I vehemently disagree about releasing basic hardware specs.
They didn't name the hardware this time like Apple or Canon, or Nikon? Cool.
What GHz proc does it have, what's the HD size, how much RAM and what type is it?
I'm an enthusiastic owner with a question, and they've released detailed info about their latest
and greatest battery pack, or motor, or charging Wunderbox on YouTube and their website.
Specs are not hackable.
I’d be curious about this, too. Because I’m a huge nerd. But cars just aren’t marketed that way. And to be honest, for 99% of what a car actually has to process (minus all the ADAS stuff) any processor from five years ago is frankly overkill.
Apple just updated their Apple TV box with an A15 bionic chip. Why? Because scrolling through a bunch of thumbnails and decoding one or two streams of 4k video needs more compute power than what we use to go to the moon? No. Because they finally ran out of A8 chips from several years ago. And they probably made too many A15s last year.
Telling customers the car has an X GHz chip is just going to lead them to think “Wow, that was last year’s chip. What a piece of crap.” And then five years from now, when they are still using that same chip, the car will seem ancient to folks who love these little details. But it will make zero difference to the daily experience of driving the car. Because the chip already has more power than it’ll ever need.
And let’s not forget, we aren’t talking about one chip. We’re talking about several chips controlling various systems in the car. I think Lucid wants to retain the flexibility to swap those out as it sees fit, without having to update all its marketing materials.
What if Lucid suddenly has trouble getting a specific chip, and they need to swap it out for something newer, or something from another manufacturer ? Well, we told the public the car has chip X, so now we have to tell them we’ve started using Y. How does everyone who got their car with chip X feel now that two months later, the car has something “better.” (Even though the newer, faster chip makes no perceptible difference to anyone?)
Why give your suppliers that much leverage over you? Once you advertise you use this specific NVIDIA chip, what’s to stop them from coming back at you and demanding more money per chip?
I’m sure someone will tear down a Lucid at some point and give you all this info. Of course, if you tear down five of them, you might get five different answers.
Given other manufacturers don’t disclose the specs of their chips, I don’t see why Lucid should.
Frankly, I think it was a mistake for the computer industry to concentrate so much on the GHz pissing match. I’m kinda glad the automotive industry isn’t repeating that.
