Gravity Bugs / Issues

[Bunnylebowski]

FWIW after I did the steering wheel reboot on 3.3.5 it cured camera and all other errors. Now it’s just brief black screen occasionally.

 

[Ron_Burgundy]

I haven’t had the message pop up since installing 3.3.5 and as such, I’m certainly in no rush to get the fob updated because I actually had more issues with it the last time they updated than previously before.

My IT brain tells me “if it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it” lol

I had it pop up twice today - both times car wouldn’t move, so I guess they were “legit” alerts…I can’t tell if that’s more, or less, troubling?

 

[hwy17er]

Did he say PaaK specifically? His post last week said “other accessibility options” or something like that.

Look, it’s a freaking fob. It’s got to work. It works on $20,000 cars. Mine gave key not detected again this morning. Wouldn’t go into gear, etc. Again, I don’t have the fob update, but I also can’t get the fob update because the SC didn’t know it existed. So now I have to wait for them to schedule me. I mean, it is total buffoonery at this point. You just have to laugh. Why issue the update for the fob if we can’t get it?

Sorry, rant over. It’s embarrassing with family, kids and friends at this point.

I spoke to Marc Winterhoff semi-privately at the San Jose SC Grand opening and to be honest after listening to the backstory I kind of felt sorry for the guy. He hired the same key fob company that does fobs for Mercedes thinking he would have a quality reputable manufacturer to produce the Gravity fob and it's been nothing short of a nightmare for him. What a shit show!! Praying for PAAK...whenever it comes along

 

[RandomDesign]

I spoke to Marc Winterhoff semi-privately at the San Jose SC Grand opening and to be honest after listening to the backstory I kind of felt sorry for the guy. He hired the same key fob company that does fobs for Mercedes thinking he would have a quality reputable manufacturer to produce the Gravity fob and it's been nothing short of a nightmare for him. What a shit show!! Praying for PAAK...whenever it comes along

Honestly from watching the videos from the manufacturer I'm convinced that Lucid went with their lowest end system, but there's no way I'm blaming Marquardt at this point given the state of the rest of Lucid's software suites.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Whether it’s low end or high end I don’t understand why on earth it would have such issues. Like I doubt Lucid agreed to get the least reliable fob option. So either Marquardt has some issues not previously revealed on a large scale or Lucid software/engineering has some issues that have revealed themselves to be a problem with Marquardt which couldn’t have been anticipated until they tried to get it to work. It leaves me scratching my head though, like why does my fob seem to work ok when I use it just like my Air fob?

 

[HC_79]

I spoke to Marc Winterhoff semi-privately at the San Jose SC Grand opening and to be honest after listening to the backstory I kind of felt sorry for the guy. He hired the same key fob company that does fobs for Mercedes thinking he would have a quality reputable manufacturer to produce the Gravity fob and it's been nothing short of a nightmare for him. What a shit show!! Praying for PAAK...whenever it comes along

It’s not the key supplier, this is on Lucid. Should we blaming Google for the software bugs due to it running on Android Automotive? No! Seems all of Lucid’s woes are everyone else’s fault bar them.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

The one thing I’ll say is Lucid’s people are very solution minded, working very hard to solve problems that arise, and are quite clever at identifying problems. As in, they are great, reactively. But one must ask why do these problems keep arising? It’s the pro-active part of preventing the problem in the first place that seems to be the foundation of fhe struggle, but also at the same time they’re limited by the information given to them by 3rd party suppliers as well as their own designers. Like I can’t fault Mark and the team for going with Marquardt if everything before Gravity production suggested that was the right move, only to find out that if certain conditions existed then you can’t drive the damn car at all. So really I wouldn’t hold the team for those choices accountable. But whoever said “nah, let’s not do pin to drive as a fail safe like we had in the Air”, uh that turned out to be very big mistake. And for sake of fairness it seems the fob issues are getting fewer and fewer and fewer with each successive update, with a few people still having surprising trouble but on the whole most are having less, so it is progress being made.

Now add drive unit failures, seat squeaks, windows not going up, frunk misbehavior, center console module failure, cameras freezing, HUD inconsistency and it’s a hurricane of trouble.

So far I’ve had very few of those issues at least so I have confidence they CAN make a car that works, but how do they do that for every car?

 

[RandomDesign]

Whether it’s low end or high end I don’t understand why on earth it would have such issues. Like I doubt Lucid agreed to get the least reliable fob option. So either Marquardt has some issues not previously revealed on a large scale or Lucid software/engineering has some issues that have revealed themselves to be a problem with Marquardt which couldn’t have been anticipated until they tried to get it to work. It leaves me scratching my head though, like why does my fob seem to work ok when I use it just like my Air fob?

The higher end system has more UWB sensors for the fob (and PaaK when it comes). In these screenshots the green highlighted hardware is UWB, yellow is NFC, blue is Blutooth BLE and pink is the control unit.

My guess they went for the basic setup is based on people with the pinched wire in the center console seeming to take out the whole system. I'd be willing to bet good money that those extra sensors are there for a reason and would contribute a lot to reliability of detection.

 

[Ron_Burgundy]

Mark November 5th on your calendar. It’s the next earnings call and likely the only time we will get a statement. Any analyst worth their salt will ask a question about the fobs…can’t be supply constraints. The issue is many of the cars they’ve built are software constrained or whatever the right term is.

It’s poor leadership. Starts at the top - whoever is there, whenever they’re there.

And, at this point, it goes to the Board of Directors.

They’re very lucky they really only answer to KSA as activists would have a field day, but KSA’s position is too huge for that.

 

[maxtor10000]

…

I hate hearing about other owners bad experiences which are really piling up in here, but here’s what I’ve been doing at I’ve really had no problems entering or driving the car since 3.3.2 and since 3.3.5 all false alerts have disappeared, and I am getting black screens on entry rarely but it takes 15 seconds to load instead of 2-3 minutes like on 3.3.2. So what I do is I have a faraday bag and keep the key in that, and keep proximity unlock/lock on. I take the key out when I’m going to be going to the car and keep it in my pocket. Car wakes up, car drives, car locks when I leave it. I still have had zero success getting either key card to drive the car though both open so I’m assuming a center console module needs replaced (service thinks that’s the case too, but I’m staying away from service until 10 k miles or forced to go due to a larger failure).

I feel similarly guilty hearing about other people’s problems because my Gravity has been almost flawless over the month I’ve had it. My fob has worked for auto lock/unlock and driving every time and after 3.3.5 the phantom key not found messages have completely disappeared (even sans firmware update). My keycards work too. The only issues I’ve had are the rare extended black screen on opening the car that goes away 10-15 sec later and an issue with profile auto switching when I used the fob after my wife used her card (which seemed to confuse the car and may not work). Once I manually switched to my profile everything worked fine again.

That’s said, hearing about all the issues others are having makes me worry that I’m just a drive away from everything changing. The inexplicably random nature of theses issues can’t be making them easier to diagnose or solve.

 

[HC_79]

Mark November 5th on your calendar. It’s the next earnings call and likely the only time we will get a statement. Any analyst worth their salt will ask a question about the fobs…can’t be supply constraints. The issue is many of the cars they’ve built are software constrained or whatever the right term is.

It’s poor leadership. Starts at the top - whoever is there, whenever they’re there.

And, at this point, it goes to the Board of Directors.

They’re very lucky they really only answer to KSA as activists would have a field day, but KSA’s position is too huge for that.

Don’t hold your breath. The software issues questions get drowned out by the “when is the mid market coming” “when is Lucid going to be profitable” “who are you speaking to about partnerships”.

 

[Ron_Burgundy]

The higher end system has more UWB sensors for the fob (and PaaK when it comes). In these screenshots the green highlighted hardware is UWB, yellow is NFC, blue is Blutooth BLE and pink is the control unit.

My guess they went for the basic setup is based on people with the pinched wire in the center console seeming to take out the whole system. I'd be willing to bet good money that those extra sensors are there for a reason and would contribute a lot to reliability of detection.

You could have a UWB sensor at every door, etc. It doesn’t matter if the software doesn’t work and the various sensors can’t communicate. We don’t know the issue, but a search on Marquardt doesn’t show ANY other major issues with recent cars except Lucid.

As @HC_79 said, this one is on Lucid.

Now, if they could fix it, they would. So that’s the really tough part to realize as an owner. Can Lucid fix it? If I can get my fob updated, I will find out!

 

[Bunnylebowski]

The higher end system has more UWB sensors for the fob (and PaaK when it comes). In these screenshots the green highlighted hardware is UWB, yellow is NFC, blue is Blutooth BLE and pink is the control unit.

My guess they went for the basic setup is based on people with the pinched wire in the center console seeming to take out the whole system. I'd be willing to bet good money that those extra sensors are there for a reason and would contribute a lot to reliability of detection.

I see no reason to think they don’t have the premium version? The Gravity definitely has less dead spots for approach, unlike the Air where if you walked in a straight line the trunk you couldn’t open the trunk, unless you approached from the side of the car.

 

[hwy17er]

It’s not the key supplier, this is on Lucid. Should we blaming Google for the software bugs due to it running on Android Automotive? No! Seems all of Lucid’s woes are everyone else’s fault bar them.

For certain the way these key fob products are implemented and utilized by Lucid's UX/UI is surely on them; but what about the other nonsense?...did Lucid make the buttons come off?? Hmmm..

 

[bryway]

Turtle came back after about 40 mins of surface-road driving. KoP wrote it up as an RDU failure and is sending a truck out to pick the car up from my house tomorrow morning. They don’t have loaner 7-seaters, so contacted the local Enterprise Rental and are covering the cost of a 7-seater rental car. I’m quite bummed because the first 3 weeks went so well, I really thought I had dodged a bullet with delivery issues. But the service folks at KoP were super professional - everything was scheduled within a matter of minutes. Fingers crossed that Lucie comes back in 2 - 3 weeks, even better than new - and with upgraded key fob hardware!!!

Sorry to hear you’re going through this. If it’s any consolation, I haven’t had any RDU-related issues since collecting Velocitron from service a few weeks ago. That includes charging at compatible Tesla Superchargers.

 

[Ron_Burgundy]

For certain the way these key fob products are implemented and utilized by Lucid's UX/UI is surely on them; but what about the other nonsense?...did Lucid make the buttons come off?? Hmmm..

That’s fair re: the buttons. If you want rugged, you go with Fisher Price. Kid tested. Bet those buttons don’t come off! They can’t or they’d be recalled as a choking hazard…

 

[bryway]

A Tale of Two Gravities (a tragicomic novel):

My partner went to the green Gravity this morning to leave for a tennis match. A few minutes later he came back in to show me a cell phone shot of the driver seat in full recline and asked me what to do. I told him others have reported the same problem on this forum and to reboot the car. He did and left for his match.

Shortly after noon I took the black Gravity to a medical appointment. On the way an earlier problem with the music going into pause repeatedly at frequent intervals resurfaced. After a few miles of driving, it corrected itself, and I made it to the appointment without further misbehavior.

I went back to the car after the appointment. When I opened the door, the car powered up, all the screens lit up, the climate control turned on, and music began to play. I took a second to switch albums, which the system did. I then put my foot on the brake pedal to put the car in gear. All the screens went instantly black, and the music and A/C shut off. I waited a while to see if they would come back on as sometimes happens with partial screen blackouts. Nothing happened.

After several minutes I tried a reboot. Nothing happened.

I called Lucid Customer care and got the voice prompts to choose Sales or Service. I chose Service and got a message that the call was being connected. After a few seconds I got another message saying that there was an "application error", and the call suddenly terminated. I tried again. Same thing. So I called the Miami Service Center. Same thing. (Maybe today's widespread AWS outage took Lucid down?)

It was 92º and I began to swelter, so I lowered the front windows, which were mysteriously still working, and called my partner to come get me. He arrived about twenty minutes later, during which time I tried a couple more reboots and kept trying to reach Lucid only to get the same "application error" messages.

When my partner arrived, I gathered my things to exit the car. But when I tried to close the windows they were now frozen in the down position. Rain was predicted for the afternoon, and I didn't want to leave the car open in a parking lot. So I tried to reach our mobile tech to see if he had any suggestions. No answer.

I decided I had no choice but to leave the car open and hope I could reach Lucid before it started raining. When I tried to open the driver door, it would not open until I pulled the latch very hard to engage the manual release. The horn immediately began blaring. So I got back into the car and closed the door, hoping that would stop the horn. It didn't, but the horn cut itself off after another minute or so. I kept trying to close the windows, and the driver window finally raised about an inch and then froze again. We went through this whole drill a second time (including another blasting horn). After this second cycle, the car suddenly sprang back to life, with everything working (almost).

I had another appointment but decided to skip it, as I dared not go through this again and just wanted to get the damned car home in one piece. As I drove off, I noticed the passenger window had lowered about a third of the way. I raised it again, and it again lowered itself about a third of the way. I tried lowering the window all the way and then raising it. Same thing. Wondering if I had something handy to slit my wrists, I drove off while constantly trying to get the passenger window to stay closed. This continued with the window going up and down for several miles until it finally stayed closed.

I had real hopes that the black Gravity we received three months after the green Gravity would be more problem-free, but those hopes are now gone.

There is NO FUCKING WAY I will put either of these cars on a road trip at this point, and now I won't even use them locally if we're carrying other people. -- two of the main reasons I wanted these Gravities. We'll be keeping our Honda Odyssey for that.

Lucid ought to fire every damn person who had anything to do with the user software in this car and farm the work out to an outfit that knows what it's doing.

Yet Lucid just plows along, putting more of these cars not only into customers' hands, but now loaning them out to car reviewers who are finding out about the interminable key fob entry/start issues and, even worse, with Tom Moloughney of widely-watched "State of Charge" getting a car with a faulty drive unit that badly fumbled his range test and would not work at a Tesla Supercharger (another reason I wanted a Gravity).

I already know that I'm going to have to eat the loss on my Lucid stock position. I've now got to decide whether I'm even keeping the cars.

OMG! That sounds truly awful - especially given the experiences you’ve had from the start with your first Gravity. I’ve been trying to stay positive (and know you’d heretofore tried as well), but agree maybe we’re being taken for granted here (test mules). I’m really sorry, man.

 

[037]

Anyone had a flappy door handle? Drove for 15 minutes and passenger front door handle was going in and out, while parked, while moving, didn’t care what I did.

 

[hmp10]

Man, I’m guessing this MAY have been suggested to you, but after market modification can introduce gremlins. I did see the pic you posted of the entire front end of your Gravity off to install radar/laser jammer. Now I PROMISE I am not victim blaming, your cars are still majorly busted, but the amount of anomalies you’re experiencing are beyond what literally any other owner I know has had.

You said what I'm sure several of us have been thinking now for a while. I don't want to blame either and I HATE that he's going thru this. But yeah....

I finally cooled down enough to venture back onto the forum, only to find this.

Maybe you missed post #2,551 on this thread:

I mentioned that I skipped an appointment after today's debacle. That appointment was to drop the car off to have the radar/laser detector installed. For starters, I can't ask them to do such work on a car that is exhibiting this level of malfunction. They'll have no way to distinguish whether they've done something amiss or whether the car itself has gone wonky.

The only thing I've had done to the black Gravity that went haywire today was having it wrapped with PPF. And the radar installation had nothing to do with the first Gravity's distorted HUD screen, seats rattling, frozen navigation system, non-functioning GPS, key fob failures -- all of which were present upon delivery -- or with its failed drive unit. In fact, the only software that has worked consistently in the car has been the software in the radar detector system those guys installed.

I've noticed something interesting on the forum for some time now. When I began reporting the issues with our first Gravity, there were several posters who said more or less, "hey, sorry, but my Gravity is just fine, functioning perfectly . . . ." Yet in looking over their other posts I have found either things to the effect of "well, I did have that problem" or "mine is beginning to do this, too", or "I have found that if you do x (reboot, remove and reinsert the fob battery while holding some button, put one seat x inches ahead of the other, get away from the car and cool your heels while the car goes through a sleep cycle, let the window up and down three times and then open to door while pressing the window, forgo this or that feature, pat your head while dancing on your left foot and spinning three times, etc.), the problem will go away."

Rationalize and blame owners or third parties all you want, but the fact remains that the Gravity's user software is a stinking hot mess, and a lot of owners (and now some reviewers) are finding it out.

 

[NovemberLima]

Wow, I was prepared for some bugs, but the level of problems being repeated here has me worried enough to consider cancelling my order.