Forum traffic seems slow

[Ughwhy]

One indicator I often use on high tech high priced items is high traffic on forums discussing that new tech.

Where is everybody? Couple posts a day, really?

I would have expected and hoped this forum would be buzzing.

If something doesn’t have enough volume it won’t survive or be supported in the long run.

Its likely that if you are on this forum (I mean all of us) you are a tech dinosaur. Forums in general are dying and being replaced with things like Reddit, Discord, and Facebook. That being said, this is one of the more active forums I participate in.

 

[Ughwhy]

So this is how you treat newcomers thinking of switching.

If you are the typical welcome wagon maybe I should stay clear.

Did I hide the fact I own a Model S?

Maybe I am looking in the wrong place. I certainly came to the wrong forum to ask.

I reported your response.

Don't take it too harshly. You essentially walked into a cozy pub full of regulars and blurted out "this place is dead". You have to expect that some people won't take that observation without skepticism.

Compared to other forums I'm on I find this one to be generally kind and full of intelligent debate and observations.

I'm new to the forum too.

 

[mswlogo]

I would say that is not a fair comparison, yet.

Just a FYI, the forums are currently averaging 190 posts per day in November. That may be "lighter" than more established brand forums, but I would say that is far from a couple posts per day.

How much of that is in the gravity subforum? And how much did it spike after orders opened?
If that’s for the entire sight that’s pretty low.

I’m not expecting the same level of Tesla. But I expected more buzz.

I would expect a boatload of separate threads on every option and color. Threads like November Wait list etc.

 

[mswlogo]

It’s likely that if you are on this forum (I mean all of us) you are a tech dinosaur. Forums in general are dying and being replaced with things like Reddit, Discord, and Facebook. That being said, this is one of the more active forums I participate in.

That’s a great point.
You’d think I’d know better since I work for the last one

 

[ButMahElectrons]

Doo dooo dee doo dee dooo.
Making the forum traffic.
doo doo dee doo.

yay lucid.

 

[ButMahElectrons]

I think it's important to keep in perspective, that, Lucid just hasn't sold THAT many cars out there yet.
And only a fraction of that group will join a forum like this.
In that regard, the traffic currently seems pretty healthy!

I imagine it will only grow over time, as we continue to zoom past that creaky dinosaur, Tesla.

 

[ButMahElectrons]

That’s a great point.
You’d think I’d know better since I work for the last one

Agreed.
FB is a place where boomers and angry Xers congregate mostly now.
So glad I turned off my account.

 

[Ktw13]

On the other hand, tesla forum is so vibrant with tons of complains about poor built quality, abandoned by customer service, waiting 9 months to get car fix, almost got killed by fsd etc etc...

 

[Ktw13]

Oh, and don't get me started on tesla pumpers posting same boring model 3 with different PPF multiple times a day on Twitter.

 

[DeaneG]

This forum's volume seems quite reasonable to me, after spending a similar amount of time on other special interest car forums now and in the past. Of course it doesn't have a million potential visitors as do forums for mass-market vehicles.

You can expect a higher volume of posts about Gravity as more specs are revealed, and again after deliveries begin.

 

[joec]

Hey, folks, I know a lot of you are not taking kindly to the suggestion we're not an active forum. We all know this isn't true. But let's try and give the OP the benefit of the doubt and remember we've all been "New Members" ourselves here at one point or another.

Think of it as an opportunity to change minds and bring someone new into the fold. As opposed to running strangers out of our little "ghost" town.

I know, pot meet kettle, and all that. I'm as guilty as any one of rushing to judgement. Just thought I'd make the suggestion.

 

[hmp10]

Where is everybody? Couple posts a day, really?

I would have expected and hoped this forum would be buzzing.

So this is how you treat newcomers thinking of switching.

If you are the typical welcome wagon maybe I should stay clear.

If you want to be taken seriously, it's best not to arrive with specious claims such as this forum only gets a couple of posts a day, something so patently false and so easily checked out as to be laughable. And phrases such as "where is everybody?" and "I would have expected and hoped" connote not a real request for information or response but rather a snide put-down.

This forum is full of posters, myself included, who often have negative things to say about their Lucids or the company. Those who put their questions or complaints forward in good faith are welcomed with open arms.


P.S. I just saw @joec's post. He makes a good point.

 

[msaunders9430]

Hey, folks, I know a lot of you are not taking kindly to the suggestion we're not an active forum. We all know this isn't true. But let's try and give the OP the benefit of the doubt and remember we've all been "New Members" ourselves here at one point or another.

Think of it as an opportunity to change minds and bring someone new into the fold. As opposed to running strangers out of our little "ghost" town.

I know, pot meet kettle, and all that. I'm as guilty as any one of rushing to judgement. Just thought I'd make the suggestion.

I've been on this forum for six months. Compared to other members, I'm definitely still a new member.

As a new member, I say to those of you "not taking kindly to the suggestion we're not an active forum", ya'll don't need to defend this forum.
And yet I can understand feeling the need to stand up to what could be interpreted as accusations. As one member said, statements easily interpreted as saying "This place is dead".

When I joined this forum, I spent most of my time researching previous posts. Years worth of posts, to get myself up-to-speed (learn more about the products, types of product issues and resolution of those issues, tone and quality of posts, member support, etc.).

There's so much more I could say to the OP, in addition to my previous post, but I would be contributing to getting off track from the actual purpose of this forum (Lucid Motors and the products). Even though there is an Off Topic section in this forum. Kudos to forum moderators for not moving this topic there.

I applaud @joec for encouraging changing minds and bringing someone new in.

This forum is keeping me going while I wait for the Gravity Touring version.
For me, there is no competitor to the Gravity and if there was, I'd look for a high quality forum for that competing product, like this one.

The Gravity will be my first ev. Buying it from a fairly new company, as well? Two risks for me, but I feel pretty confident that between Lucid support and this forum, I'm making the right decision and looking forward to contributing (including complaining ), as a Gravity owner. Whatever issue I may encounter, it helps to have resources.

 

[Dug]

A couple is 2. The forum posts per day = ~6.
So the Original Poster was not far off in quantity, and the assessment of a lack of ‘buzz’ is certainly valid when considering that the Gravity and Air are amazing technological feats.

There is something to consider about this lack of buzz, and Lucid and this Lucid forum should be wondering such: Having built a better mouse trap, why are only 1 in ~1 million people in the USA beating a path to this forum door?

In addition to being a potential Lucid buyer, I have a startup myself that’s working on ‘revolutionizing lifestyle’. So I consider this lack of buzz, and potentially a lack of sales, from the perspective of a buyer potentially owning a brick (a la Fisker). But more importantly, I’m curious how the market receives a new product and what convinces them to buy.

From both perspectives, my opinion is that Lucid may have mastered the art of packaging EV technology, but it has not packaged excitement so well. While the Air is a beautiful sport sedan, the Gravity is a capable-looking (but not cutting-edge) station wagon.

In my opinion, the design language of the Gravity leans a little too hard towards ‘conventional’, and misses an opportunity to be ‘as unique in appearance as it is in capability’.

We purchased an Ioniq 5 as a companion car to a Gravity or other 6-7 seater. It performs admirably as a compact and eye-catching hatchback, and the sliding/reclining 2nd row means I can fit a wheelchair on its side in the cargo area without folding down the chair or losing any seats.

Similarly to Gravity, the Ioniq 5 is another example of a vehicle package ‘only possible with an EV drivetrain’, and the Ioniq 5 certainly looks the part.

But there’s more missing from Lucid than ‘cutting-edge design language’; what’s also missing is just language itself…as in communication via photos, videos, and what we’d generally call ‘multimedia’.

The order site is woefully lacking for anyone other than the Lucid Faithful. I had to create my own little presentation of vehicle combinations for my wife to consider side by side. There’s few photos of the interior trim.

All in all, Lucid has a 1990’s era website that is struggling to sell 2027 era EV tech in a 2015 body style.

But design language can be quickly fixed with different wheels, headlights, and captain’s chairs, while corporate culture is more difficult. And I think that Matketing needs to double down and live up to the standard set by Lucid Engineering.

Lack of Lucid engagement = lack of buyer buzz. Why is there so little information available on the website or social media?

I’ve been trying to get info on the Gravity storage dimensions for the same wheelchair consideration as we had for the Ioniq 5, but there’s been little information available to potential buyers, and none when it comes to interior dimensions (and yet I’m sure every competing car builder had this information within days of photographing the Gravity at the LA Auto Show last year).

So this post is too long for a first, but it contains equal parts hope and frustration that I think reflects my thoughts as well as others.

Here’s hoping that 6 posts a day become 6 million site visits a day.

 

[Dug]

P.S. Hopefully Lucid is deliberately trying to stay under the radar screen by slow-rolling Gravity’s promotion, but if this is the ‘best foot forward’, well…

 

[hydbob]

A couple is 2. The forum posts per day = ~6.
So the Original Poster was not far off in quantity, and the assessment of a lack of ‘buzz’ is certainly valid when considering that the Gravity and Air are amazing technological feats.

There is something to consider about this lack of buzz, and Lucid and this Lucid forum should be wondering such: Having built a better mouse trap, why are only 1 in ~1 million people in the USA beating a path to this forum door?

In addition to being a potential Lucid buyer, I have a startup myself that’s working on ‘revolutionizing lifestyle’. So I consider this lack of buzz, and potentially a lack of sales, from the perspective of a buyer potentially owning a brick (a la Fisker). But more importantly, I’m curious how the market receives a new product and what convinces them to buy.

From both perspectives, my opinion is that Lucid may have mastered the art of packaging EV technology, but it has not packaged excitement so well. While the Air is a beautiful sport sedan, the Gravity is a capable-looking (but not cutting-edge) station wagon.

In my opinion, the design language of the Gravity leans a little too hard towards ‘conventional’, and misses an opportunity to be ‘as unique in appearance as it is in capability’.

We purchased an Ioniq 5 as a companion car to a Gravity or other 6-7 seater. It performs admirably as a compact and eye-catching hatchback, and the sliding/reclining 2nd row means I can fit a wheelchair on its side in the cargo area without folding down the chair or losing any seats.

Similarly to Gravity, the Ioniq 5 is another example of a vehicle package ‘only possible with an EV drivetrain’, and the Ioniq 5 certainly looks the part.

But there’s more missing from Lucid than ‘cutting-edge design language’; what’s also missing is just language itself…as in communication via photos, videos, and what we’d generally call ‘multimedia’.

The order site is woefully lacking for anyone other than the Lucid Faithful. I had to create my own little presentation of vehicle combinations for my wife to consider side by side. There’s few photos of the interior trim.

All in all, Lucid has a 1990’s era website that is struggling to sell 2027 era EV tech in a 2015 body style.

But design language can be quickly fixed with different wheels, headlights, and captain’s chairs, while corporate culture is more difficult. And I think that Matketing needs to double down and live up to the standard set by Lucid Engineering.

Lack of Lucid engagement = lack of buyer buzz. Why is there so little information available on the website or social media?

I’ve been trying to get info on the Gravity storage dimensions for the same wheelchair consideration as we had for the Ioniq 5, but there’s been little information available to potential buyers, and none when it comes to interior dimensions (and yet I’m sure every competing car builder had this information within days of photographing the Gravity at the LA Auto Show last year).

So this post is too long for a first, but it contains equal parts hope and frustration that I think reflects my thoughts as well as others.

Here’s hoping that 6 posts a day become 6 million site visits a day.

Where are you getting 6 posts a day? I'm certainly seeing more than that....

 

[Joe]

The confusion for me was the thread title "Forum traffic seems slow" which means to me the complete forum. Some of you are simply talking about the Lucid Gravity section part of the forum. I understand now.

This forum software does not provide individual based section statistics so I cannot provide that.

Regardless, if you simply look at only one thread in the Lucid Gravity section, it's averaging 29.5 posts per day. (384 posts divided by 13 days at the time of this post):

Thread 'Gravity Orders Discussion'

Nov 7, 2024

As people start placing their design orders, I will look into putting together a tracker just like we did with the Air.

In the meantime, post your design builds here.

• Joe
• Replies: 386
• Forum: Ordering / Pricing / Production / Deliveries

• 

My observation is that the Lucid buyers are an older demographic and most don't use online forums. I can see my older siblings with a family, parents, uncles, etc purchase a Gravity, but none of them even know that an online forum exists.

If I had to make a guess, I would say this forum captures maybe 10% of the Lucid owners. They just don't know or care about the forums and most likely are in a Facebook group because they got onboard with Facebook.

And don't forget about Reddit which has traffic regarding Gravity.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LUCID/

I don't expect the forum to be overly busy until mid-size when there is an influx of younger owners who seek out online forums such as these.

 

[hmp10]

A couple is 2. The forum posts per day = ~6.
So the Original Poster was not far off in quantity, and the assessment of a lack of ‘buzz’ is certainly valid when considering that the Gravity and Air are amazing technological feats.

The confusion for me was the thread title "Forum traffic seems slow" which means to me the complete forum. Some of you are simply talking about the Lucid Gravity section part of the forum. I understand now.

I'm completely mystified by this. I single-handedly often put up 6 or more posts a day, and I am far from the only poster.

Even if the OP meant the Gravity-only threads, the thread about the opening of orders went to 13 pages in just a few days . . . and there are many other threads about the Gravity. (Type "Gravity" in the search tool on this forum and see just how many Gravity threads there are.) Beyond that, there are innumerable posts about the Gravity sprinkled throughout other threads not dedicated specifically to the Gravity.

The OP said he works at Facebook. How could someone who works at a social media company look at this forum and conclude it is only getting a couple of posts a day?

I almost never open this forum from early morning until late evening and find less than a dozen members and considerably more guests on it. Here is the forum visitor count as it stands while I write this post:

Honestly, folks, something is seriously off base with these claims that the forum has almost no traffic or posting activity.

 

[hmp10]

I just checked the Rivian Owners forum on which I used to be active while I was holding a Rivian reservation. It's showing a total of "80.1K posts" since its inception in 2019.

I just did a tally of the number of posts from just the top 20 posters on this forum. The tally? 80,848.

Rivian launched into two vehicle categories far more popular than sedans: pickup trucks and SUVs. Its most expensive products cost far less than Lucid's.

Again, something is seriously off base with claims that either Lucid or this forum is drawing no interest.

 

[joec]

A couple is 2. The forum posts per day = ~6.
So the Original Poster was not far off in quantity, and the assessment of a lack of ‘buzz’ is certainly valid when considering that the Gravity and Air are amazing technological feats.

There is something to consider about this lack of buzz, and Lucid and this Lucid forum should be wondering such: Having built a better mouse trap, why are only 1 in ~1 million people in the USA beating a path to this forum door?

In addition to being a potential Lucid buyer, I have a startup myself that’s working on ‘revolutionizing lifestyle’. So I consider this lack of buzz, and potentially a lack of sales, from the perspective of a buyer potentially owning a brick (a la Fisker). But more importantly, I’m curious how the market receives a new product and what convinces them to buy.

From both perspectives, my opinion is that Lucid may have mastered the art of packaging EV technology, but it has not packaged excitement so well. While the Air is a beautiful sport sedan, the Gravity is a capable-looking (but not cutting-edge) station wagon.

In my opinion, the design language of the Gravity leans a little too hard towards ‘conventional’, and misses an opportunity to be ‘as unique in appearance as it is in capability’.

We purchased an Ioniq 5 as a companion car to a Gravity or other 6-7 seater. It performs admirably as a compact and eye-catching hatchback, and the sliding/reclining 2nd row means I can fit a wheelchair on its side in the cargo area without folding down the chair or losing any seats.

Similarly to Gravity, the Ioniq 5 is another example of a vehicle package ‘only possible with an EV drivetrain’, and the Ioniq 5 certainly looks the part.

But there’s more missing from Lucid than ‘cutting-edge design language’; what’s also missing is just language itself…as in communication via photos, videos, and what we’d generally call ‘multimedia’.

The order site is woefully lacking for anyone other than the Lucid Faithful. I had to create my own little presentation of vehicle combinations for my wife to consider side by side. There’s few photos of the interior trim.

All in all, Lucid has a 1990’s era website that is struggling to sell 2027 era EV tech in a 2015 body style.

But design language can be quickly fixed with different wheels, headlights, and captain’s chairs, while corporate culture is more difficult. And I think that Matketing needs to double down and live up to the standard set by Lucid Engineering.

Lack of Lucid engagement = lack of buyer buzz. Why is there so little information available on the website or social media?

I’ve been trying to get info on the Gravity storage dimensions for the same wheelchair consideration as we had for the Ioniq 5, but there’s been little information available to potential buyers, and none when it comes to interior dimensions (and yet I’m sure every competing car builder had this information within days of photographing the Gravity at the LA Auto Show last year).

So this post is too long for a first, but it contains equal parts hope and frustration that I think reflects my thoughts as well as others.

Here’s hoping that 6 posts a day become 6 million site visits a day.

I personally posted more than 6 times today.