- Joined
- Aug 23, 2020
- Messages
- 3,646
- Reaction score
- 4,224
- Location
- Paradise Valley, AZ
- Cars
- Lucid GT
- Referral Code
- K9WIJHB0
It’s time for a review since it has been a little over a week and 350 miles since I picked up my Air GT, with 21”wheels, on March 3. Let me preface this review by saying that this is the first EV that I have owned and my only prior EV experience was a weekend Tesla Model S rental.
My car has a manufacturing date of Twosday 2/22/22. Nice coincidence since that was our 25thanniversary. Good thing we did not order silver.
Delivery and Setup
The delivery was well done. Lucid put on a nice show to reveal the car when we arrived and then went through the setup. My delivery host was excellent at navigating the car’s UI and knowledgeable about features. He covered 75-80% of the @sartogalefty checklist without being asked. He was very willing to go through the remaining items and was interested in the forum where I got it. The only issue we encountered was setting up Alexa which took a few tries. Not sure why, but it did not want to take my password when trying to link the car to my Amazon account. My host did not enable the Alexa skills to play Tidal or Spotify and I did not know that this was required to use that function. This may be obvious to most Alexa users, but I have never used Alexa before. Fortunately it was not difficult to do at home.
I asked my delivery host about a reboot sequence (unlock doors, turn signal on, lock car, wait for turn signal to stop blinking) and he was not aware of one. I wish that I would have written down the sequence to try with him but I assumed that he would know it.
Driving
While it may not be a fast as the Dream Edition, it is still incredibly fast. I have yet to find an opportunity where I could safely fully hit the accelerator The AGT is by far the best driving car that I have ever driven. The acceleration and cornering continues to impress me in a very positive way. The car is more capable than I am as a driver. It is fun and fast. The GT will keep up with any car on the road and get ahead of anyone if you are first at a stoplight. The only difficulty is keeping speed down. I followed an Aston Martin from a stoplight on Lincoln road yesterday and was going 70 in a 40 zone before I knew it. For people outside of Phoenix, this is not wise in Paradise valley because Lincoln road has three redlight/speed cameras and the city has two mobile enforcement vans often in use along this road.
I really like the high regenerative brake setting. It took a day to get used to but every stop is a chance to practice. It seems natural today. There are still two situations where I struggle. I still find backing up with high regen difficult. I also struggle to keep a constant speed when canceling the cruise control exiting the freeway. This just points to the need for more AGT driving.
The AGT is very quiet with a pleasant electric wine when it accelerating fast. I do hear some road/tire noise on rough asphalt but it is still quiet in comparison to my previous cars. There is not a single squeak or rattle even on rough roads. The sound system is truly amazing, the best that I have listened to in any car.
Efficiency and range worry me a bit. I am only getting about 3.1 miles/kWhr over the last 80 miles and this was driving in Smooth mode with no fast accelerations and nothing above 70 mph. Probably two-thirds freeway and one-third city streets. I need to do a better controlled test before commenting more but I am a bit disappointed. I was expecting to get 80% of EPA (0.8*4.24= 3.4miles/kWhr) during this type of driving.
Displays and Controls
The displays and controls are fantastic. I normally do not like to drive an unfamiliar car at night but I only had about 20 minutes in the daylight after picking up my car and there was no way that I was waiting a day to enjoy it. To my surprise, there was no difficulty finding controls or seeing things at night. I just dimmed the screens a bit. It was as easy as during the daylight. This is a real credit to the Lucid design team. The displays are well laid out and mostly intuitive to use. The infamous yellow “Passenger Air Bag” has either been dimmed or I do not find it annoying. I find the Hazard light switch to be much brighter than the airbag light. I even bought the dim strips recommended by another forum member but will not use them.
I like the key fob for the simple reason that I dislike looking at a key fob to figure out which button I need to press. The Lucid one button approach is simple and easy. It may not be for everyone, but I like it.
Getting Attention
As others have said on this forum, don’t drive the Air if you do not want attention. A lot of people looking and asking about it at stoplights and parking lots. Lots of people giving a thumbs up and taking pictures with their phones. Surprisingly, most people know what the Lucid Air is but have never seen one. That may be unique to AZ since there has been some local press about the Casa Grande factory and Scottsdale design studio.
Software
I had to save this for last because I love the car but it has a few software “features” that are not great. The screens are very slow to load and often very slow to react to touch commands. They do not react to a quick touch, I need to hold my finger on the screen for a second or two. The door handles present themselves with either the mobile key or the key fob present only about 50% of the time. I cannot find any pattern reason for it. Fortunately, a single press on any door handle will present them.
On one occasion the car only loaded half of my profile skipping the steering wheel and mirror adjustment. That was the same drive where the car would not connect to my phone even when I tried to manually connect it. It quit playing Tidal after a few minutes and said that there was no network connection yet showed 5 bars of cellular reception. I used the reboot sequence and everything was normal after that.
I cannot figure out how the car determines which profile to load. Even when I was the last one to drive, the car frequently changes profile with nobody in the car. I assumed that this was because my wife would walk by it in the garage with her key fob and phone in her purse. I set the automatic profile loading to facial recognition only, turned off the phone and key fob and it still does it. I have concluded it is the car’s way of telling my that my wife should be driving it rather than me. Lastly, I wish the regenerative brake setting was connected to a profile since I like high and my wife likes standard.
Homelink was easy to setup and pops up when I pull into the driveway. However, the screen does not recognize my touch without holding my finger on the screen just the right amount of time but not too long. As others have said, when backing out of the garage, it takes multiple steps to bring up the homelink control to close the garage door.
Siri commands (lock, unlock, open trunk or frunk, etc.) only seem to work half the time. The other half the time I get some weird error message. When it does work, it is slow. I was really hoping to use Siri on my watch to open the trunk or frunk when carrying stuff to the car. Maybe someday.
I will post some interior/exterior pictures later today on the picture thread. I am also going to find an EA station and try that out today when I get down to 20-30% charge.
My car has a manufacturing date of Twosday 2/22/22. Nice coincidence since that was our 25thanniversary. Good thing we did not order silver.
Delivery and Setup
The delivery was well done. Lucid put on a nice show to reveal the car when we arrived and then went through the setup. My delivery host was excellent at navigating the car’s UI and knowledgeable about features. He covered 75-80% of the @sartogalefty checklist without being asked. He was very willing to go through the remaining items and was interested in the forum where I got it. The only issue we encountered was setting up Alexa which took a few tries. Not sure why, but it did not want to take my password when trying to link the car to my Amazon account. My host did not enable the Alexa skills to play Tidal or Spotify and I did not know that this was required to use that function. This may be obvious to most Alexa users, but I have never used Alexa before. Fortunately it was not difficult to do at home.
I asked my delivery host about a reboot sequence (unlock doors, turn signal on, lock car, wait for turn signal to stop blinking) and he was not aware of one. I wish that I would have written down the sequence to try with him but I assumed that he would know it.
Driving
While it may not be a fast as the Dream Edition, it is still incredibly fast. I have yet to find an opportunity where I could safely fully hit the accelerator The AGT is by far the best driving car that I have ever driven. The acceleration and cornering continues to impress me in a very positive way. The car is more capable than I am as a driver. It is fun and fast. The GT will keep up with any car on the road and get ahead of anyone if you are first at a stoplight. The only difficulty is keeping speed down. I followed an Aston Martin from a stoplight on Lincoln road yesterday and was going 70 in a 40 zone before I knew it. For people outside of Phoenix, this is not wise in Paradise valley because Lincoln road has three redlight/speed cameras and the city has two mobile enforcement vans often in use along this road.
I really like the high regenerative brake setting. It took a day to get used to but every stop is a chance to practice. It seems natural today. There are still two situations where I struggle. I still find backing up with high regen difficult. I also struggle to keep a constant speed when canceling the cruise control exiting the freeway. This just points to the need for more AGT driving.
The AGT is very quiet with a pleasant electric wine when it accelerating fast. I do hear some road/tire noise on rough asphalt but it is still quiet in comparison to my previous cars. There is not a single squeak or rattle even on rough roads. The sound system is truly amazing, the best that I have listened to in any car.
Efficiency and range worry me a bit. I am only getting about 3.1 miles/kWhr over the last 80 miles and this was driving in Smooth mode with no fast accelerations and nothing above 70 mph. Probably two-thirds freeway and one-third city streets. I need to do a better controlled test before commenting more but I am a bit disappointed. I was expecting to get 80% of EPA (0.8*4.24= 3.4miles/kWhr) during this type of driving.
Displays and Controls
The displays and controls are fantastic. I normally do not like to drive an unfamiliar car at night but I only had about 20 minutes in the daylight after picking up my car and there was no way that I was waiting a day to enjoy it. To my surprise, there was no difficulty finding controls or seeing things at night. I just dimmed the screens a bit. It was as easy as during the daylight. This is a real credit to the Lucid design team. The displays are well laid out and mostly intuitive to use. The infamous yellow “Passenger Air Bag” has either been dimmed or I do not find it annoying. I find the Hazard light switch to be much brighter than the airbag light. I even bought the dim strips recommended by another forum member but will not use them.
I like the key fob for the simple reason that I dislike looking at a key fob to figure out which button I need to press. The Lucid one button approach is simple and easy. It may not be for everyone, but I like it.
Getting Attention
As others have said on this forum, don’t drive the Air if you do not want attention. A lot of people looking and asking about it at stoplights and parking lots. Lots of people giving a thumbs up and taking pictures with their phones. Surprisingly, most people know what the Lucid Air is but have never seen one. That may be unique to AZ since there has been some local press about the Casa Grande factory and Scottsdale design studio.
Software
I had to save this for last because I love the car but it has a few software “features” that are not great. The screens are very slow to load and often very slow to react to touch commands. They do not react to a quick touch, I need to hold my finger on the screen for a second or two. The door handles present themselves with either the mobile key or the key fob present only about 50% of the time. I cannot find any pattern reason for it. Fortunately, a single press on any door handle will present them.
On one occasion the car only loaded half of my profile skipping the steering wheel and mirror adjustment. That was the same drive where the car would not connect to my phone even when I tried to manually connect it. It quit playing Tidal after a few minutes and said that there was no network connection yet showed 5 bars of cellular reception. I used the reboot sequence and everything was normal after that.
I cannot figure out how the car determines which profile to load. Even when I was the last one to drive, the car frequently changes profile with nobody in the car. I assumed that this was because my wife would walk by it in the garage with her key fob and phone in her purse. I set the automatic profile loading to facial recognition only, turned off the phone and key fob and it still does it. I have concluded it is the car’s way of telling my that my wife should be driving it rather than me. Lastly, I wish the regenerative brake setting was connected to a profile since I like high and my wife likes standard.
Homelink was easy to setup and pops up when I pull into the driveway. However, the screen does not recognize my touch without holding my finger on the screen just the right amount of time but not too long. As others have said, when backing out of the garage, it takes multiple steps to bring up the homelink control to close the garage door.
Siri commands (lock, unlock, open trunk or frunk, etc.) only seem to work half the time. The other half the time I get some weird error message. When it does work, it is slow. I was really hoping to use Siri on my watch to open the trunk or frunk when carrying stuff to the car. Maybe someday.
I will post some interior/exterior pictures later today on the picture thread. I am also going to find an EA station and try that out today when I get down to 20-30% charge.
