Nice Lucid Review on Electrek

[borski]

Although I agree, it must be admitted that Teslas did drive pretty well compared to gas cars, mostly due to their lower center of gravity. What is also true is that they did not exploit the full potential of EVs in terms of chassis, and the Lucid adequately rectifies that.

Brutal, but true

I drove the original roadster. I would not say it drove well compared to, for example, the Lotus Elise it was based on, a car I owned at the time.

It was extremely impressive from a 0-60 and simply a “cool” factor, but a driver’s car it definitely wasn’t.

 

[hmp10]

. . . it must be admitted that Teslas did drive pretty well compared to gas cars, mostly due to their lower center of gravity.

Yes, they did. The best-handling car I ever owned was a 1996 Mazda Miata. The three cars preceding my first Tesla were Audi R8s (a V8 Coupe, a V10 Coupe, and a V10 Sypder). The V10s lost a bit of the V8's handling edge but were still incredibly well-handling cars. (Their mid-mounted engines used dry sump oil systems that allowed the engines to sit lower in the bay.) When I traded the final R8 for a 2015 Tesla Model S P90D, I was astonished at how well it handled, something I attributed to its incredibly low center of gravity (14" off the pavement, if I remember correctly). It wasn't as mind-bogglingly precise as the Audis, but it was damned good for a heavy sedan.

But the fact that the 2015 Model S handled as well as it did became a source of disappointment with the 2021 Plaid. The Plaid overpowers the suspension, whereas the earlier Tesla didn't. The Plaid, with the Raven and further suspension editions since the P90D, nevertheless rides harsher and noisier. The chassis flexion, which was barely detectable in the 2015 Model S, is more pronounced in the Plaid, yielding body squeaks and groans the earlier Tesla never developed.

Interestingly, the P90D was still built on the chassis that Peter Rawlinson had overseen at Tesla (although he did not develop the frame of the car). The Plaid is two generations beyond Rawlinson's work at Tesla and, to my mind, has regressed in the handling department.

 

[Pragmatic]

But the fact that the 2015 Model S handled as well as The Plaid, with the Raven and further suspension editions since the P90D, nevertheless rides harsher and noisier. The chassis flexion, which was barely detectable in the 2015 Model S, is more pronounced in the Plaid, yielding body squeaks and groans the earlier Tesla never developed.

Did Tesla change the body for Plaid production? Hyundai adds welds and body adhesive for 11% more torsional rigidity when making N versions of the Ioniq 5.

 

[hmp10]

Did Tesla change the body for Plaid production? Hyundai adds welds and body adhesive for 11% more torsional rigidity when making N versions of the Ioniq 5.

Yes, they did. Although the current Tesla Model S looks very similar to the preceding model, there are very few body components in common.

The interior fit and finish of our 2015 Tesla was very good, and the components held up very well against wear and tear for the six years we had the car. The 2021 Plaid has several misaligned trim pieces, and large plugs of the yoke covering have peeled off. Tesla has had to change both the yoke and the steering wheels to resolve this widespread problem. We've had to wait months for a steering wheel to replace our yoke, and we're still waiting. A mobile tech came to the house a month ago to swap the yoke for a new wheel, but he could not break the mounting nut free despite using a 3-foot extension lever on his wrench. So we're taking the car to a service center next week where they're apparently going to have to drill it out.

It seems to me that Tesla, for all its reported advances on the manufacturing front, is actually cheapening the materials in their cars. We will not be buying another one.

 

[joec]

It seems to me that Tesla, for all its reported advances on the manufacturing front, is actually cheapening the materials in their cars. We will not be buying another one.

They are also endlessly pursuing stats, at the expense of real-world driving experience. It's all about being able to say "fastest" or "ludicrous."

Who cares if the nose lifts off the ground while flooring it? My number is better than your number.

And it works, unfortunately. People are actually impressed with numbers on a sheet. And many don't have enough experience driving high performance vechicles to know the difference.

 

[Leftlane]

Man every thread devolves into somehow bashing on Tesla, even a thread started to highlight a good review of Lucid. It seems as though lots of people have an insecurity about Tesla and feel better about their decision by criticizing them. My Model S Plaid is fantastic and maybe the most fun I’ve had in a long time. If I owned a Lucid, I’m sure I’d feel the same way about that. I’m not a Lucid owner but I like reading about them and enjoy this forum, but the constant penis measuring gets old. Can you not just enjoy your car, acknowledge Tesla is also good, and get on with life? Or is your happiness only predicated on people hating Tesla?

 

[xponents]

I drove the original roadster. I would not say it drove well compared to, for example, the Lotus Elise it was based on, a car I owned at the time.

It was extremely impressive from a 0-60 and simply a “cool” factor, but a driver’s car it definitely wasn’t.

Oops, I meant the Model S. Obviously, nothing will be able to hold a candle to the Elise, but the roadster technically wasnt a "from the ground up" platform. The Model S was though, and compared to similar sedans of yore (e class, 5 series, cls), I would think it'd be a reasonable assumption that it would be better than the non M/AMG cars considering the relatively favorable comparison to a damn R8!

Man every thread devolves into somehow bashing on Tesla, even a thread started to highlight a good review of Lucid. It seems as though lots of people have an insecurity about Tesla and feel better about their decision by criticizing them. My Model S Plaid is fantastic and maybe the most fun I’ve had in a long time. If I owned a Lucid, I’m sure I’d feel the same way about that. I’m not a Lucid owner but I like reading about them and enjoy this forum, but the constant penis measuring gets old. Can you not just enjoy your car, acknowledge Tesla is also good, and get on with life? Or is your happiness only predicated on people hating Tesla?

We literally started off praising Tesla, while some want to refute it based on their own experiences. What is the problem with that?

 

[hmp10]

Man every thread devolves into somehow bashing on Tesla, even a thread started to highlight a good review of Lucid. It seems as though lots of people have an insecurity about Tesla and feel better about their decision by criticizing them. My Model S Plaid is fantastic and maybe the most fun I’ve had in a long time. If I owned a Lucid, I’m sure I’d feel the same way about that. I’m not a Lucid owner but I like reading about them and enjoy this forum, but the constant penis measuring gets old. Can you not just enjoy your car, acknowledge Tesla is also good, and get on with life? Or is your happiness only predicated on people hating Tesla?

Perhaps it’s because I’m fed up with Elon Musk’s and his acolytes’ attacks on Lucid, including his lying about Peter Rawlinson’s role in the Model S development. For a man who once claimed to want to foster the transition of all automakers to EVs, his response to Lucid’s arrival on the scene has been despicable.

 

[joec]

Man every thread devolves into somehow bashing on Tesla, even a thread started to highlight a good review of Lucid. It seems as though lots of people have an insecurity about Tesla and feel better about their decision by criticizing them. My Model S Plaid is fantastic and maybe the most fun I’ve had in a long time. If I owned a Lucid, I’m sure I’d feel the same way about that. I’m not a Lucid owner but I like reading about them and enjoy this forum, but the constant penis measuring gets old. Can you not just enjoy your car, acknowledge Tesla is also good, and get on with life? Or is your happiness only predicated on people hating Tesla?

I'm sure there's tons of positive comments about Lucid in all the Tesla forums out there.

But seriously. @hmp10 and I (and many others here) have owned and have driven Teslas for thousands and thousands of miles. We've earned the right to our opinions about the company and its products. If we were talking out of our butts, (as many here do about Lucid) I'd say you had a point.

Neither of us has been bashing Tesla in this thread, either. We've merely been pointing out what we see as the fundamental differences between the two companies and their products. Feel free to disagree, but there's no call to tone police or assign motives to us.

 

[Leftlane]

I have to say - on the Tesla forums I am on, there is little to no talk of Lucid most of the time, unless it is a comparison thread. Now, plenty of people on there complaining about their own Tesla for sure. It just seems almost every discussion here at some point has to criticize Tesla for something. If you think Lucid is a better car, great, just enjoy it and be glad you don’t have a Tesla anymore. But I seriously doubt Peter R needs hmp10 to defend his honor or that Elon is trying to hurt owners here personally. Yes Elon is a tool - who cares?

 

[borski]

Man every thread devolves into somehow bashing on Tesla, even a thread started to highlight a good review of Lucid. It seems as though lots of people have an insecurity about Tesla and feel better about their decision by criticizing them. My Model S Plaid is fantastic and maybe the most fun I’ve had in a long time. If I owned a Lucid, I’m sure I’d feel the same way about that. I’m not a Lucid owner but I like reading about them and enjoy this forum, but the constant penis measuring gets old. Can you not just enjoy your car, acknowledge Tesla is also good, and get on with life? Or is your happiness only predicated on people hating Tesla?

I understand how you could perceive that, but I don’t think that was the goal.

I, at least, am not trying to bash Tesla and I don’t think anyone else here is. Just relaying our personal experiences.

I enjoyed the Roadster. It just didn’t drive better than the Elise, so I didn’t feel a need to replace it.

But it was cool af.

 

[borski]

I have to say - on the Tesla forums I am on, there is little to no talk of Lucid most of the time, unless it is a comparison thread. Now, plenty of people on there complaining about their own Tesla for sure. It just seems almost every discussion here at some point has to criticize Tesla for something. If you think Lucid is a better car, great, just enjoy it and be glad you don’t have a Tesla anymore. But I seriously doubt Peter R needs hmp10 to defend his honor or that Elon is trying to hurt owners here personally. Yes Elon is a tool - who cares?

Again, I don’t think that’s the goal. People are fed up with Elon but not because of defending anyone’s “honor.” It’s things like lobbying for a different read of the law to make L3 chargers crappier via NEVI, cheapening materials, etc., that is frustrating.

Being completely honest, I want Tesla to do well. I want them to build spectacular cars instead of cutting costs at every corner. I want more competition.

That just isn’t what they’re doing today, though again, I really wish they would. They need to axe Musk and hire a committed CEO, focused on the actual business at hand, before they lose a hard-earned lead and struggle to regain it.

 

[Leftlane]

That just isn’t what they’re doing today, though again, I really wish they would. They need to axe Musk and hire a committed CEO, focused on the actual business at hand, before they lose a hard-earned lead and struggle to regain it.

Could not agree more. As a long time Tesla shareholder I think they need a grown up at the helm. I want Lucid, Rivian, etc to absolutely succeed and take share away from Tesla, so they will be forced to get better at everything - materials, panel gaps, attitude, service. But I still acknowledge that they are an incredible success story and some of their cars are pretty awesome.

 

[Chrry]

That, indeed, is exactly how I will forever articulate my decision to move from Tesla to Lucid.

Also: Lucid makes cars for people who love to drive. Tesla makes cars for people who like computers.

I remember when the early Teslas came out, and the reviewers were mostly making comments like "And it handles really well, considering x." With X being, "it's an EV" or "it's a new company" and so on.

Meanwhile, savagegeese is putting out videos where they flat out say Lucid is kicking BMWs ass at making fun driver's cars.

Test drove the BMW i7 and it was a beautiful drive 𝓫𝓾𝓽…
The interface sucked a$$ and the drive was even more beautiful in the back seat. It’s more of a “I have a driver” car. Ummmm no thanks. I’ve been my son’s driver for too long. Lucid is def kicking their butt

 

[xponents]

Test drove the BMW i7 and it was a beautiful drive 𝓫𝓾𝓽…
The interface sucked a$$ and the drive was even more beautiful in the back seat. It’s more of a “I have a driver” car. Ummmm no thanks. I’ve been my son’s driver for too long. Lucid is def kicking their butt

It has a very comfortable ride, and the rear seat is nice. I like that (for obvious reasons, LOL), but the benefits of the Lucid far outweigh that. I actually think the i7 is a very good car, especially in comparison to abominations like the EQS.

 

[hmp10]

But I seriously doubt Peter R needs hmp10 to defend his honor or that Elon is trying to hurt owners here personally. Yes Elon is a tool - who cares?

It's not a matter of defending anyone's honor. It's about a man of Musk's reach in political culture being willing to outright lie about someone because he stole a march on Musk with EV technology.

Musk is clearly out to hurt Lucid stockholders with his recurrent claims -- and those of his shills such as Warren Redlich, the Electric Viking, et. al. -- about Lucid's inherently flawed business model and imminent bankruptcy. He is doing exactly the same thing to Lucid that he used to whine endlessly that short-sellers were doing to Tesla and its stock.

As for who cares? Musk has managed to convince legions of people that he is an engineering genius, has managed to get the U.S. government to become too dependent on him for technology of national defense interest, and has hoodwinked people into seeing him as a social visionary without peer. His stunt in hamstringing Ukraine's defense moves in its war with Russia alone should make us all care what's going on with Musk.

 

[hmp10]

Man every thread devolves into somehow bashing on Tesla, even a thread started to highlight a good review of Lucid. It seems as though lots of people have an insecurity about Tesla and feel better about their decision by criticizing them. My Model S Plaid is fantastic and maybe the most fun I’ve had in a long time. If I owned a Lucid, I’m sure I’d feel the same way about that. I’m not a Lucid owner but I like reading about them and enjoy this forum, but the constant penis measuring gets old. Can you not just enjoy your car, acknowledge Tesla is also good, and get on with life? Or is your happiness only predicated on people hating Tesla?

Our 2015 Model S P90D is the car that made me an EV convert. I enjoyed owning and driving it for six years and only traded it when its extended warranty ran out. Even though we were soon to take delivery of a Lucid Air Dream, we had decided to evolve toward an all EV-household, and we wanted to keep a Tesla in the mix based on how much we had liked our first Tesla.

So I moved over to a Model S Plaid with full expectations that it would be an even better experience than our first Model S. Sadly, it was not.

As @joec posted, it was all about numbers on a spec sheet which made the Plaid look like a competition killer. On the numbers, the Plaid blew the P90D and pretty much every other sedan out of the water. But the actual ownership experience was an unexpected disappointment. The car rode rougher and handled less surely than our first Model S. Under hard acceleration the front end broke loose in very unsettling ways. Its interior materials were a step down (we had the rare Rear Executive Seat option in our P90D). The fit and finish were worse. The car was delivered with an outside rearview mirror on the driver side that was not firmly attached to the car. The yoke steering column squeaked. Rubber grommets fell off the trunk lid studs. Panel gaps were all over the place. The factory PPF behind the door handles and ahead for the rear wheel wells was noticeably yellower than our white car. The yoke airbag cover was deformed.

Not only this, but the user ergonomics of the car had deteriorated over the earlier car. The counter-intuitive turn signal buttons were cumbersome. The yoke made certain maneuvers awkward at best and dangerous at worst. The algorithm for automatically selecting gear direction was a mess. Having to go into a screen menu to adjust an air vent was annoying. Good luck finding the horn in an emergency.

I had assumed that the six years between the two cars would have brought improvement on most if not all fronts. What I instead found was mostly regression. There were some modest improvements in rear seating, but then our Air arrived four months later, and the Model S rear quarters suddenly became a bad joke in a car of virtually the same exterior dimensions.

As I posted at length on this forum, I had fits with the Air's first year of software gremlins, and the car had its share of hardware issues which I also shared -- perhaps to the point of tedium -- on this forum. (Oddly enough, just as did our P90D, its battery pack and rear drive unit even failed.) But our Air was among the first few hundred cars Lucid built. Our Plaid was an update of a model that had been on the market nine years.

Today, our Air remains as rock solid as the day it was delivered. By 10,000 miles our Plaid had developed squeaks and groans in the rear quarters. The interior materials of our Air are holding up to wear and tear as well as our first Tesla's did and any of the premium German cars we've owned. The cover is falling in shreds off the Plaid's yoke, and the plastic panel at the bottom of a front seat keeps popping off.

If I had not lived for six years with a better built and easier to operate Tesla than the one we have now, I might not feel as strongly about this. But to my mind, Tesla's pursuit to squeeze costs out of its cars is squeezing something else out, too. I'm now just waiting for the Tesla Cimarron to debut.

 

[Chrry]

Man every thread devolves into somehow bashing on Tesla, even a thread started to highlight a good review of Lucid. It seems as though lots of people have an insecurity about Tesla and feel better about their decision by criticizing them. My Model S Plaid is fantastic and maybe the most fun I’ve had in a long time. If I owned a Lucid, I’m sure I’d feel the same way about that. I’m not a Lucid owner but I like reading about them and enjoy this forum, but the constant penis measuring gets old. Can you not just enjoy your car, acknowledge Tesla is also good, and get on with life? Or is your happiness only predicated on people hating Tesla?

Most of us are joking. We gotta joke about them. If not Tesla then who? It’s actually a complement that they get so much attention on 𝓛𝓾𝓬𝓲𝓭 𝓕𝓸𝓻𝓾𝓶.
On the real… if it wasn’t for Musk, and I didn’t know about Lucid…. It would’ve been a Tesla. But for that idiot and the mileage on Luci (ok looks, drive, and luxury too ).
Since I found my true love… shit talking I shall do sowwweee. Love still lives

 

[Steveinarizona]

if it wasn’t for Musk, and I didn’t know about Lucid…. It would’ve been a Tesla. But for that idiot and the mileage on Luci (ok looks, drive, and luxury too ).

I agree but would add:

(1) that unless one gets the rather old S or X models, one must look sideways to see the speed limit, how fast one is going, etc. No binnacle and no Headup Display (not even an option). and,

(2) Selling an imperfect (and therefore dangerous) ADAS system as "Full self driving" option when in fact it is limited and probably less effective in most instances than the ADAS systems of its competitors.

So...idiot, looks (panel fitting etc.), lack of luxury features, display location issues and ADAS advertising. But, in the performance models, it does go fast.

I do think one has to give credit to Tesla. It essentially invented the electric automobile (I know, it existed more than a hundred years ago and GM was doing it in the 90s) including the infrastructure for it. For many years, it was the only game in town. As noted by others above, it is now facing competition and it is natural for folks to compare any vehicle with the industry standard. There are many good things about every car and many bad things and I would not expect a forum for a competitor to list out and argue for the good things side except when it is something that they want to copy. Just human nature.

 

[HC_79]

If Lucid didn’t exist I’d no doubt be in a Tesla as we speak. Without them, I doubt we’d have Lucid, Rivian or any of the EV’s we see on the market today. OTA’s would be non-existent because traditional automakers are STILL struggling with it a decade after Tesla started doing it. Even down to the manufacturing process they’ve forced others to take a step back and rethink things. So credit where credit is due, we’re all benefiting off Tesla’s existence in some way or another and that should be recognized.

On the other hand, competition is good! It drives innovation. On the model front, I’ve found Tesla to have become a little complacent. The S & X refreshes weren’t anything amazing but I guess if they sell like hotcakes then don’t change what ain’t broke but it does appear to showing signs of having run its course, especially now that many more EV’s are on the market.

Then there’s Elon…… I think he’s doing more harm than good at the moment for Tesla but I do want to see Tesla, Lucid & Rivian all continue to succeed. The misinformation being spread about Lucid though by Elon and his loyal minions is frustrating. There’s plenty of room for them all to succeed without the need to deliberately spread lies and misinformation about the competition.