New HV Battery

[koflo]

If your rear vent wasn’t working, I can guarantee your future AC will be better. The car cools down way way faster with the rear vent on.

As for the service - sadly the one drawback of the DE. In many ways, my DE has been more stable and superior to other’s GTs, but the initial days did require more service for various corrections. It’s possible you bought yours before it had been through the same treatment.

My car hasn’t seen service for a long time though, until its current stint - which is just a list of various minor things collected over the last year plus a delayed two year annual service (delayed by me; was traveling).

Yeah the DE is a double edged sword. On one hand, its an engineering marvel with enough HP that I will never need more. And as stated in other threads, no company has a replacement for it. Not even Lucid. On the other hand, I know I experience more issues than most. I give them the benefit of the doubt on these hardware issues as I understand that mine was #113th of the line. Many things have been addressed in a relatively timely manner but does worry me about long term ownership of DEs in particular.

I voice my opinions a lot about the car but its truly because I care and I try to keep them software centric as that's the thing they can control with rolling updates. I haven't had a car in recent years in which it felt like a leap frog to the next car. The Lucid has stayed in the garage even when I had the new car itch.

I really don't mind getting a new battery. In my eyes, that is like getting my odometer set back to 0 but that does come with hesitations for long term reliability. Especially if they run their diagnostics and don't see the issue they are expecting to see. As a consumer, I would be a little nervous and would urge for the battery to be replaced regardless since that bug has already been planted in my ear straight from the source.

We will see what happens once I get the call back but if the A/C is totally replaced and it worked perfectly then that would knock out one of the few remaining hardware issues I have about the car. Car key is still at the top but the A/C was a close second.

 

[borski]

And as stated in other threads, no company has a replacement for it. Not even Lucid.

The Sapphire would like a word

(But yes, I agree)

Many things have been addressed in a relatively timely manner but does worry me about long term ownership of DEs in particular.

I wouldn’t stress too much about it. If mine and @hydbob’s are any indicator, once the relative well-defined set of issues is corrected, the DEs tend to be trouble-free. Like I said, mine has minor things like a broken passenger seat headrest and I want my door striker adjusted, but nothing that I wasn’t willing to wait until the next annual for.

Nothing major in years.

I haven't had a car in recent years in which it felt like a leap frog to the next car. The Lucid has stayed in the garage even when I had the new car itch.

I completely agree. I recent had the itch and texted someone at Lucid about the Sapphire but I’d have such trouble giving up the glass roof. And I looked at a few other ICE cars again and nothing can convince me to give up the Air yet.

I really don't mind getting a new battery. In my eyes, that is like getting my odometer set back to 0 but that does come with hesitations for long term reliability.

Your warranty remains the exact same - 70% after 8 years. Of note, I have yet to hear, ever, of a battery needing to be replaced twice. The issue isn’t the battery failing, as far as I understand it, but interference of certain components in the battery and/or Wunderbox. They moved a component from one to the other, and thus they replace both instead of just one.

Now, there may be newer battery issues, but my understanding is that’s the same one that existed before on some vehicles, but this time they’ve added software diagnostics to identify it before it fails; seems like a good thing to me.

Also of note, in general when it failed, a hard reset would make the car drivable again (but unclear for how long). I drove mine a half hour to Millbrae after mine failed on the highway; it gave me a two minute warning so I pulled off an exit, parked in a driveway, reset, and drove straight to Millbrae. I had contacted Christopher in this time and he already had a rental set up, so within an hour of the initial failure, I was back on the road in a rental (this was before loaners existed).

So anyway - I wouldn’t worry too much about long term reliability, since we’ve never actually seen a battery “fail” in the classical sense, to my knowledge.

Car key is still at the top but the A/C was a close second.

The fob is just going to be something to learn to live with. I’m not saying it’s great, it will just make you happier if you can, haha.

The A/C is a different story obviously.