EPA vs real world range: maybe Gravity isn't so bad after all

[prgarg]

It's a tricky situation for Lucid... If they don't advertise the EPA range, they are at a disadvantage vs the other brands doing so; if they do, it leads to owners' disappointment and bad reviews on YouTube

 

[Brou]

Um, no they are not. Neither of them are claiming that their test is 'an EPA test'. Both of them are quite clear about it, and about what exactly they are testing, and the are doing it BECAUSE everyone knows that the EPA rated range/efficiency is useless to actual customers.

The only reason they mention EPA is to point out how useless/wrong the EPA rated range is for road trips - which is mostly the only time customers actually need to know what the full range is.

OOS is literally saying in the description that they're comparing their 70 mph hwy range test against the EPAs mixed city/hwy range results. In their words. "a full 70 mph steady- state highway range test to see how close it could get to Lucid's 450-mile EPA range claim!"

Car and Driver writes: "In our 75-mph highway range test, the iX3 managed 330 miles, 62 short of its EPA estimate. That’s a little disappointing but not entirely surprising"

They're both being dishonest and claiming to be disappointed by their skewed results. C&D claiming "62 short of its EPA estimate" when they know the EPA estimate is an entirely different test than the one they conducted is the same as OOS comparing their hwy results to a mix city/hwy estimate.

 

[exxxviii]

It's a tricky situation for Lucid... If they don't advertise the EPA range, they are at a disadvantage vs the other brands doing so; if they do, it leads to owners' disappointment and bad reviews on YouTube

It is definitely a marketing and brand placement decision... The EPA protocol allows automakers to add a "voluntary adjustment factor" on top of the standard adjustment factors determined by the 2-cycle or 5-cycle test. So, it looks like a lot of automakers choose to de-rate their EPA outcomes by 10% to 20%. This plays well in the court of public opinion when reviewers like OOS, C&D, MotorTrend, SoC, Consumer Reports, etc. are delighted to report their highway range tests that exceed the car's EPA range. On the other hand, it lowers the range they can brag about in their own marketing materials.

It looks like Lucid wants to focus its marketing on efficiency supremacy and high range, so it chooses not to de-rate (or de-rate very little) the range from its EPA testing. That enables Lucid to publish a higher range to brag about. But then the outside reviewers get much lower results in their highway range tests and they bash.