still only give me $12k for it.

Those things pissed me off far more than not covering the issue.

Though again, given that the issue is one that absolutely they should have noticed the last time they had the vehicle, and that it resulted in the engine cratering less than a month after the end of the warranty, they should have been willing to cover it. That kind of thing is something most automakers will do.

Instead, in the course of a single week, they turned me from someone who loved my car and would almost certainly have bought another BMW next, they turned me into an enemy for life, not only refusing to spend money with them directly, but on a mission to influence everyone else I can to avoid doing so.
 
doubletwist said:
I checked the battery temp and saw that it had only gotten up to about 67°,
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Sorry for the problem, but a very nice posting of you experiences on this trip.

I'm a new owner and was wondering how you check the battery temp? I could not find that in the owner's manual.
 
bobr said:
Sorry for the problem, but a very nice posting of you experiences on this trip.

I'm a new owner and was wondering how you check the battery temp? I could not find that in the owner's manual.
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I have Home Automation set up in my home lab and use the plug-in for it that borski developed. It collects the data from Lucid's API using your Lucid login.
 
3000+ Mile Air Touring Winter Road Trip - Main Service Experience Update


It's been just about 36hours shy of 1 month and I've finally got my baby back! It was quite the ordeal, and so far as I can tell, none of the delays were Lucid's fault. From the time they got the vehicle to the service center to the time they were done and ordering transport to me was 13 days, which seems pretty quick considering all the work they had to do.

Just to quickly re-cap: I was 1,985 miles into my road trip, on I-95 in upstate NY, when I got a Drive System Fault error at 12:45am on Dec 31, in the middle of a snow storm. Up until this point the car was great.

I had to get towed off the interstate by a company approved by NY, so I got it towed to a Love's truck stop. It was 2am by this point so my sister came and picked us up to take us to her house.

The next morning, I called Lucid back, and they started their process to have the car towed down to the King of Prussia service center. That tow company brought to car to their tow yard where it sat for some time. Apparently due to the holidays, there was some delay between when they told Lucid they'd get it down to them, and it didn't arrive at the service center until Jan 7th.

Lucid started their diagnostics immediately, and by the next day (Jan 8th) they had contacted me to let me know that they found an issue with the front drive unit, so they ordered a replacement.

The replacement unit arrived on Jan 12th, and they begin installation on the 14th. I think at that time they also discovered issues with the coolant pumps, and informed me that they'd be replacing all four coolant pumps (front and rear drive, battery, and cabin pumps). They also noted that when they removed the front drive unit, they discovered that the front tie rod was bent, and there was damage to the wheels. They believe it happened during the towing and transport.

On Jan 19th I was informed that the drive unit and coolant pumps had been replaced, and they were moving forward with replacing the tie rod and all four wheels.

On Jan 20th, they let me know that all the work had been completed, and that they had put in the request for the transport to bring the vehicle back to me in Texas, and estimated that the long-distance transport company would be picking it up from the service center on the 23rd.

Around this time, the weather forecasts started warning about the impending winter storm that was going to impact most of the country, including the entire swath between PA and TX. I knew already that even if it did get picked up on Fri the 23rd it would be delayed. By that Friday, they knew the pickup was going to be delayed and estimated it might not get picked up until the middle of the next week, but unexpectedly, the transport company did pick up the vehicle on Sat Jan 24th, and their original estimate was that they'd have it to me by Monday the 26th, but given that we were in the middle of getting 2" of ice and sleet dumped on us, I knew that wasn't going to happen.

By that Saturday evening, the transport driver texted me to let me know that roads had been closed in PA and WV, and that the delivery would be delayed. He included a short video of the near-whiteout conditions on the freeway.

The next day, I could see in the Lucid app that my car appeared to be sitting in a field near a rural house in NC. (I later learned that was the transport driver's home), which is where it sat until Tuesday Jan 27th, when the driver texted to let me know the car would be here about 8am the next morning...

That too, was not to be. He texted me later that night that he'd been stuck in traffic near Memphis. I told him not to worry about it, just to be safe. I could see in the app that the car was on the interstate in MS a bit south-east of Memphis.

The next morning (Wed Jan 28th), the driver let me know that he'd been stuck on the freeway for 14+hrs. The poor guy had basically gotten stuck in this nightmare:

Again I told him just to be safe, I was in no rush to get the car.

By that evening, he had finally gotten off the freeway and headed south to come a different way, and let me know he'd be here by 8am Thur morning (Jan 29th)

This morning, it was a glorious sight to see him coming down the street.

It was a covered transport, so when he pulled the car out, my baby looked clean and damned near as good as the day I got it brand new.

At this point, the following has been completely replaced:
- Front Drive Unit
- Four coolant pumps
- Front Tie Rod
- All Four wheels

Throughout the whole ordeal, Dana at the service center was super helpful and timely with her updates, so definitely no issues there.

I haven't had a chance to drive it yet other than pulling it into the driveway, so it remains to be seen if all the repairs were fully successful, but so far it seems good, and I'm very happy to be able to return the Mach-E rental I've been driving for 3 weeks. Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible, but it's no Lucid!
 
Fingers crossed that all of your issues are in the rear view mirror. Best of luck!
 
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