- Joined
- Sep 16, 2024
- Messages
- 46
- Reaction score
- 8
- Location
- Richmond VA
- Cars
- 2024 Lucid Touring
- DE Number
- 0
Hello Fellow Lucid Owners and Followers,
I wanted to take the opportunity to share with everyone my ownership experience thus far. As a disclaimer, I am a BMW person for the last 28 cars in our family... and about 20 of them for myself since 2008. So the only point of reference I have is with BMW. Our experience started last Sunday driving 2 hours to the closest Lucid dealer and met up with the sales person. He was patient amongst my non stop questions and concerns. We took the single motor and dual motor out for a spin. Since I have never been one to order my cars I asked for what was the best deal that I could buy from the lot that day... We had the option for the Pure RWD or the Touring AWD, with a 25.5K discount for a lease I opted for the Touring with the following specs
Fathom Blue metallic
DD Premium
Surreal Sound Pro
Mjoave PurLuxe
Alcantara Headliner
Comfort and Convenience Package.
Software 2.3.1
The sales rep was awesome. He even drove it 2.5 hours to our home that same night with traffic backups and all and all... and it took him at least another 3 hours to get back to his home. Now to the vehicle..... The drive and handling is quite indescribable. Our previous and current EV experience has been with an I4 and and IX (which we still have). Both of those drive well and did not imagine it could get even better, the Air Touring is like in a class of it's own. It has all the acceleration one would expect from an EV but the handling and how it hugs the road is none other... sorry BMW.
I would not say I am an expert when it comes to music and sound systems but I do like an upgraded sound system, I have returned my car in the past after realizing it had a sub par system in it. The system is quite awesome. Even without an equalizer it sounds quite superb. When I tried streaming with some ATMOS music it elevated it even more. While I am an Apple user, I am not a Carplay user so i have not tried out spatial audio, I can only imagine how awesome it is.
With the Touring having less battery packs it makes the rear seats even more comfortable and I cannot understand how they got so much room back there. I had my 6.2 son sit in the driver seat and I sit in the back and there was still plenty of space... I'm about 6.1. I guess when you build a car from scratch you can rethink the layout of everything and compare it to the market.
Now to the issues or observations of the vehicle that I feel Lucid could do better:
1) Key Fob has a miserable low rate of success of function. Other than me using it in my garage when I am out and about I have a tough time pressing 2 times and getting the car to unlock. Sometimes I am next to the vehicle and pressing and still nothing. I almost always have to press the door handle in for it to unlock... yes the battery has been replaced.
2) The motor whine in the front while amusing at first does get a little old after awhile, there was a part of me that wished we did the RWD where there was no motor sound, we certainly did not experience this in our other EV.
3) Maps - One should be able to choose options for your route. i.e. no tolls, no highway etc. I have that today in the IX.
4) There should be more flexibility with the console tablet and the main display. For example I should be able to have my maps on the tablet and when I choose music at the top don't take my maps away.
5) You should be able to customize your dash screen. I should be able to put the widgets on there that make sense to me. Why can't I have a trunk short cut versus a frunk short cut? Accessing the trunk is physically easier for my lifestyle than the frunk. It makes sense I can customize my short cuts.
6) I should be able to have shortcuts that spans across all functions. For example, a short cut screen that can have my favorite radio station, XM stations, my vehicle display like trips etc. It makes it easier to have a shortcut page to access the items you use frequently.
7) Why can I only see SOC in percentage or miles .. why not both? I think both are important pieces of info and should not be that difficult to show side by side.
8) The gear changer and wiper changer should be lit up at night so you can actually see what in the world you are changing things to. Granted the gear shifter will mostly be muscle memory after a while, but it seems someone forgot.
9) The volume spin wheel in the center next to the AC controls should be lit up at night. It seems weird that all the controls are lit except that... again feels like they forgot it.
10) Should have the ability to show in the dash your efficiency as well as miles traveled. While seeing miles traveled is great, but being an EV it is nice to do how many miles per KwH you are using.
11) There should be an additional lock button next to the trunk/frunk close button. When you take your wares out you might just want to lock the vehicle, so having a button in there that closes and locks it is quite nice
12) Why does the APP not sure the tire pressure once the car is cut off?
13) Separate profiles has been the norm in lux cars for many years now... and we have it here as expected, however items we would expect to be shared and NOT shared is not available. For example, the likelihood that the secondary driver would need a DIFFERENT homelink connection i.e garage door is pretty slim. So you need to program it twice if you have 2 profiles. Now the likelihood that the 2nd driver but want a different drive and feel is more likely but those settings are shared. Makes no sense. I like to drive my car like an EV does, hi regen single pedal experience. My wife likes it to be more like a conventional car, but we cannot set 2 different settings. they are shared. Like I said where it makes sense to share we are not, where we should not be sharing we are.
14) With so many cameras in the car why doesn't any of them record? For example in our other vehicle we can manually invoke a recording of everything around us or during an accident it saves all the video x seconds before impact and after. This has proven useful for us to show law enforcement on what transpired. It is so low tech that one would have to go get a dash cam to do that? Lucid can do better here.
15) The cabin sounds like a loud lawn mower when the fans are on high speed when you are charging. So much so we were concerned something was wrong that we posted a video here and sent it to customer care.
I had purposely not get the self drive option (the RWD had it) because I had read that it was really not ready from prime time. Coming from BMW I felt that I would be paying extra for an option that I would be disappointed in. Having said that the coding behind that can be quite complicated. The items I just listed out on the other hand, most of them are not. I get it, this is all subjective but I am comparing to what I am use to coming from the BMW product line.
UI inconveniences, loud fan noises during charging, lack of lighting in places are all tolerable in my book and would not change so much the ownership experience but would be nice to have for a vehicle at this price point and the competitors have. What will get old very quickly is the inability to unlock the car from afar with the fob. I have not tried passive unlock and may try so, I had avoided it because folks had reported battery drain as a result. Somethings for a car should just work.
Thank you all for letting me share my feedback. Appreciate positive feedback as well.
I wanted to take the opportunity to share with everyone my ownership experience thus far. As a disclaimer, I am a BMW person for the last 28 cars in our family... and about 20 of them for myself since 2008. So the only point of reference I have is with BMW. Our experience started last Sunday driving 2 hours to the closest Lucid dealer and met up with the sales person. He was patient amongst my non stop questions and concerns. We took the single motor and dual motor out for a spin. Since I have never been one to order my cars I asked for what was the best deal that I could buy from the lot that day... We had the option for the Pure RWD or the Touring AWD, with a 25.5K discount for a lease I opted for the Touring with the following specs
Fathom Blue metallic
DD Premium
Surreal Sound Pro
Mjoave PurLuxe
Alcantara Headliner
Comfort and Convenience Package.
Software 2.3.1
The sales rep was awesome. He even drove it 2.5 hours to our home that same night with traffic backups and all and all... and it took him at least another 3 hours to get back to his home. Now to the vehicle..... The drive and handling is quite indescribable. Our previous and current EV experience has been with an I4 and and IX (which we still have). Both of those drive well and did not imagine it could get even better, the Air Touring is like in a class of it's own. It has all the acceleration one would expect from an EV but the handling and how it hugs the road is none other... sorry BMW.
I would not say I am an expert when it comes to music and sound systems but I do like an upgraded sound system, I have returned my car in the past after realizing it had a sub par system in it. The system is quite awesome. Even without an equalizer it sounds quite superb. When I tried streaming with some ATMOS music it elevated it even more. While I am an Apple user, I am not a Carplay user so i have not tried out spatial audio, I can only imagine how awesome it is.
With the Touring having less battery packs it makes the rear seats even more comfortable and I cannot understand how they got so much room back there. I had my 6.2 son sit in the driver seat and I sit in the back and there was still plenty of space... I'm about 6.1. I guess when you build a car from scratch you can rethink the layout of everything and compare it to the market.
Now to the issues or observations of the vehicle that I feel Lucid could do better:
1) Key Fob has a miserable low rate of success of function. Other than me using it in my garage when I am out and about I have a tough time pressing 2 times and getting the car to unlock. Sometimes I am next to the vehicle and pressing and still nothing. I almost always have to press the door handle in for it to unlock... yes the battery has been replaced.
2) The motor whine in the front while amusing at first does get a little old after awhile, there was a part of me that wished we did the RWD where there was no motor sound, we certainly did not experience this in our other EV.
3) Maps - One should be able to choose options for your route. i.e. no tolls, no highway etc. I have that today in the IX.
4) There should be more flexibility with the console tablet and the main display. For example I should be able to have my maps on the tablet and when I choose music at the top don't take my maps away.
5) You should be able to customize your dash screen. I should be able to put the widgets on there that make sense to me. Why can't I have a trunk short cut versus a frunk short cut? Accessing the trunk is physically easier for my lifestyle than the frunk. It makes sense I can customize my short cuts.
6) I should be able to have shortcuts that spans across all functions. For example, a short cut screen that can have my favorite radio station, XM stations, my vehicle display like trips etc. It makes it easier to have a shortcut page to access the items you use frequently.
7) Why can I only see SOC in percentage or miles .. why not both? I think both are important pieces of info and should not be that difficult to show side by side.
8) The gear changer and wiper changer should be lit up at night so you can actually see what in the world you are changing things to. Granted the gear shifter will mostly be muscle memory after a while, but it seems someone forgot.
9) The volume spin wheel in the center next to the AC controls should be lit up at night. It seems weird that all the controls are lit except that... again feels like they forgot it.
10) Should have the ability to show in the dash your efficiency as well as miles traveled. While seeing miles traveled is great, but being an EV it is nice to do how many miles per KwH you are using.
11) There should be an additional lock button next to the trunk/frunk close button. When you take your wares out you might just want to lock the vehicle, so having a button in there that closes and locks it is quite nice
12) Why does the APP not sure the tire pressure once the car is cut off?
13) Separate profiles has been the norm in lux cars for many years now... and we have it here as expected, however items we would expect to be shared and NOT shared is not available. For example, the likelihood that the secondary driver would need a DIFFERENT homelink connection i.e garage door is pretty slim. So you need to program it twice if you have 2 profiles. Now the likelihood that the 2nd driver but want a different drive and feel is more likely but those settings are shared. Makes no sense. I like to drive my car like an EV does, hi regen single pedal experience. My wife likes it to be more like a conventional car, but we cannot set 2 different settings. they are shared. Like I said where it makes sense to share we are not, where we should not be sharing we are.
14) With so many cameras in the car why doesn't any of them record? For example in our other vehicle we can manually invoke a recording of everything around us or during an accident it saves all the video x seconds before impact and after. This has proven useful for us to show law enforcement on what transpired. It is so low tech that one would have to go get a dash cam to do that? Lucid can do better here.
15) The cabin sounds like a loud lawn mower when the fans are on high speed when you are charging. So much so we were concerned something was wrong that we posted a video here and sent it to customer care.
I had purposely not get the self drive option (the RWD had it) because I had read that it was really not ready from prime time. Coming from BMW I felt that I would be paying extra for an option that I would be disappointed in. Having said that the coding behind that can be quite complicated. The items I just listed out on the other hand, most of them are not. I get it, this is all subjective but I am comparing to what I am use to coming from the BMW product line.
UI inconveniences, loud fan noises during charging, lack of lighting in places are all tolerable in my book and would not change so much the ownership experience but would be nice to have for a vehicle at this price point and the competitors have. What will get old very quickly is the inability to unlock the car from afar with the fob. I have not tried passive unlock and may try so, I had avoided it because folks had reported battery drain as a result. Somethings for a car should just work.
Thank you all for letting me share my feedback. Appreciate positive feedback as well.
I felt exactly the same as you 3 months ago, now I'm over it. I would make the same choice again, because the car is great to drive. If you drove an E39, you know what I'm talking about 
