The SVP of quality was replaced which I think is the most important move. It’s impossible for us to know the behind the scenes aspects behind Gravity development and production, we are not company insiders and even those of us with leadership experience may be dead wrong on our assumptions without having detailed information. BUT in my opinion since Peter Rawlinson and VP of manufacturing Steven David departed, the reliability and predictability of the car has gotten worse. Air Fob worked for me nearly all of the time, if it didn’t, it was because of a dead battery. And there was always pin to drive, and the keycards for me always worked too. Now there’s no phone as a key, incomprehensible fob chaos, keycards don’t work a lot of the time, and no pin to drive. The fact that it’s 11 months since first produced vehicles and there’s no CarPlay or AA means to me that the state of the first production Gravity was so poor that Apple wouldn’t even consider approving CarPlay, let alone Apple Key.
BUT we must be even handed and fair here. The charging on Gravity is what every Air owner was begging for since day 1. Native NACS, super fast and easy reliable charging. And the vehicle build quality, fit and finish is leaps and bounds beyond the first Airs. And we can have independent screens now which people begged for on the Air. And the low levels of NVH is fantastic, the sound system is even better, DDPro has advanced a lot, and now we’ve got a dashcam (yes I know it’s in Beta and erratic), and we’ve got gobs more efficiency data than before and better charger planning, and user interface over all is next level over the Air, and the Air is already good. So all things considered in the balance, the Gravity is AMAZING and the best driving EV SUV you can buy. But this screw up with the fobs/entry and confidence destroying instability of the software combined with some hardware problems like center console and RDU and seats and windows suggests to me that there was some inability to figure things out before the car rolled off the line. Who owns that failure is anyone’s guess.
It’s a tough market man, it is NOT easy at all to make a vehicle in this climate, and I very much respect Lucid and love their service people and innovations and the car itself. BUT there needs to be some improvements and it needs to happen fast, so I’m reassured they are taking action, I just hope it yields results.
