Auxiliary Power Supply Fault

[JoshG]

Suddenly got this message, and of course I’m on a trip 400 miles from home for next 3 days.

Anyone seen this one? Tried logo reboot and leaving car for 90 minutes for the time-out reset. Message persists.

Customer care says there’s no one to diagnose that until Monday.

 

[Adnillien]

Keep us posted on this. It is the first time that I have seen it here.

 

[xponents]

Never heard of this warning, keep us posted!

 

[Steveinarizona]

The good news is that it appears that it will only affect your heater, at least for now. Eventually this will be a nonissue as Lucid moves to a heat pump from resistance heating.

 

[JoshG]

This problem remains... and as the message states, it means you will not have heat (or AC, which is less obvious from the screen message) until the problem is fixed, as we learned on a long, cold nighttime drive from L.A. back to S.F. (seat heaters still worked, but still wasn't pleasant).

Dropped it off for service at Milbrae center yesterday and they say it will be at least until next week before this can even get diagnosed, much less repaired.

Not happy... owned the car 1 month and has had two major faults. First it needed a new WonderBox as it wouldn't take a charge, which occurred on day 1 as soon as i got it home. Now a different major component failure necessitating what may be lengthy repairs.

I must say I've gone from an excited Air owner and brand proponent to a worried and less-than-happy owner forced to question the company's QC checks their new cars go through before delivery. Sad that I've stopped telling people how great my new car is.

I did get a loaner GT, so that is nice... but it's just frustrating to have my shiny new car spend 30% of its first month of ownership in the shop getting systems replaced or repaired.

 

[suchluke]

This problem remains... and as the message states, it means you will not have heat (or AC, which is less obvious from the screen message) until the problem is fixed, as we learned on a long, cold nighttime drive from L.A. back to S.F. (seat heaters still worked, but still wasn't pleasant).

Dropped it off for service at Milbrae center yesterday and they say it will be at least until next week before this can even get diagnosed, much less repaired.

Not happy... owned the car 1 month and has had two major faults. First it needed a new WonderBox as it wouldn't take a charge, which occurred on day 1 as soon as i got it home. Now a different major component failure necessitating what may be lengthy repairs.

I must say I've gone from an excited Air owner and brand proponent to a worried and less-than-happy owner forced to question the company's QC checks their new cars go through before delivery. Sad that I've stopped telling people how great my new car is.

I did get a loaner GT, so that is nice... but it's just frustrating to have my shiny new car spend 30% of its first month of ownership in the shop getting systems replaced or repaired.

I am really sorry for your experience. It must be one off. There are many satisfied owners driving these cars trouble free. You still got a loaner so you are not without a car. Think of it as positive that you can use and put miles on a loaner instead of your own car.

 

[suchluke]

I noticed your battery level was very high on the picture you posted. I wonder if that is somehow related and if you used fast charger to charge to 100%? I generally try to not charge above 80%.

 

[JoshG]

I am really sorry for your experience. It must be one off. There are many satisfied owners driving these cars trouble free. You still got a loaner so you are not without a car. Think of it as positive that you can use and put miles on a loaner instead of your own car.

Thanks, and yes i know this isn't a typical experience as we'd all be hearing more about this. Just my bad luck that I got a car with multiple system failures in first 1200 miles. But it doesn't make me feel great about the purchase decision.

hopefully, my faith will be restored over time.

 

[JoshG]

I noticed your battery level was very high on the picture you posted. I wonder if that is somehow related and if you used fast charger to charge to 100%? I generally try to not charge above 80%.

Yep - I did charge to 100%, as i was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles (350+ miles each way, plus lots of driving around in L.A. on the trip) and was going to be away from home charging for the whole 3-day trip, and then the long reverse trip. This is the type of situation when you definitely should charge to the max. It wasn't done for daily driving around my home region.

Possible this short-term max charging could have contributed to a component failure, but if so, that's a problem for Lucid - I was using the car as would be expected for someone on an 800 mile road trip for a few days.

 

[joec]

Yep - I did charge to 100%, as i was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles (350+ miles each way, plus lots of driving around in L.A. on the trip) and was going to be away from home charging for the whole 3-day trip, and then the long reverse trip. This is the type of situation when you definitely should charge to the max. It wasn't done for daily driving around my home region.

Possible this short-term max charging could have contributed to a component failure, but if so, that's a problem for Lucid - I was using the car as would be expected for someone on an 800 mile road trip for a few days.

Max charge should not have caused this issue. It’s perfectly fine to charge to 100 every now and then. I think you are just running into some bad luck.

Perhaps the bad Wunderbox put some extra stress on the 12v somehow and caused it to burn out? I have no idea. Lucid should take care of it, though. You’ll have your car back and be happy again soon, I hope.

 

[suchluke]

Yep - I did charge to 100%, as i was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles (350+ miles each way, plus lots of driving around in L.A. on the trip) and was going to be away from home charging for the whole 3-day trip, and then the long reverse trip. This is the type of situation when you definitely should charge to the max. It wasn't done for daily driving around my home region.

Possible this short-term max charging could have contributed to a component failure, but if so, that's a problem for Lucid - I was using the car as would be expected for someone on an 800 mile road trip for a few days.

I agree that it would be a valid scenario to charge it to 100%. Hopefully it wasn't caused by faulty EA station and its just bad luck as you described. Fingers crossed only smooth sailing after this issue is resolved. Now enjoy the AGT loaner.

 

[hydbob]

I agree that it would be a valid scenario to charge it to 100%. Hopefully it wasn't caused by faulty EA station and its just bad luck as you described. Fingers crossed only smooth sailing after this issue is resolved. Now enjoy the AGT loaner.

Not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Ask @Bunnylebowski who had an EVGo station fry his car. Hopefully this gets resolved, but after 2 years here with owner experiences, this is the first heat failure we've seen.

 

[SDHacker]

Yep - I did charge to 100%, as i was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles (350+ miles each way, plus lots of driving around in L.A. on the trip) and was going to be away from home charging for the whole 3-day trip, and then the long reverse trip. This is the type of situation when you definitely should charge to the max. It wasn't done for daily driving around my home region.

Possible this short-term max charging could have contributed to a component failure, but if so, that's a problem for Lucid - I was using the car as would be expected for someone on an 800 mile road trip for a few days.

I’ve DCFC charged to 100% when I’m going to be far from even L2 chargers on road-trips. Just really bad luck and hopefully this repair will be the end of it.

 

[Steveinarizona]

This problem remains... and as the message states, it means you will not have heat (or AC, which is less obvious from the screen message) until the problem is fixed, as we learned on a long, cold nighttime drive from L.A. back to S.F. (seat heaters still worked, but still wasn't pleasant).

Dropped it off for service at Milbrae center yesterday and they say it will be at least until next week before this can even get diagnosed, much less repaired.

Not happy... owned the car 1 month and has had two major faults. First it needed a new WonderBox as it wouldn't take a charge, which occurred on day 1 as soon as i got it home. Now a different major component failure necessitating what may be lengthy repairs.

I must say I've gone from an excited Air owner and brand proponent to a worried and less-than-happy owner forced to question the company's QC checks their new cars go through before delivery. Sad that I've stopped telling people how great my new car is.

I did get a loaner GT, so that is nice... but it's just frustrating to have my shiny new car spend 30% of its first month of ownership in the shop getting systems replaced or repaired.

Everyone is different. For me, if they provided me with an equivalent loaner (and they appear to have done that for you) I don't mind waiting for a repair. To me, part of the luxury car purchase experience is effortlessly getting service. That means primarily, giving me an equivalent loaner every time I need service. That is what my BMW dealership did for me. But that might not work for you and what is effortless and acceptable to one individual (me) might not be to another (you).

Think of it as a savings on your insurance policy as your mileage will decrease.

 

[JoshG]

Everyone is different. For me, if they provided me with an equivalent loaner (and they appear to have done that for you) I don't mind waiting for a repair. To me, part of the luxury car purchase experience is effortlessly getting service. That means primarily, giving me an equivalent loaner every time I need service. That is what my BMW dealership did for me. But that might not work for you and what is effortless and acceptable to one individual (me) might not be to another (you).

Think of it as a savings on your insurance policy as your mileage will decrease.

good perspective, thanks.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

I agree that it would be a valid scenario to charge it to 100%. Hopefully it wasn't caused by faulty EA station and its just bad luck as you described. Fingers crossed only smooth sailing after this issue is resolved. Now enjoy the AGT loaner.

My failure occurred about an hour after I plugged into a broken EVGo that I didn’t check ahead of time on plug share to make sure it was working. The screen looked normal but when I plugged in the coolant fan and climate control for the left only went to max speed, got a charging error so I unplugged, drove to an EA 10 minutes away and got the Signet surge YoYo between 70-120kw but it did charge. Then we went to a nearby restaurant and when I came back the left wiper was going at max speed and the car wouldn’t go above 50mph. I since learned those are both safety features. Lucid responded within seconds of me reaching out, sent us an Uber (it was 8pm on a Saturday night in rural Connecticut), towed the car that Monday, and did a great job of solving the problem. I never got the auxiliary power error though. However that was MANY software updates and nearly a year ago, so maybe they’ve since changed something without it can detect/report an error? I can’t be sure the charging from either EVGo or EA messed my car up, unfortunately I did the nuclear reset before calling them which wipes the on-board logs which don’t always get sent to the cloud. Maybe it was coincidence but I did use two misbehaving chargers within a couple hours of this failure. I hope the best of luck for the member who had this fault though. The one thing I’ve learned is that Lucid cares very much about identifying and eliminating any flaws like this before the car leaves the factory, but the unfortunate thing is that sometimes this isn’t just one issue or a problem with just one supplier or one in-house design, and while they have very smart people working on these issues it’s not always easy to identify and eliminate a defect.

They have my confidence though. They remotely detected a fault in my battery that could have stranded me but did not yet cause a problem, called me, took the car and got me a new battery/Wunderbox and a loaner. It made me think of Tom Cruise in Minority Report, stopping the crime that was going to happen.

 

[JoshG]

Two weeks in service (but that includes Christmas when they were closed a few days and understandably short-staffed for much of the holiday week), but car is back.

To fix this they had to put in a completely new Wunderbox as well as a new high voltage heater. That makes 2 Wunderbox replacements my new Air Touring has needed in under 2 months.

The service techs and coordinators were all excellent, and the loaner of a GT was very nice, so they are working hard to take good care of customers when the cars have an issue.

Been a frustrating first 6 weeks of ownership I must say, but hopefully my car is now properly sorted and won't have major issues going forward.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Two weeks in service (but that includes Christmas when they were closed a few days and understandably short-staffed for much of the holiday week), but car is back.

To fix this they had to put in a completely new Wunderbox as well as a new high voltage heater. That makes 2 Wunderbox replacements my new Air Touring has needed in under 2 months.

The service techs and coordinators were all excellent, and the loaner of a GT was very nice, so they are working hard to take good care of customers when the cars have an issue.

Been a frustrating first 6 weeks of ownership I must say, but hopefully my car is now properly sorted and won't have major issues going forward.

Yeah that’s a frustrating bunch of trouble all up front when you just want to enjoy your new fun car. I think it’s likely your troubles are done though, sounds like the WunderBox was only replaced a second time due to the integration with the failed heater component and the first replacement maybe wasn’t a solution? Your situation is the first I’ve heard of this type of problem so hopefully it was a fluke. While this is entirely anecdotal so far it seems to me the more miles get put on the Air the longer it goes without incident, and that when a failure occurs it seems to be early on, making me think the issues are not design/engineering/manufacuturing faults but rather component integration faults from suppliers that may be outside of Lucid’s control. At least in all my interactions with Lucid staff they’ve been very clever mechanics and their service has been the best I’ve ever experienced and that’s coming from having a Mercedes before this, and they all seem to be enthusiasts about the car (my service center manager actually bought a new Lucid so he must have some confidence in the vehicle!), so I think those factors make me less concerned about future reliability headaches. I got my HV battery/Wunderbox replaced at 18k miles (the car didn’t fail, it was a pre-emptive move by Lucid to save me a future failure when remote diagnostics notified them of a voltage inconsistency, pretty slick like Minority Report haha), and I have put 4500 miles on it since then with no trouble so maybe no more service issues for me I hope?

 

[JoshG]

Thanks @Bunnylebowski... appreciate hearing your experience.
And you're mostly correct about the recent issue being an incompatibility between the very latest rev of the Wunderbox being incomptible with the older rev of the heater unit, as I understand it.
I'm sure few members here care about the lengthy explanation, but seems certain versions of the newest Wunderbox are NOT compatible with the older versions of the heater units. When my original Wunderbox was replaced, they should have also replaced the heater unit but they weren't aware of that issue at the time. That became my second problem. Now both units are the latest (and greatest??) versions and i'm told all should be well now.

 

[TRJ_Lucid45]

My heater failed a couple of weeks ago. There were no error messages. Just cold air. They had to replace the heater unit. This was the first real problem I have had since I got my Lucid. I have 15000 miles on it.