Lucid Air paint thickness - real issue or PPF marketing?

[Austins]

Hi everyone,

I’m a newer Lucid Air owner and have been doing some general reading and watching videos while getting familiar with the car.

I’ve come across a few discussions and detailer videos mentioning that the Lucid Air may have relatively thin paint, with some people recommending PPF early on.

Now I have already have PPF on mine, but is thin paint really a thing on a new car? I’ve been driving this for 4 months now. And I love it.

But just wondering if this “thin paint” thing is real or just marketing coming from detailers + PPF shops.

 

[TahoeMichael]

Hi everyone,

I’m a newer Lucid Air owner and have been doing some general reading and watching videos while getting familiar with the car.

I’ve come across a few discussions and detailer videos mentioning that the Lucid Air may have relatively thin paint, with some people recommending PPF early on.

Now I have already have PPF on mine, but is thin paint really a thing on a new car? I’ve been driving this for 4 months now. And I love it.

But just wondering if this “thin paint” thing is real or just marketing coming from detailers + PPF shops.

I have no idea if it's true or not. Actually measuring the relative paint thickness seems like it would require incurring minor damage on multiple vehicles and the use of micrometers. I doubt there's any detailer doing that. To the extent it's true, I expect they actually mean how robust the paint is, as paint chemistry will effect its resilience, not just how thick it is.

But it sounds like a sales pitch much more than a fact.

 

[Austins]

I have no idea if it's true or not. Actually measuring the relative paint thickness seems like it would require incurring minor damage on multiple vehicles and the use of micrometers. I doubt there's any detailer doing that. To the extent it's true, I expect they actually mean how robust the paint is, as paint chemistry will effect its resilience, not just how thick it is.

But it sounds like a sales pitch much more than a fact.

That is what I was thinking.
Like what even is the relative paint thickness, how is that measured. What if that doesn’t even matter but paint type used is what actually matters.

Idk too many factors. But why are they choosing to say this about the lucid. Because I have not heard this claim for another car before. Idk, maybe because its A newish brand?

 

[RajD]

OutofSpec did a Gravity paint thickness and quality inspection video (I think they did one for Air too, maybe search for this). But they used a tool that did the paint thickness measurement digitally and didn't cause any damage so pretty safe. They found very adequate and relatively consistent paint thickness around the entire car.

However, they did say that the Air they had tested was not that way, that it was 2mm thick in some sections (4-7mm apparently is a good range). So maybe the Air does have less consistent paint on earlier models. And hopefully they've corrected this in more recent models.

 

[DreamTour]

A thicker coat of paint (clearcoat) just means it can be polished more before you run out of it.

If you don’t have enough clear, you can’t polish further without repainting, which is expensive.

The thickness of the clear is more with regards to fine scratches like swirls. Anything that is a chip is not going to buff out and would need touch up paint.

Having had full ppf on my lucid, I feel like it’s a mixed bag. It did protect it from several instances that would have chipped the paint but it also is softer than paint, so it starts to show damage faster. In the cases where it protected the paint it required that ppf panel to be replaced which was not cheaper either.

Also full ppf does not hold a ceramic coat as well as paint. Having had both, the ppf loses its coating relatively quickly compared to paint.

My opinion is if you can garage park, full ppf is overkill.

 

[hmp10]

Hi everyone,

I’m a newer Lucid Air owner and have been doing some general reading and watching videos while getting familiar with the car.

I’ve come across a few discussions and detailer videos mentioning that the Lucid Air may have relatively thin paint, with some people recommending PPF early on.

Now I have already have PPF on mine, but is thin paint really a thing on a new car? I’ve been driving this for 4 months now. And I love it.

But just wondering if this “thin paint” thing is real or just marketing coming from detailers + PPF shops.

In a discussion about Air paint thickness several year ago on this forum, a poster who said he was a retired coatings engineer said that paint thickness had little to do with the quality and durability of modern automotive paints.

Lucid's paint operations were a state-of-the-art installation by German contractors when the factory was built, and I've never really believed all the negative stuff I read about Air paint. Our first Air (an early Dream Edition) did not have PPF on it, and up until the time it was wrecked almost two years in its paint job held up beautifully. We bought a used Dream to replace it that was almost two years old at the time, had no film, and had been through two New England winters. We had that one fully wrapped, but the paint required no correction or touchup before doing so. And today that 4-year-old car still looks brand new.

 

[DeaneG]

...However, they did say that the Air they had tested was not that way, that it was 2mm thick in some sections (4-7mm apparently is a good range).

4-7 mm would mean that the paint is about 1/4 inch thick!

The review was quoting paint thickness in American "mils", which are 1/1000 of an inch. This is very different from UK "mils", which are millimeters, almost 40 times times larger.
Factory automotive paint is usually in the range of 80-150 microns, or about 3 to 6 American mils. The USA is the only country that uses "mils" this way.

One review I saw of an early Air mentioned thin paint in places. A similar review of a later Air said that paint thickness was in the normal range.
Early posts in this forum were full of comments about "weak" paint and windshields, though these comments have faded away. IMO there's nothing unusual about the Air's paint or glass.

 

[RajD]

4-7 mm would mean that the paint is about 1/4 inch thick!

The review was quoting paint thickness in American "mils", which are 1/1000 of an inch. This is very different from UK "mils", which are millimeters, almost 40 times times larger.
Factory automotive paint is usually in the range of 80-150 microns, or about 3 to 6 American mils. The USA is the only country that uses "mils" this way.

One review I saw of an early Air mentioned thin paint in places. A similar review of a later Air said that paint thickness was in the normal range.
Early posts in this forum were full of comments about "weak" paint and windshields, though these comments have faded away. IMO there's nothing unusual about the Air's paint or glass.

Yes you're correct, sorry I had the wrong units on my post!

 

[socktucker]

Former body guy here. Lucid is high quality paint, appropriate for a 6 figure car. Color paint thickness is meaningless. Clear is debatable.

 

[borski]

It’s fine. The thickness is unimportant (within a range), and most people talking about it misunderstand it. They are not measuring clear coat thickness vs color coat. The only thing a thinner paint layer means is there isn’t as much paint that you can polish off before you PPF the car. That’s all. It has ~nothing to do with the quality of the paint.

(It can, however, be an indicator of a piece that was repainted, which is still fine if it happens before leaving the factory. That would be a situation with a very thick paint layer, compared to the rest of the car. Still says nothing about quality.)

Lucid has great paint. Is it perfect? No. There are sometimes swirl marks, etc. But there literally doesn’t exist a brand this is untrue for.

Any good PPF shop will do a full paint correction before applying PPF anyway.