I tend to agree with that approach. Promised future capabilities are nice to hear about, but they're not always delivered on the original timeline—or at all.
Do you think Lucid's current hardware is genuinely capable of supporting higher levels of autonomy later on, or is there a good chance they'll need another major hardware refresh before L3/L4 becomes practical?
I think Lucid's safety standard is higher than others but otherwise, it could achieve point-to-point driving (Tesla FSD) with the oldest hardware line (Air).
The Lucid's release does not mention the Air for point-to-point driving. Gravity and Cosmo are covered.
L3 is conditional autonomy. The company can set what conditions that would qualify as "autonomy."
If the hardware is not powerful enough, the company can create stricter conditions: daylight only (not darker ambiance), slow speed (not practical for highways but good in stop and go traffic), dry roads (no wetness allowed), front leading car...
L3 has been achieved by some companies but they now shift their focus back to L2 instead due to the non-practicality of L3.
So, in theory, even an Air can be L3 depending on how much you want it to be so impractical on highways.
Lucid does plan L3 and personal-owned L4 (Waymo, Neuro but personally owned by you).
However, as
@TahoeMichael said, even Waymo has to repeatedly change its hardware, so I am very suspicious whether my current hardware will be able to do for the future plan.
For practical purpose, when I designed my car, I would click on the "i" icon to see what the current hardware capabilities are.
Not too long ago, although the Gravity was sold as Autolane change but it could not until subsequent firmware updates.
Thus. I think what listed for that "i" icon is trustworthy even if the feature (Gravity hands-free) is not available at the time.
For practical expection, I would think the Air will get better and might get Autosteer in the city streets. I don't expect point-to-point driving until Lucid woud announce its plan.
I would think Gravity and Cosmo will eventually get point-to-point driving and highway L3.
For L4, I expect multiple hardware generations before it could be achieved. The timeline for L4 industry is still very long because Waymo can still make basic rookie mistakes that a child could solve.
Thus, I would hope the industry would apply L4 technology for L2 driving. The car would drive itself most of the time until it can't solve a simple scenario and the driver is already to take over (the old days of Waymo with safety driver).
