Driving:
As so many have said here before, driving the Air is a dream. It’s a blast to take on winding roads up the mountain or to cruise along straightaways on the highway. Highway Assist has been a surprising pleasure to use. It never leaves me scared it might do something completely stupid at any moment, unlike other driver-assist systems I’ve used. Even when someone cuts in front of me, it calmly adjusts speed. I love the way manual lane changes are executed. (Engage turn signal. Wait for three clicks. Wheel releases. Make lane change. Let the car take back over automatically.) It’s clear Lucid is taking its time with these assist features, and I appreciate that.
Sure, HA wants to take an exit every now and then while I’m in the right lane, but a gentle nudge to the left usually solves that quickly.
Speaking of lanes, the lane departure warnings are a bit overly aggressive. I really wish there was an option to “Warn only” visually in the center cockpit, rather than having the car take over and attempt to keep me in the lane every time. There are actually times where being in the center of a lane is not what’s called for. Humans who have been driving for decades know this better than car software.
I’ve considered turning off this feature altogether, but I hate that it leaves an ugly warning icon in the main cockpit screen. So I just deal with it.
I don’t rely on HA to “drive for me” so I don’t feel any disappointments in its current limitations. When I see stopped traffic ahead, I put my foot back on the accelerator, click the “cancel” button, and take over for a few moments. If I get nervous passing a truck, again I take over until I get back to a comfortable space.
When I’m on a winding road with many tight turns, I drive myself and leave the assist off. Why? Because a winding road is a playground. Why would I want to let the car have all the fun?
I have been driving mostly in smooth mode, which has netted me an average of 3.2 mi/kWh. For winter driving, in more than a handful of snowstorms, where I make no attempt to keep it below the speed limit, I’d say that’s very decent. I have a feeling if I drove this car at 55 or even 60 mph in the summer, it would do closer to 3.9 or 4 mi/kWh. Many of our highways are limited at 65 or 75 mph, though, so it’s unlikely I’ll go that slow around here often.
I decided to flip into sprint just for kicks the other day for the first time in a while, and I forgot how much quicker the car can be in that mode. A mere tap on the accelerator, and getting from 70 to 90 is almost instantaneous. I will never have any trouble passing anything in this car (except maybe at GT or Dream Edition). Anyone concerned the Touring isn’t fast enough compared to a GT—unless you are tracking the car, I would not consider it a problem. GT has many advantages over Touring, but to me speed would not be a good reason alone to go for the higher price.