We have only had our Air GT for a little over a month, but we have put about 3000 miles on it, due to two road trips (about 500 mi roundtrip to Lake Tahoe, and 1700 mi roundtrip to Tucson, AZ). Overall, we are pleased with the car, even though the software is quite rough.
I will leave it to more expert opinions than myself to comment in detail on the driving dynamics, I simply state that I enjoy driving the car. Previously, our family has owned a 2011 Chevy Volt, 2014 BMW i3, 2015 Tesla Model S, 2017 Tesla Model X, and a 2018 Tesla Model 3 Performance, so we are very familiar with driving electric vehicles. I love the regen on the Lucid, which is more than a Tesla Model 3 (which is more than our Model X). I have long preferred one pedal driving (although my new complaint about it is foot fatigue - more of a problem when cruise control is not an option for long drives).
The seats in the Lucid are much more comfortable than the seats in either of our Teslas. The interior space is excellent. We had 4 older adults (ages 45 - 80) and an 8 year old in the car driving all day (with lots of stops) to Tahoe with nothing but complements on the comfort of the seating. I am not sure yet how useful the massage feature is in the seats, but it does seem to help some when you have been driving a long time, and my wife used it quite a bit in the passenger seat. The ventilated seats definitely made a difference in the heat of Arizona (at least in April).
Speaking of heat, I noticed a lot of heat coming off the front windshield of the car from inside. If the car had been parked outside in the sun, the inside of the windshield was too hot to touch, even when the inside of the car had cooled down to about 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Even an hour later, with the AC at full blast, I could still feel heat radiating off the windshield onto my face, even though it was now cool enough to touch, it was still quite warm. (This was while driving on the freeway). The AC seemed a bit underpowered overall to me, noticeably less than either the Model 3 or Model X (but perhaps I was being thrown by how much heat was coming off the front windshield). Both of our Tesla's have Spectra Photosync tinting, which is about the best you can get for IR reflection. Unfortunately, my tinting installer informs me that the mouldings in the Lucid are too tight to fit Photosync, I will need to use a thinner film tint. We also use the Tesla feature to run the AC to prevent the interior temp from getting above about 100 while the car is sitting parked - Lucid does not yet have this exact feature, although it can run the AC for about a half hour after you exit the car to keep it at temp, which is better than nothing.
Just this week, I went to the movie theater, the temperature was 87 degrees F outside. When we returned to the car, after sitting in the sun for over two hours, it remained uncomfortably hot for the entire 20 minute drive back to our house. The AC was unable to chill the car down to a comfortable level in 20 minutes, even with front and back set to 59 degrees (the max setting). The front windshield was hot to the touch and noticeably radiating that heat onto my face. I fear this may be a fatal flaw in the Lucid Air for me - I usually like to have the car on the cool side, and not being able to be comfortable in the car makes driving much less enjoyable overall. Perhaps tinting + religiously turning the AC back on while its parked from the mobile app will be allow me to overcome this flaw. If Lucid upgraded the power of the compressor in a later year model, it would be enough for me to upgrade. Perhaps they should add a sensor to detect the temp of the front windshield and automatically enable the 'defrost' vents with AC when the temp is high - I have not yet tried turning this on manually - it disables 'Auto' when you do it, so you have to remember to turn it off, or forever manually control the fan speed. Until Lucid makes some sort of change, I think I will probably give up on auto so I can do try this.
I find it frustrating that a large portion of the instrument cluster (on the right side) is taken up with the static text, "Lucid Air," particularly since there is no way to be looking at the nav system / map and also see which track is playing in your music. Overall, I feel that the UX 'language' that Lucid is going for, with the overlays on the bottom screen being content which can be 'swiped' from the top screen is a flawed metaphor, which leads to the inability to show music on one and nav on the other (since they are both overlays which start from the top). I also think it leads to confusion on how to get to places, as there are things which look like tabs on the top and bottom of the lower screen, and then an overlay window with a close button. I think this could use a UX rethink to make it simpler to use and easier to find things - not to mention more functional. I get what they were going for here, but I do not think it quite 'works'. Just recently it was pointed out that some marketing pictures for Lucid show 'Now Playing' in place of the "Lucid Air text" so there is hope this feature may be forthcoming.
I miss some of the features and software refinement of Tesla. I miss automatically closing my garage door when I back down the driveway. In the Lucid, I tend to have to stop the car after I have backed out of the garage, put it in park (to hide the backup camera, because the home button which leads to the garage door is hidden buy the camera), then manually hit the garage button in the UI, then go back to reverse to back up the rest of the way down the driveway. I am hopeful that Lucid will both add the garage door button to the UI when in parking camera mode and add the automatic close feature that Tesla has.
My biggest complaint is with the nav system itself. I am someone who uses the nav for 95% of my trips, even short ones to locations where I know exactly the route I will take. I primarily do this because I love to see the ETA - I find this is something which has made it possible for me to be on time much more frequently to places I need to go. My kids also like to look from the back seat to see how long until we arrive at our destination - letting them look themselves is so much better than answering the question, "how many more minutes until we get there?" Lucid could make this an even better experience for the kids if they could show the nav or at least the ETA on the back screen. (I have it locked anyway, so they do not mess with the climate settings, so right now its not doing much useful)
So, it was not 30 seconds after I drove away from the delivery center that I discovered my first complaint - I could not find a way to disable the voice instructions for the nav system. I turned this off in my Tesla when I got it and I never turned it back on. I have no idea how good or bad the voice instructions are in a Tesla because I cannot recall ever listening to them. After pulling over and spending 5 minutes trying to figure out how to turn off the voice, I turned around and went back to the delivery center to ask how to turn it off. The first person did not know, then had to ask someone else, then after some consultation they informed me there was no way to turn of the voice at the current time. Clearly the engineers working on this are not forced to use the nav or they clearly would have put in a way to turn it off. The voice is also pretty privative. For example, all over the Bay Area, we have roads that are labeled like this, "Almaden Expwy," and the car pronounces this as "expwee", not "expressway".
The nav system is not bad just because it is missing a simple feature to turn off the voice. It is bad at almost every level. I was going to say that it reminds me of a TomTom or Garmin from the old days, but I am not sure that is being fair to TomTom and Garmin. The routes that the nav picks are particularly bad.
Imagine a city with a standard square grid of streets. Now imagine that one street which runs diagonal to the grid. Lets say that street is only 2 or 4 lanes, but still big enough to have street lights when it intersects with more major streets. The nav system still directed me to turn right onto a larger street, drive 100 feet, then wait at a light to another major street, turn left and drive another 100 feet, then wait again to turn right back onto the diagonal street upon which I started. Clearly the nav system is giving too high a weight to larger streets vs smaller streets, to the detriment of avoiding unnecessary turns, particularly leaving the street you on to take an unnecessary and slower detour, with more streetlights, to get back to the street you started on.
In another case, it wanted me to leave a perfectly acceptable two lane road with only 2 stop signs before I arrived at a major road close to my destination in order to go winding through a neighborhood orthogonal to the direction to my destination, only to then have to make a difficult left turn onto a major road without the assistance of any traffic signal/sign, then wait in another left turn lane, and drive another 1000 yrds to get back to where my current road was leading.
And then the nav system also has outdated or bad maps which direct you to make left turns when there is a median and the only possibility is a right turn. And then miss the U turn only lane that is immediately available in favor of driving all the way to a light to make a U turn.
The most frustrating thing about the nav system though, is how it effectively tricks you into missing your exit on an interchange. I have had it do this to me multiple times. Lets say you are driving on I10 northbound and need to take the interchange to US 202 westbound. At this particular interchange, the first off-ramp is to US 202 eastbound, and the second immediate ramp after that is to US 202 westbound. The voice will say, "In 1 mile, stay left for I 10", then later, "In 1000 yards, stay left for I 10", then "Stay left for I 10", then just as you are passing that ramp, "Now right for US 202". There is literally no warning before you have to be in the correct lane, and it never tells you that you are even leaving I 10 until its more or less too late to get into that lane. In my particular case, I was in the carpool lane, and there was an exit from that carpool lane to my freeway going the correct direction. But neither did the voice tell me, nor did the UI when I looked at it, indicate that I would be going to that new freeway. I even thought, isn't this my freeway, but when I looked, I thought it was telling me no, no it is not. I stayed in that lane until it told me to literally cross 5 lanes of traffic to get to the exit that was 100 feet ahead - I missed it of course. I have since had it do the same thing to me several times, such that I do not trust it at all for interchanges. The fact neither the voice nor the user interface differentiate in any way the two directions of freeway travel just makes this worse (ie, it never says "N(Northnound)" or "S(Southbound)" when describing entering/switching to a freeway.
Despite the complaints, overall I am enjoying driving the Lucid and I am hopeful that software updates can make things a lot better.
-Brent
I will leave it to more expert opinions than myself to comment in detail on the driving dynamics, I simply state that I enjoy driving the car. Previously, our family has owned a 2011 Chevy Volt, 2014 BMW i3, 2015 Tesla Model S, 2017 Tesla Model X, and a 2018 Tesla Model 3 Performance, so we are very familiar with driving electric vehicles. I love the regen on the Lucid, which is more than a Tesla Model 3 (which is more than our Model X). I have long preferred one pedal driving (although my new complaint about it is foot fatigue - more of a problem when cruise control is not an option for long drives).
The seats in the Lucid are much more comfortable than the seats in either of our Teslas. The interior space is excellent. We had 4 older adults (ages 45 - 80) and an 8 year old in the car driving all day (with lots of stops) to Tahoe with nothing but complements on the comfort of the seating. I am not sure yet how useful the massage feature is in the seats, but it does seem to help some when you have been driving a long time, and my wife used it quite a bit in the passenger seat. The ventilated seats definitely made a difference in the heat of Arizona (at least in April).
Speaking of heat, I noticed a lot of heat coming off the front windshield of the car from inside. If the car had been parked outside in the sun, the inside of the windshield was too hot to touch, even when the inside of the car had cooled down to about 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Even an hour later, with the AC at full blast, I could still feel heat radiating off the windshield onto my face, even though it was now cool enough to touch, it was still quite warm. (This was while driving on the freeway). The AC seemed a bit underpowered overall to me, noticeably less than either the Model 3 or Model X (but perhaps I was being thrown by how much heat was coming off the front windshield). Both of our Tesla's have Spectra Photosync tinting, which is about the best you can get for IR reflection. Unfortunately, my tinting installer informs me that the mouldings in the Lucid are too tight to fit Photosync, I will need to use a thinner film tint. We also use the Tesla feature to run the AC to prevent the interior temp from getting above about 100 while the car is sitting parked - Lucid does not yet have this exact feature, although it can run the AC for about a half hour after you exit the car to keep it at temp, which is better than nothing.
Just this week, I went to the movie theater, the temperature was 87 degrees F outside. When we returned to the car, after sitting in the sun for over two hours, it remained uncomfortably hot for the entire 20 minute drive back to our house. The AC was unable to chill the car down to a comfortable level in 20 minutes, even with front and back set to 59 degrees (the max setting). The front windshield was hot to the touch and noticeably radiating that heat onto my face. I fear this may be a fatal flaw in the Lucid Air for me - I usually like to have the car on the cool side, and not being able to be comfortable in the car makes driving much less enjoyable overall. Perhaps tinting + religiously turning the AC back on while its parked from the mobile app will be allow me to overcome this flaw. If Lucid upgraded the power of the compressor in a later year model, it would be enough for me to upgrade. Perhaps they should add a sensor to detect the temp of the front windshield and automatically enable the 'defrost' vents with AC when the temp is high - I have not yet tried turning this on manually - it disables 'Auto' when you do it, so you have to remember to turn it off, or forever manually control the fan speed. Until Lucid makes some sort of change, I think I will probably give up on auto so I can do try this.
I find it frustrating that a large portion of the instrument cluster (on the right side) is taken up with the static text, "Lucid Air," particularly since there is no way to be looking at the nav system / map and also see which track is playing in your music. Overall, I feel that the UX 'language' that Lucid is going for, with the overlays on the bottom screen being content which can be 'swiped' from the top screen is a flawed metaphor, which leads to the inability to show music on one and nav on the other (since they are both overlays which start from the top). I also think it leads to confusion on how to get to places, as there are things which look like tabs on the top and bottom of the lower screen, and then an overlay window with a close button. I think this could use a UX rethink to make it simpler to use and easier to find things - not to mention more functional. I get what they were going for here, but I do not think it quite 'works'. Just recently it was pointed out that some marketing pictures for Lucid show 'Now Playing' in place of the "Lucid Air text" so there is hope this feature may be forthcoming.
I miss some of the features and software refinement of Tesla. I miss automatically closing my garage door when I back down the driveway. In the Lucid, I tend to have to stop the car after I have backed out of the garage, put it in park (to hide the backup camera, because the home button which leads to the garage door is hidden buy the camera), then manually hit the garage button in the UI, then go back to reverse to back up the rest of the way down the driveway. I am hopeful that Lucid will both add the garage door button to the UI when in parking camera mode and add the automatic close feature that Tesla has.
My biggest complaint is with the nav system itself. I am someone who uses the nav for 95% of my trips, even short ones to locations where I know exactly the route I will take. I primarily do this because I love to see the ETA - I find this is something which has made it possible for me to be on time much more frequently to places I need to go. My kids also like to look from the back seat to see how long until we arrive at our destination - letting them look themselves is so much better than answering the question, "how many more minutes until we get there?" Lucid could make this an even better experience for the kids if they could show the nav or at least the ETA on the back screen. (I have it locked anyway, so they do not mess with the climate settings, so right now its not doing much useful)
So, it was not 30 seconds after I drove away from the delivery center that I discovered my first complaint - I could not find a way to disable the voice instructions for the nav system. I turned this off in my Tesla when I got it and I never turned it back on. I have no idea how good or bad the voice instructions are in a Tesla because I cannot recall ever listening to them. After pulling over and spending 5 minutes trying to figure out how to turn off the voice, I turned around and went back to the delivery center to ask how to turn it off. The first person did not know, then had to ask someone else, then after some consultation they informed me there was no way to turn of the voice at the current time. Clearly the engineers working on this are not forced to use the nav or they clearly would have put in a way to turn it off. The voice is also pretty privative. For example, all over the Bay Area, we have roads that are labeled like this, "Almaden Expwy," and the car pronounces this as "expwee", not "expressway".
The nav system is not bad just because it is missing a simple feature to turn off the voice. It is bad at almost every level. I was going to say that it reminds me of a TomTom or Garmin from the old days, but I am not sure that is being fair to TomTom and Garmin. The routes that the nav picks are particularly bad.
Imagine a city with a standard square grid of streets. Now imagine that one street which runs diagonal to the grid. Lets say that street is only 2 or 4 lanes, but still big enough to have street lights when it intersects with more major streets. The nav system still directed me to turn right onto a larger street, drive 100 feet, then wait at a light to another major street, turn left and drive another 100 feet, then wait again to turn right back onto the diagonal street upon which I started. Clearly the nav system is giving too high a weight to larger streets vs smaller streets, to the detriment of avoiding unnecessary turns, particularly leaving the street you on to take an unnecessary and slower detour, with more streetlights, to get back to the street you started on.
In another case, it wanted me to leave a perfectly acceptable two lane road with only 2 stop signs before I arrived at a major road close to my destination in order to go winding through a neighborhood orthogonal to the direction to my destination, only to then have to make a difficult left turn onto a major road without the assistance of any traffic signal/sign, then wait in another left turn lane, and drive another 1000 yrds to get back to where my current road was leading.
And then the nav system also has outdated or bad maps which direct you to make left turns when there is a median and the only possibility is a right turn. And then miss the U turn only lane that is immediately available in favor of driving all the way to a light to make a U turn.
The most frustrating thing about the nav system though, is how it effectively tricks you into missing your exit on an interchange. I have had it do this to me multiple times. Lets say you are driving on I10 northbound and need to take the interchange to US 202 westbound. At this particular interchange, the first off-ramp is to US 202 eastbound, and the second immediate ramp after that is to US 202 westbound. The voice will say, "In 1 mile, stay left for I 10", then later, "In 1000 yards, stay left for I 10", then "Stay left for I 10", then just as you are passing that ramp, "Now right for US 202". There is literally no warning before you have to be in the correct lane, and it never tells you that you are even leaving I 10 until its more or less too late to get into that lane. In my particular case, I was in the carpool lane, and there was an exit from that carpool lane to my freeway going the correct direction. But neither did the voice tell me, nor did the UI when I looked at it, indicate that I would be going to that new freeway. I even thought, isn't this my freeway, but when I looked, I thought it was telling me no, no it is not. I stayed in that lane until it told me to literally cross 5 lanes of traffic to get to the exit that was 100 feet ahead - I missed it of course. I have since had it do the same thing to me several times, such that I do not trust it at all for interchanges. The fact neither the voice nor the user interface differentiate in any way the two directions of freeway travel just makes this worse (ie, it never says "N(Northnound)" or "S(Southbound)" when describing entering/switching to a freeway.
Despite the complaints, overall I am enjoying driving the Lucid and I am hopeful that software updates can make things a lot better.
-Brent
