New member, new owner (soon) in Anaheim, CA

[Photon Empress]

Hello all!

I actually had not planned on buying a Lucid car, and frankly had not done much research about them. Back in February of this year I ordered a Tesla Model X Plaid for delivery later this year. That date came and was June 30th! Huzzah! Only problem is that I work in aerospace and was traveling to the Cape Canaveral Space Force station on that day. No big deal, I was returning home on July 1st, I can just have them hold the car for 16 hours until I'm back, right?

Nope.

June 30th was the end of the quarter and Tesla wanted that X off their books. When they heard I couldn't pick it up until July 1st they pulled the VIN, for which they already had me get insurance for, and gave the car to someone else. I got dumped back in to the waiting list and have no VIN and no delivery date anymore. That. Pissed. Me. Off.

I had a pre-autopilot Model S (sorta, we bought it before AP was ever announced, but our car ended up with AP1 and was one of the first ones off the line with that hardware.) We own a Model 3 Performance and a Model Y performance. I clearly am willing to buy cars from them. This seemed like a crazy stupid thing to do. Sure, they got the X off their books in time for the end of the quarter, but they also pissed off a loyal customer.

In that moment I decided that I wanted to look at other options. While still at the Cape I began researching other shipping cars. Lucid came up and with the exception of the software had some pretty epic reviews. Reserved a Lucid Air Grand Touring Thursday night as Tesla was giving away my car. Flew home Friday and visited a Lucid showroom. Saw the car, saw the options, test drove a unit. Had an absolute blast. LOVED the offering! Finalized my config on the spot, the same day I was supposed to be taking delivery of my X. And so now here I am, an excited new Lucid-about-to-be-owner eager to get her new car!

The last time I was this excited for a new car was 8 years ago when I was picking up my original Model S. Super excited to play and see where the hardware and software can take me!

 

[joec]

Wow Talk about a dumb move from Tesla. But I can’t say it surprises me. There are a lot of former and current (soon to be former) Tesla drivers here, so you are in good company.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

June 30th was the end of the quarter and Tesla wanted that X off their books. When they heard I couldn't pick it up until July 1st they pulled the VIN, for which they already had me get insurance for, and gave the car to someone else. I got dumped back in to the waiting list and have no VIN and no delivery date anymore.

Wow, that’s insane, never heard of a VIN being pulled because you needed to wait to take delivery. Well welcome over here! You may have seen the ozone system my brother designed out at Canaveral, they live not too far away from there in Titusville, and can see the Space X launches from their back yard.

At least when you get your Lucid the Software will be more ironed out, although they’ve already made a lot of progress in the last few months. The more I drive this car the more I’m realizing the best thing about it is how versatile it is, nice at low speeds, monstrous at high speeds, like it’s almost a teleportation device it’s so quick from 60-120mph. But then you can fill it with tons of stuff in the front and back, while listening to an amazing soundtrack, as you finish charging quicker than the other vehicles next to you at EA stations, and then drive further without worry. You’ll find a few disgruntled owners on here but I’m happy, I’d buy another one if I had the $$$ to burn.

 

[Photon Empress]

Wow Talk about a dumb move from Tesla. But I can’t say it surprises me. There are a lot of former and current (soon to be former) Tesla drivers here, so you are in good company.

Concur. I don’t think they care about the customer and are all about numbers right now. Too bad as that will come back to haunt them. Excited to join the Lucid club and can’t wait to take delivery! Hoping this year!

 

[Photon Empress]

You’ll find a few disgruntled owners on here but I’m happy, I’d buy another one if I had the $$$ to burn.

I think that’s true of all things. You can’t make everyone happy and many may not realize what being an early adopter entails… but I love new tech and finding it’s quirks. As long as it has a solid foundation, the rest can be fixed as you go.

For me, treating people / customers with respect is the key thing. Everything has engineering trades. But great customer service helps end users understand why those trades were made. Not sure that makes sense or not.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

I think that’s true of all things. You can’t make everyone happy and many may not realize what being an early adopter entails… but I love new tech and finding it’s quirks. As long as it has a solid foundation, the rest can be fixed as you go.

For me, treating people / customers with respect is the key thing. Everything has engineering trades. But great customer service helps end users understand why those trades were made. Not sure that makes sense or not.

I had a 17 minute conversation with the service rep on the phone about a “drive system malfunction” alert that I got, that I assumed was software error since it was fixed by a reboot (the car has been fine since), and the guy on the phone apologized as he said he realizes that everyone expects a $150k car (or $139k in our case!) to work flawlessly and that the car is still being improved, and he mentioned they’re working very hard on an update that’s just software stability focused, some of it based on feedback from this forum. He asked me what I thought of the navigation improvements in 1.2.6 and I said it was a huge leap forward from 1.2.1, and mentioned some suggestions for fixes he said they’re already working on.

Basically my point in bringing this up is the service reps have a direct line to engineering and software development and they want this car to be outstanding in every way, and they appreciate input from the owners, even if the owner is pissed off (I wasn’t and he thanked me for being understanding, I got the impression they get some unreasonably irate customers sometimes). I don’t think you’d get that feeling that you’re part of the team because you’re an owner at any other car company at this price point, and I’m quite happy with the car, so whatever they got coming next will be icing on the cake, even though some of it is expected and promised like DD Pro and Car Play.

 

[Photon Empress]

Basically my point in bringing this up is the service reps have a direct line to engineering and software development and they want this car to be outstanding in every way, and they appreciate input from the owners, even if the owner is pissed off

That sounds like an amazingly healthy system. Especially since the front line reps have direct access to the real issues customers are seeing. All products have issues. And listening to the support team is *always* a great thing. Good on them!

 

[OCDC]

Welcome to the forum! OC is well represented here. There’s plenty of great general and local info awaiting you!

 

[Photon Empress]

Basically my point in bringing this up is the service reps have a direct line to engineering and software development and they want this car to be outstanding in every way, and they appreciate input from the owners, even if the owner is pissed off

That sounds like an amazingly healthy system. Especially since the front line reps have direct access to the real issues customers are seeing. All products have issues. And listening to the support team is *always* a great thing. Good on them!

 

[Photon Empress]

And for anyone following along, my delivery date just got bumped to October. Ha!

 

[Bunnylebowski]

And for anyone following along, my delivery date just got bumped to October. Ha!

View attachment 3212

You may well have your Lucid by then.

 

[Photon Empress]

I hope I do! It will be fun when Tesla finally comes around with an available car and I can say, “oh, thank you but no need… I already have my Lucid Air ”

To be fair though, that’s an aggressive timeline and not really fair to Lucid. Still fun to dream though!

 

[Coltonw011]

Sheeesh, from a June 30 delivery confirmation to October..the stones on them

 

[Photon Empress]

Sheeesh, from a June 30 delivery confirmation to October..the stones on them

I’m not sure if they realize that they are not the only game in town anymore. Reputation matters and it will be hard to rebuild theirs after they have burned every… single… bridge.

Seems very short sighted to me. Then again Tesla keeps breaking their own sales records, so they must be doing something right.

I vote with my wallet though. So here I am!

 

[Coltonw011]

I’m not sure if they realize that they are not the only game in town anymore. Reputation matters and it will be hard to rebuild theirs after they have burned every… single… bridge.

Seems very short sighted to me. Then again Tesla keeps breaking their own sales records, so they must be doing something right.

I vote with my wallet though. So here I am!

Good choice! You’ll love the car once you have it! I love mine, even with the software quirks, which without question will improve!

 

[Photon Empress]

First EV was a 2014 Model S and it was one of the first off the line with AP1 hardware. Software quirks do not frighten me. I live them

I actually enjoy getting in early and watching the system get improved and tweaked. It’s a bit… uh… rough right now. But that just means it can only get better!**

** this statement is not true

 

[joec]

I’m not sure if they realize that they are not the only game in town anymore. Reputation matters and it will be hard to rebuild theirs after they have burned every… single… bridge.

Seems very short sighted to me. Then again Tesla keeps breaking their own sales records, so they must be doing something right.

I vote with my wallet though. So here I am!

I feel like Elon has fallen victim to the same phenomenon George Lucas did. He surrounded himself with people who are in awe of him, so there's no one there to get in his face and say "Hey, stupid. Let's not screw over a loyal customer just so we can get a little closer to hitting a quarterly sales target."

You're absolutely right they don't see the competition coming. They are far too confident that FSD (and robots, apparently) are going to make them more money than cars ever did. So they don't feel they owe their car customers much of anything. How many Cybertruck and Roadster reservations have been sitting in their bank account for years, and it's not even considered a priority to ship either at this point?

They will get away with it for a few more years, maybe. But the day will come when they take a hard hit from all sides, and it'll be too late by then to fix it with better cars or suddenly being nice to their customers.

And the stock will come tumbling down…

I have oodles of respect for what Tesla has accomplished in the past. But its long-term future is far from rosy.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

I feel like Elon has fallen victim to the same phenomenon George Lucas did. He surrounded himself with people who are in awe of him, so there's no one there to get in his face and say "Hey, stupid. Let's not screw over a loyal customer just so we can get a little closer to hitting a quarterly sales target."

I’m sure that’s accurate. I used to be inside the ego-inflating cult of personality thing that happens around individuals like Elon and George Lucas in my former career. There are far too many stories to tell about the madness that attaches itself to that level of fame and success, but here’s a common pattern I saw again and again: the famous powerful people are so overwhelmed and busy that their minions end up running the show, and there are many moments of “don’t let George be disturbed by that fan because he needs to concentrate on Episode IIII” or “don’t let Elon hear that we don’t have USB ports for the Model Y, just ship them anyway so we can meet delivery targets”, and the boss may not even be aware of it, or they’re aware but they don’t care because they don’t want to deal with yet another headache. Or worse case scenario, the inner circle allowed Steve Jobs to see his mindfulness coach and take their advice for a year instead of traditional medicine for his rare kind of pancreatic cancer that was actually treatable, and now he’s dead because of it, because of bad judgment that the minions encouraged.
At least so far with Lucid there seems to not be a cult of personality, and the team at the company very much wants to just get things right and they’re working on it, so fingers crossed they don’t end up going down the Tesla road of “screw the customer, there’s enough people in line to get the next car that we can just do whatever we want” mindset.

 

[MoniputerLM]

Hello all!

I actually had not planned on buying a Lucid car, and frankly had not done much research about them. Back in February of this year I ordered a Tesla Model X Plaid for delivery later this year. That date came and was June 30th! Huzzah! Only problem is that I work in aerospace and was traveling to the Cape Canaveral Space Force station on that day. No big deal, I was returning home on July 1st, I can just have them hold the car for 16 hours until I'm back, right?

Nope.

June 30th was the end of the quarter and Tesla wanted that X off their books. When they heard I couldn't pick it up until July 1st they pulled the VIN, for which they already had me get insurance for, and gave the car to someone else. I got dumped back in to the waiting list and have no VIN and no delivery date anymore. That. Pissed. Me. Off.

I had a pre-autopilot Model S (sorta, we bought it before AP was ever announced, but our car ended up with AP1 and was one of the first ones off the line with that hardware.) We own a Model 3 Performance and a Model Y performance. I clearly am willing to buy cars from them. This seemed like a crazy stupid thing to do. Sure, they got the X off their books in time for the end of the quarter, but they also pissed off a loyal customer.

In that moment I decided that I wanted to look at other options. While still at the Cape I began researching other shipping cars. Lucid came up and with the exception of the software had some pretty epic reviews. Reserved a Lucid Air Grand Touring Thursday night as Tesla was giving away my car. Flew home Friday and visited a Lucid showroom. Saw the car, saw the options, test drove a unit. Had an absolute blast. LOVED the offering! Finalized my config on the spot, the same day I was supposed to be taking delivery of my X. And so now here I am, an excited new Lucid-about-to-be-owner eager to get her new car!

The last time I was this excited for a new car was 8 years ago when I was picking up my original Model S. Super excited to play and see where the hardware and software can take me!

My son just got a Model X Plaid and had the opposite experience. Tesla moved his delivery date in by several months and he had to move the date 3 times and had no problems. But he did take delivery in June so...

 

[Photon Empress]

My son just got a Model X Plaid and had the opposite experience. Tesla moved his delivery date in by several months and he had to move the date 3 times and had no problems. But he did take delivery in June so...

Well, if he had a white on white car at the end of June, I guess I know who got my car now?