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Gravity Service Appointments and Time In Service

Palagius said:
Today I got in my car to head home from work as per usual and discovered once I was already on the road that none of the physical feature controls in the car were working at all. Trying to change the temp using the on-screen controls (since the physical didn't work) would just have it snap back to the prior setting after a second or two. And I couldn't turn down the music at all. Not the knob, and not any of the steering wheel controls worked either. So no fan, temp, seat, volume, etc. controls at all. Completely disabled. At least the turn signal functioned, or I would have noticed earlier.

Upon arrival I took a video of it because it was so ridiculous.

Once I got home a soft-reboot (single chime) made the controls start working again. I mean, until next time something else fails. As I have posted elsewhere, I was braced for some teething pains and believed I was going in clear-eyed about what I was signing up for. But three weeks of ownership is the interval it took for me to go from a huge Lucid fan to looking at how much teeth lemon laws have in Virginia. Certainly right now I am posting angry, but what I will say is knowing what I know now I would absolutely not have gotten this car. Which is a shame, because it drives superbly when things work and the packaging and materials are all great.

I feel like I am grossly out of step with a lot of the other owners in here, as the dominant response to people having problems appears to be "caveat emptor" more than anything else. Lucid asserts that they delivered Gravity cars to people in December of last year. That means beyond software development running lockstep with designing and preparing to build the car, we are looking at nearly a full year of post-delivery bug fixes. And we are in this state where something extremely basic is broken basically in every drive, and we are supposed to just cross-reference our checklist for the elaborate chicken dance we are expected to do in order for basic things to function.

When I extrapolate from being a year in to post-delivery bug fixes and look toward the future, I see only more years of pain from the most expensive car I have ever owned. And the amount of goodwill Lucid had to squander to get me there is colossal.
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Caveat emptor.

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
 
Palagius said:
Today I got in my car to head home from work as per usual and discovered once I was already on the road that none of the physical feature controls in the car were working at all. Trying to change the temp using the on-screen controls (since the physical didn't work) would just have it snap back to the prior setting after a second or two. And I couldn't turn down the music at all. Not the knob, and not any of the steering wheel controls worked either. So no fan, temp, seat, volume, etc. controls at all. Completely disabled. At least the turn signal functioned, or I would have noticed earlier.

Upon arrival I took a video of it because it was so ridiculous.

Once I got home a soft-reboot (single chime) made the controls start working again. I mean, until next time something else fails. As I have posted elsewhere, I was braced for some teething pains and believed I was going in clear-eyed about what I was signing up for. But three weeks of ownership is the interval it took for me to go from a huge Lucid fan to looking at how much teeth lemon laws have in Virginia. Certainly right now I am posting angry, but what I will say is knowing what I know now I would absolutely not have gotten this car. Which is a shame, because it drives superbly when things work and the packaging and materials are all great.

I feel like I am grossly out of step with a lot of the other owners in here, as the dominant response to people having problems appears to be "caveat emptor" more than anything else. Lucid asserts that they delivered Gravity cars to people in December of last year. That means beyond software development running lockstep with designing and preparing to build the car, we are looking at nearly a full year of post-delivery bug fixes. And we are in this state where something extremely basic is broken basically in every drive, and we are supposed to just cross-reference our checklist for the elaborate chicken dance we are expected to do in order for basic things to function.

When I extrapolate from being a year in to post-delivery bug fixes and look toward the future, I see only more years of pain from the most expensive car I have ever owned. And the amount of goodwill Lucid had to squander to get me there is colossal.
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It seems crazy to me that they can’t fix this. It has to be a skill issue, right? Like the guy that knew how to do it quit and now they’re trying to find someone to fix it? They are hiring like crazy. This can’t be the situation they want.
 
Palagius said:
Lucid asserts that they delivered Gravity cars to people in December of last year. That means beyond software development running lockstep with designing and preparing to build the car, we are looking at nearly a full year of post-delivery bug fixes.
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The December deliveries were a PR stunt, the car wasn’t ready. The real deliveries started around June and you could tell the software was never ready because a major update got applied right before those deliveries happened.

I do think Lucid is losing some goodwill over it. People are like “the Air took years to get right and now it’s great”. That was the first model, Lucid can’t afford to make people wait years to get the software right for every model they release. The more cars they sell with software woes the more it will become vocal and damage their reputation.
 
socktucker said:
It seems crazy to me that they can’t fix this. It has to be a skill issue, right? Like the guy that knew how to do it quit and now they’re trying to find someone to fix it? They are hiring like crazy. This can’t be the situation they want.
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We can only speculate. But this is the Internet so I'm going to speculate. I will say from my own experience in congruent spaces that working on large and complex software systems is really hard. It can take months of familiarization before even a senior dev can go from "zero" to "able contributor". What is scary to contemplate is the potential that there are fundamental software design flaws from early in the foundation that impair their ability to fix things in more visible areas. All of the little things that go wrong in the interface, like the map "type" icon showing one mode (3D chase) but the map is actually running in "north up" mode potentially speak to there not being a consistent design pattern backing state and configuration management synchronization. Hardware people tend to think of software as infinitely flexible, but if you have to refactor something deep in the architecture it can snowball into orders of magnitude more man-hours further up the stack.

Again, that is 100% speculation on my part. And I am just a rando on the Internet who may have no idea what he's talking about. But I was very suspicious that they appeared to carry so little forward from the Air software--which others point out is actually pretty mature. Obviously the Gravity has very different (and independent) display setups, and there may have been valid reasons to start "from scratch". But my suspicion is they never read this missive from 25 years ago:

Perils of Rewrite

I'll spare you the read, but this is the quotation from that I think about when pondering not carrying the Air code forward to the new platform:

Each of these bugs took weeks of real-world usage before they were found. The programmer might have spent a couple of days reproducing the bug in the lab and fixing it. If it’s like a lot of bugs, the fix might be one line of code, or it might even be a couple of characters, but a lot of work and time went into those two characters.

When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away all that knowledge. All those collected bug fixes. Years of programming work.

You are throwing away your market leadership. You are giving a gift of two or three years to your competitors, and believe me, that is a long time in software years.
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As an owner of several Teslas, one thing I deeply appreciate is how zealous they are about preserving commonality in the software stack between vehicles. The Model X directly benefited from all the software development that went into the Model S right from the day it launched. They saved the really bad engineering decisions for things like falcon wing doors and getting rid of ultrasonic parking sensors. And the inability to figure out automatic wipers like other manufacturers did in 2000.

Again, this is just speculation from a rando on the Internet and I might be an idiot. But that is the stuff I think about when I am sitting in my Gravity and things are not working right. Also, the idea that they might have the same poor software quality on something like detecting the accelerator position on a 1000 HP SUV does leave me staring at the ceiling sometimes at night.
 
It's clear they started deliveries when the vehicle was far from being production ready. And now, with cars already on the road and showing different behaviors, it doesn't seem very likely that quick OTAs will have a significant impact.
Combine this with the news that the PIF is short on cash and being questioned for the poorly performing recent investments and... I'll stop here so I don't speculate.

Reading this makes me really nervous about my upcoming delivery. I felt the same way yesterday watching the NotchEV video with him getting concerned when he couldn't get the car to boot in the middle of Maine.
 
prgarg said:
Combine this with the news that the PIF is short on cash and being questioned for the poorly performing recent investments and... I'll stop here so I don't speculate.
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$925 billion in managed assets and $60 billion in cash is far from entering panic mode.
 
HC_79 said:
$925 billion in managed assets and $60 billion in cash is far from entering panic mode.
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That's very true, but they are going to start being more strategic and moderate in the way they invest.

"That’s in large part because Prince Mohammed and his deputies have spent a vast portion of the nation’s bounty on projects that are in financial distress, and they are frantically trying to turn things around, according to 11 people briefed on its operations, including current employees, board members, investors and their representatives."


1763859072126.webp
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/business/pif-saudi-arabia-fund-problems.html
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Has Big Plans, but His Giant Fund Is Low on Cash
3 days ago
 
prgarg said:
That's very true, but they are going to start being more strategic and moderate in the way they invest.

"That’s in large part because Prince Mohammed and his deputies have spent a vast portion of the nation’s bounty on projects that are in financial distress, and they are frantically trying to turn things around, according to 11 people briefed on its operations, including current employees, board members, investors and their representatives."


View attachment 34529
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/business/pif-saudi-arabia-fund-problems.html
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Has Big Plans, but His Giant Fund Is Low on Cash
3 days ago
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As the majority shareholders, I wonder if the Saudis pushed Lucid into trying to stick to the Gravity's schedule even though they doubtless knew that they weren't ready for the market. They have a lot of money, but that's far from the same thing as having good business sense. But I concede that it's possible that the fault lies with the current or prior CEO. Either way, if I had to make my decision today, I'd walk away from my deposit. I've been told that they don't have a way to push someone to the back of the queue, but today I think I'd like to wait a few months and see if they're able to demonstrate any better progress on fixing bugs. At this point it seems like they've really only addressed some of the key fob issues, and the other bugs are unchanged.
 
TahoeMichael said:
As the majority shareholders, I wonder if the Saudis pushed Lucid into trying to stick to the Gravity's schedule even though they doubtless knew that they weren't ready for the market. They have a lot of money, but that's far from the same thing as having good business sense. But I concede that it's possible that the fault lies with the current or prior CEO. Either way, if I had to make my decision today, I'd walk away from my deposit. I've been told that they don't have a way to push someone to the back of the queue, but today I think I'd like to wait a few months and see if they're able to demonstrate any better progress on fixing bugs. At this point it seems like they've really only addressed some of the key fob issues, and the other bugs are unchanged.
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The way to go to the back of the queue is to change your color to Lunar Titanium. That will work even “better” with the recent notification that LT color has been delayed to early next year. You can always change back to whatever you want when LTs go into production.
 
Ron_Burgundy said:
The way to go to the back of the queue is to change your color to Lunar Titanium. That will work even “better” with the recent notification that LT color has been delayed to early next year. You can always change back to whatever you want when LTs go into production.
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Can I do this is my car is already past production stage? It just moved to “In preparation for Delivery”.😕
 
blackcoal said:
Can I do this is my car is already past production stage? It just moved to “In preparation for Delivery”.😕
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You can try. Seriously. They can not force you to take delivery and it’s 100% okay to say you’re not comfortable doing so given the known issues. Lucid has excellent customer service. I bet they’d say “ok”, but you can’t just cancel - if you do that, you owe $1,000. Or, you can cancel and lose $1,000 which is WAY better than spending $100,000+ and being pissed and frustrated. Think of the $1,000 as an option to purchase. Some options are “money good”, some are not. You decide.
 
Ron_Burgundy said:
Or, you can cancel and lose $1,000 which is WAY better than spending $100,000+ and being pissed and frustrated.
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I cannot even articulate how much I agree with this, with more emphasis. A thousand dollars is real money, and I absolutely without hesitation would have eaten the deposit rather than take delivery knowing what I know now.

I placed a Gravity order the morning orders opened (for a GGT, obviously). What was it, Nov 7 last year? Waiting still another year for delivery for an actual functioning product would absolutely have been preferable. I get angry every time I get in the car, and I sure as hell can't share the car with my wife, who, you know, expects the car to function.

$1000 to not be pissed off literally every time I see or think about the car would feel like a bargain. Maybe in 2 months when I finally am able to get in for service they'll knock the edges off the things that bother me the most that appear to be vehicle-specific.
 
Palagius said:
I cannot even articulate how much I agree with this, with more emphasis. A thousand dollars is real money, and I absolutely without hesitation would have eaten the deposit rather than take delivery knowing what I know now.

I placed a Gravity order the morning orders opened (for a GGT, obviously). What was it, Nov 7 last year? Waiting still another year for delivery for an actual functioning product would absolutely have been preferable. I get angry every time I get in the car, and I sure as hell can't share the car with my wife, who, you know, expects the car to function.

$1000 to not be pissed off literally every time I see or think about the car would feel like a bargain. Maybe in 2 months when I finally am able to get in for service they'll knock the edges off the things that bother me the most that appear to be vehicle-specific.
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I hear you. I can’t let my wife drive it because of this and this is why she won’t “accept” the other GGT we have ordered. She doesn’t want to learn workarounds, etc. She likes her X (which I can’t stand) because it works. Is it as luxurious inside? No. Does it handle as well? No. Does it carry our kids and sh-t as well? Not at all. She readily admits all of this but still won’t drive the Gravity. Total bummer.

I love it and live with it. But “regular” people like my wife won’t tolerate many of the issues. I am still very much hoping to be a two Lucid household very soon. But we aren’t in a sedan portion of our life, so need the Gravity bugs to settle.
 
Palagius said:
I cannot even articulate how much I agree with this, with more emphasis. A thousand dollars is real money, and I absolutely without hesitation would have eaten the deposit rather than take delivery knowing what I know now.

I placed a Gravity order the morning orders opened (for a GGT, obviously). What was it, Nov 7 last year? Waiting still another year for delivery for an actual functioning product would absolutely have been preferable. I get angry every time I get in the car, and I sure as hell can't share the car with my wife, who, you know, expects the car to function.

$1000 to not be pissed off literally every time I see or think about the car would feel like a bargain. Maybe in 2 months when I finally am able to get in for service they'll knock the edges off the things that bother me the most that appear to be vehicle-specific.
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I'm leaning in the direction of not accepting delivery for all these reasons. Although I can afford a $120K vehicle, my anger level if it proves frustrating will be much higher than if I'd spent half as much. The price leads to different expectations.
 
Since this thread is already way off topic, I'll pile on. One might say that all threads on this forum at the moment seem to suffer from a "gravitational" pull toward the same general frustration. I think it's fair to say if there was any other vehicle on the market that could come close to matching the features and functionality of the Gravity *and* had solid software, we would all be buying that. There's a host of annoying issues with the Gravity, but I still can't find anything else at any price that can match the driving experience, performance, comfort, and utility. Despite Lucid's - definitely aspirational - slogan of "Compromise Nothing", every car is a bunch of compromises. There's other cars that I might think look better, some that might handle better on a track (which I never do), some that have more reliable software, some are better off road, but all of them come with their own set of trade offs. We wouldn't be here discussing this if those other cars met our needs better. We all just want the Gravity to get its software dialed in. It's just a question of whether they can do it before some other car comes along that delivers a better set of compromises.
 
NovemberLima said:
Since this thread is already way off topic, I'll pile on. One might say that all threads on this forum at the moment seem to suffer from a "gravitational" pull toward the same general frustration. I think it's fair to say if there was any other vehicle on the market that could come close to matching the features and functionality of the Gravity *and* had solid software, we would all be buying that. There's a host of annoying issues with the Gravity, but I still can't find anything else at any price that can match the driving experience, performance, comfort, and utility. Despite Lucid's - definitely aspirational - slogan of "Compromise Nothing", every car is a bunch of compromises. There's other cars that I might think look better, some that might handle better on a track (which I never do), some that have more reliable software, some are better off road, but all of them come with their own set of trade offs. We wouldn't be here discussing this if those other cars met our needs better. We all just want the Gravity to get its software dialed in. It's just a question of whether they can do it before some other car comes along that delivers a better set of compromises.
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Totally agree. “On Paper” the Gravity clicked all the right boxes for me and is why I placed an order. Currently Gravity is delivering about 95% of what it promised hardware wise but only about 70% of what it promised software wise. The good news is that hardware issues are much harder to correct after delivery vs. software issues - assuming that the software issues are not due to some core foundation problems deep in the system.
 
TahoeMichael said:
I'm leaning in the direction of not accepting delivery for all these reasons. Although I can afford a $120K vehicle, my anger level if it proves frustrating will be much higher than if I'd spent half as much. The price leads to different expectations.
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Same here. I was planning to take delivery and drive it up to Tahoe(! ;) ) in December (if there is any snow), but after reading some of the experiences here and on Reddit, I’m worried it might just be asking for trouble. How it will handle in the snow is still a bit of a mystery, and I’m also disappointed there isn't that promised terrain mode yet—though of course I’m sure it could still manage.

Waiting 3-6 months to have the kinks worked out some more seems like the wiser option.
 
I expect delivery in the next week or so. As and owner of a very early 2022 Air GT, I am not worried at all about the bugs or service on my new Gravity. I understand that not everyone is like me, but the Gravity offers a drive, range, charging and cargo volume that nobody can match. It is well worth the small software issues to enjoy the benefits of owning a Lucid.
 
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