Choosing gravity GT vs DE

[pyle112]

I'm not talking about what we might know through other avenues. I'm just talking about the data point being used as evidence that "we saw DE over a year ago". No, we absolutely did not "see" an actual DE that long back. We saw a cobbled together "thing" that had a DE badge on it. What was shown is no evidence at all that DE has been under actual development for that long. All we know from what we saw was that the concept that there might be a DE was being considered back then.

Now, if you know that it has been under development for some time through other means - that's great!

But, "I saw a thing with a badge on it at the original unveiling" has absolutely no evidentiary value in this discussion.

Same logic can be applied to whether what we saw was an actual gravity. Is there even really a lucid? I've never visited the factory in person nor actually seen a car being built. Are we having an existential crisis? Is there even a God!

 

[hmp10]

I'm not talking about what we might know through other avenues. I'm just talking about the data point being used as evidence that "we saw DE over a year ago". No, we absolutely did not "see" an actual DE that long back. We saw a cobbled together "thing" that had a DE badge on it. What was shown is no evidence at all that DE has been under actual development for that long. All we know from what we saw was that the concept that there might be a DE was being considered back then.

Now, if you know that it has been under development for some time through other means - that's great!

But, "I saw a thing with a badge on it at the original unveiling" has absolutely no evidentiary value in this discussion.

Do you seriously think Lucid teased a Dream Edition during the unveiling and on the show circuit for 16 months without any plans in place to bring it to production?

Tesla, maybe. But Lucid? I don't think so.

 

[flarbear]

Same logic can be applied to whether what we saw was an actual gravity. Is there even really a lucid? I've never visited the factory in person nor actually seen a car being built. Are we having an existential crisis? Is there even a God!

That's a far cry from "Oh look, it has DE badging! We now have rock solid proof that they are actively designing a DE from this very moment" followed by many public comments about how they weren't going the same route as the Air launch and were diving directly into the final GT, then T production cars. I have had multiple confirmations from Lucid that there was never any DE planned, right up until they sent email offering to order one - so we now know that those comments weren't true. This is about time frame, not about whether something exists.

 

[flarbear]

Do you seriously think Lucid teased a Dream Edition during the unveiling and on the show circuit for 16 months without any plans in place to bring it to production?

Tesla, maybe. But Lucid? I don't think so.

Yes, absolutely. They literally said so to my face on multiple occasions. And the prevailing sentiment on the board until a few weeks ago was that there would not be one. I'm not going to go and do a full survey, but before we had evidence to the contrary there were many comments about the presence of the badging on the cars being shown and how that it was not going to happen.

Right up until it did.

Again, the show cars were cobbled together and some aspects were likely based on prior product launches (of which there had been only 1) that started with DEs, so of course they dressed it up as such. But when plans were announced and orders began, they didn't start with a DE, they started with heading directly into the non-limited production models. The badges weren't any confirmation, they were just mock ups of "business as might be expected from prior history".

 

[hmp10]

I thought we had word that there would not be one after all and that the badging shown was just an idea. In other words, they had explicitly denied that those badges were, in fact, telling the market that there was going to be a DE. It turns out there is a DE, but there was also explicit denial that the presence of those badges back then was any indication.

As far as I know, no one from Lucid ever said any such thing. In fact, several videographers over the months asked senior people such as Eric Bach, Derek Jenkins, and David Lickfold about a higher-performance version of the Gravity, and they were always met with sort of smirking dodges instead of any denials, something that always kept my hopes alive.

What happened was that Lucid's long silence on the matter beyond what was on the show circuit caused many of us here, myself included, to speculate (or worry, in my case) that the Dream Edition might have fallen by the wayside. But a lot of that was driven by recollections that they led with the Dream Edition on the Air launch and confusion about why they were not doing so on the Gravity launch.

As it turns out, I think @borski was right that the timing decision had more to do with pricing publicity this time around than production plans.

 

[flarbear]

They are currently offering DE with 20/21" wheels. Was that planned all the way back to 11/2023? No. It wasn't even planned all the way back to 2/2025.

That change happened right after a number of people (including me) got phone calls and said that they weren't going to go for DE because of the range hit exacerbated by the forced wheel selection.

Next thing you know? Suddenly you can order DE with the 20/21" wheels.

I'd say there is far more direct evidence that they are still playing with the concept of DE than whether badges on the originally hand-crafted cars represented an intent to build DE.

 

[hmp10]

Yes, absolutely. They literally said so to my face on multiple occasions. And the prevailing sentiment on the board until a few weeks ago was that there would not be one.

Who said so to your face? Sales associates, or someone actually in a position to know?

And what sentiment did the Board actually express that suggested there would be no Dream Edition?

 

[hydbob]

I have no idea what you mean by 'mechanical indication.' The DE wasn't an afterthought, and they've been thinking about and planning it for a very long time. Some of the badging or whatever may have been adjusted in the final version, but the plan to release a DE is not new.

I know this for a fact, as do some of the rest of the folks here, from prior conversations with Lucid folks.

I'm backing Borski up on this one =). I've known that a Gravity DE has been in the works when I took delivery of my car in November '21.

 

[hmp10]

They are currently offering DE with 20/21" wheels. Was that planned all the way back to 11/2023? No. It wasn't even planned all the way back to 2/2025.

If you've been following the forum, you know that there have been several recent inadvertent omissions or errors on the Lucid website. One was an erroneous labeling of the Gravity as a 2026 model. Another was an erroneous mention of the range for a 5-seater Gravity Dream that does not exist. Both were corrected when caught. In fact, it's been a fairly common issue with the Lucid website since its inception.

I think it's a lot more likely that someone forgot to include the 20/21" wheel option on the Dream configurator than that someone woke up one morning and said, "hey, the peasants are getting restless; let's whip out a late-breaking wheel option."

 

[Neurio]

Why has this become a pissing contest? Who cares when Lucid decided they'd build a DE Gravity? Point is that they are. Buy it or don't. No one here really cares what everyone else does.

 

[openball]

Where do you guys see the option to build a DE?

 

[hmp10]

Why has this become a pissing contest? Who cares when Lucid decided they'd build a DE Gravity? Point is that they are. Buy it or don't. No one here really cares what everyone else does.

The reason I care is that the debate is accompanied by either the claim or the implication that the Dream Edition is a slapdash product cobbled together at the last minute from whatever was lying around.

For a company whose first product was one of the most award-winning cars in history and promises to do the same with a version of a vehicle on which its future might ride to some degree, I think it borders on calumny. Nothing I have seen from Lucid or its engineers justifies such assumptions about the way they produce cars.

 

[Neurio]

The reason I care is that the debate is accompanied by either the claim or the implication that the Dream Edition is a slapdash product cobbled together at the last minute from whatever was lying around.

For a company whose first product was one of the most award-winning cars in history and promises to do the same with a version of a vehicle on which its future might ride to some degree, I think it borders on calumny. Nothing I have seen from Lucid or its engineers justifies such assumptions about the way they produce cars.

I agree. But I think the back and forth is getting kind of ridiculous.

 

[borski]

Now, if you know that it has been under development for some time through other means - that's great!

I do. It has.

I thought we had word that there would not be one after all and that the badging shown was just an idea. In other words, they had explicitly denied that those badges were, in fact, telling the market that there was going to be a DE. It turns out there is a DE, but there was also explicit denial that the presence of those badges back then was any indication.

Nobody has ever explicitly denied it, to my knowledge, and I’m not counting misinformed sales staff. The only thing that had been said was that the only trim coming out at launch was the GT to be followed by the Touring. Nobody had said anything about the DE. They were mum on it.

People made assumptions that there wouldn’t be one. Sometimes assumptions are wrong.

I didn’t correct anyone because: a) I had no proof and only conversations, and b) Lucid could change their mind and it wasn’t on me to disclose anything for them.

As it turns out, I think @borski was right that the timing decision had more to do with pricing publicity this time around than production plans.

I know I am. This is fact, and more people than just me have been aware of it.

They are currently offering DE with 20/21" wheels. Was that planned all the way back to 11/2023? No. It wasn't even planned all the way back to 2/2025.

No, that wasn’t planned. That was in response to consumer demand, which they didn’t anticipate.

You’re right, they changed that option. It’s also possible they added or removed a paint color! I have no idea, and *these* kind of decisions can be made late without worry.

The important ones were not.

Don’t believe me? Fine. I have nothing to gain in this fight.

But please end the speculation; it is no longer providing any value.

 

[flarbear]

As far as I know, no one from Lucid ever said any such thing. In fact, several videographers over the months asked senior people such as Eric Bach, Derek Jenkins, and David Lickfold about a higher-performance version of the Gravity, and they were always met with sort of smirking dodges instead of any denials, something that always kept my hopes alive.

What happened was that Lucid's long silence on the matter beyond what was on the show circuit caused many of us here, myself included, to speculate (or worry, in my case) that the Dream Edition might have fallen by the wayside. But a lot of that was driven by recollections that they led with the Dream Edition on the Air launch and confusion about why they were not doing so on the Gravity launch.

As it turns out, I think @borski was right that the timing decision had more to do with pricing publicity this time around than production plans.

Maybe they never said it to you, but they said it to my face on 2 occasions as I was looking over a show model that had the badging. Once at the headquarters. But, yeah, they've said a number of things that represent more "current plans" and lack of pass-down than specific guarantees, so take my 2 data points with a grain of salt. Still, I was not surprised to hear that. I asked "is there going to be a DE", already pretty much knowing what their answer would be through information garnered from other sources.

Smirking dodeges - as in a performance or sapphire version. Those were smirked about as happening down the road, not references to a potential DE which would be a launch model or which was already being designed with an intent to ship as one of the first shipments. The videographers were asking about future plans.

In fact, it is likely that what is now the DE was really just them advancing the time frame on the P/S versions that they were planning all along. The presence of the DE badges and the "maybe in the future" smirks are still no evidence on when they started work on the performance drivetrains. Other than those with internal conversations, the only conclusion from the DE badges followed by no DE's on the initial order pages, combined with how fast they updated the available DE configs based on customer feedback, that kind of external evidence would be consistent with them deciding to bring forward a future P drivetrain and call it a DE only recently.

But, the discussion here was more about "how fresh, new, planned, or cobbled is the DE drivetrain". To that I can easily believe that they already had at least an idea of how to put a P drivetrain into the Gravity for an eventual P/S version, and possibly some prototypes already being tested. But, "seeing DE badges on the road show circuit" is still not really any evidence that they had planned these DE deliveries with a specific drivetrain in any specific time frame.

My guess as to the progress was:
11/23 - we have the new cars ready to be looked at, are we doing DE? Should we put DE badges on them? Who knows? Let's do it!
11/fall - GT and T mechanicals all working as intended? Time to open up orders.
11/24 - what's our launch process? No DE? OK, put up orders for just GT and pre-announce T
11/whenever - eventually we'll want P and maybe S? Now that we have GT/T worked out, let's work out what a high performance drivetrain might be
2/25 - it's taking a really long time to get volume on GT and T, meanwhile those P drivetrains are pretty far along in development. Hey, let's go ahead and use them for a DE.
3/25 - why aren't more people upgrading to DE? Oh, range hit from big wheels? Let's offer DE with base wheels then!

Basically, the development of the higher power drivetrains was always going to happen. It was originally planned for down the road as a specialty variant after GT and T were taking over the market. The presence of DE on the unveil models was mostly just a guess at the marketing and not any indication of how the launch would go (in particular, the actual launch itself didn't originally involve a DE), and the possibility of a performance drivetrain was already pretty much assumed it would eventually happen, but the DE badges there weren't really an indication that they were already designing that drivetrain. What we see as the DE now is basically just bringing forward the P drivetrain as an early adopter incentive.

Has it been in development since the GT was starting design? It was probably expected since then, but active development? The DE badges don't really tell us anything there.
Has it been in development since before they announced DE last month? Maybe, probably, possibly not. Again, DE badges in 11/23 are no indication of that.
Internal knowledge gained from talking to the development team? Yes, that would be a pretty solid indicator of how long they have been working on the drivetrain that will appear in DE.

But, the "DE badges on the initial unveil" have a dubious history of whether or not they predict it would even exist, much less whether they imply the actual development of its drivetrain.

 

[pyle112]

Where do you guys see the option to build a DE?

If you order a GT the sales advisor will offer the upgrade. If you give a mouse a cookie it will ask for 1000hp!

 

[pyle112]

Maybe they never said it to you, but they said it to my face on 2 occasions as I was looking over a show model that had the badging. Once at the headquarters. But, yeah, they've said a number of things that represent more "current plans" and lack of pass-down than specific guarantees, so take my 2 data points with a grain of salt. Still, I was not surprised to hear that. I asked "is there going to be a DE", already pretty much knowing what their answer would be through information garnered from other sources.

Smirking dodeges - as in a performance or sapphire version. Those were smirked about as happening down the road, not references to a potential DE which would be a launch model or which was already being designed with an intent to ship as one of the first shipments. The videographers were asking about future plans.

In fact, it is likely that what is now the DE was really just them advancing the time frame on the P/S versions that they were planning all along. The presence of the DE badges and the "maybe in the future" smirks are still no evidence on when they started work on the performance drivetrains. Other than those with internal conversations, the only conclusion from the DE badges followed by no DE's on the initial order pages, combined with how fast they updated the available DE configs based on customer feedback, that kind of external evidence would be consistent with them deciding to bring forward a future P drivetrain and call it a DE only recently.

But, the discussion here was more about "how fresh, new, planned, or cobbled is the DE drivetrain". To that I can easily believe that they already had at least an idea of how to put a P drivetrain into the Gravity for an eventual P/S version, and possibly some prototypes already being tested. But, "seeing DE badges on the road show circuit" is still not really any evidence that they had planned these DE deliveries with a specific drivetrain in any specific time frame.

My guess as to the progress was:
11/23 - we have the new cars ready to be looked at, are we doing DE? Should we put DE badges on them? Who knows? Let's do it!
11/fall - GT and T mechanicals all working as intended? Time to open up orders.
11/24 - what's our launch process? No DE? OK, put up orders for just GT and pre-announce T
11/whenever - eventually we'll want P and maybe S? Now that we have GT/T worked out, let's work out what a high performance drivetrain might be
2/25 - it's taking a really long time to get volume on GT and T, meanwhile those P drivetrains are pretty far along in development. Hey, let's go ahead and use them for a DE.
3/25 - why aren't more people upgrading to DE? Oh, range hit from big wheels? Let's offer DE with base wheels then!

Basically, the development of the higher power drivetrains was always going to happen. It was originally planned for down the road as a specialty variant after GT and T were taking over the market. The presence of DE on the unveil models was mostly just a guess at the marketing and not any indication of how the launch would go (in particular, the actual launch itself didn't originally involve a DE), and the possibility of a performance drivetrain was already pretty much assumed it would eventually happen, but the DE badges there weren't really an indication that they were already designing that drivetrain. What we see as the DE now is basically just bringing forward the P drivetrain as an early adopter incentive.

Has it been in development since the GT was starting design? It was probably expected since then, but active development? The DE badges don't really tell us anything there.
Has it been in development since before they announced DE last month? Maybe, probably, possibly not. Again, DE badges in 11/23 are no indication of that.
Internal knowledge gained from talking to the development team? Yes, that would be a pretty solid indicator of how long they have been working on the drivetrain that will appear in DE.

But, the "DE badges on the initial unveil" have a dubious history of whether or not they predict it would even exist, much less whether they imply the actual development of its drivetrain.

To go back to the original question whether de was an after thought- can I ask why it matters if it was?

 

[flarbear]

People made assumptions that there wouldn’t be one. Sometimes assumptions are wrong.

Absolutely!

But, by the same token. "We thought it didn't exist, but now it does" does not equate to "any mention of a DE, even ones that failed to pan out in the ordering process, are absolute evidence that they've been working on the DE drivetrains since then". That's a guess, and there is plenty of evidence that the concept of a DE had a rocky journey since then.

They showed DE badges. They originally went with no DE on launch. The fact that it exists now doesn't imbue those original sightings of the badges with any special power to predict how long the planning for the current DE hardware has been.

 

[flarbear]

To go back to the original question whether de was an after thought- can I ask why it matters if it was?

There was a long discussion about whether DE is a "parts car" with a rushed drivetrain, or if it was a well-planned and executed variant. The late announcement of it suggests the question, but I think there is plenty of evidence that they've always wanted to do a P version anyway so the development would have had some degree of planning by this stage.

If they literally thought of it in late February and said "Hey, Fred, do you think you can tweak the software to just put out 250-ish more HP?" would raise questions as to how well the car would last before it tore itself to bits (or screeched head on into some trees). But, I seriously doubt it was anything like that.

 

[pyle112]

There was a long discussion about whether DE is a "parts car" with a rushed drivetrain, or if it was a well-planned and executed variant. The late announcement of it suggests the question, but I think there is plenty of evidence that they've always wanted to do a P version anyway so the development would have had some degree of planning by this stage.

If they literally thought of it in late February and said "Hey, Fred, do you think you can tweak the software to just put out 250-ish more HP?" would raise questions as to how well the car would last before it tore itself to bits (or screeched head on into some trees). But, I seriously doubt it was anything like that.

Fred is the man