Rejoining the (extended) family

[Vette2Lucid]

Friends,

Our '23 Air Touring was totaled last month after having been hit by a drunk driver in December; there's another post covering that. We got a reasonable settlement from the other insurance company and I discussed replacing the beloved car with my wife. As noted in another of my prior posts, my wife was never able to get comfortable in the Lucid's front seat. But beyond that, she has just been more comfortable driving a compact-midsize crossover, and my 21-year-old son is also much more comfortable with that. I loved the Lucid but wanted to see if something out there would make us all happy. Before I started my search in earnest, I drove the Pure and was bowled over by its quiet and its relaxed demeanor. I hoped that our search would lead us right back to that car.

Some basic criteria to qualify for our search:

• Price cap just high enough to allow a nicely-optioned Pure
• Plugs in
• At least 300 miles of range-- although not all of that range has to be accessible via electricity. I allowed one exception to this rule, a Genesis (because it's beautiful enough that we just had to check it out)
• Room enough to seat our family of four with plentiful legroom in back. I sometimes used the back seat of our Lucid as a mobile office and wanted the space to do that comfortably.
• Elevated form factor. The Lucid was the only vehicle that got a pass on this rule-- no other CAR could possibly come close.
• Plays AM radio. I know, so many people do streaming to get around this, but my wife and I wanted the real thing. We listen to it very often. And our Lucid had outstanding AM radio reception.
• Offers ventilated seats in front. We live in Phoenix-- these make a big difference.

I might be forgetting one or two things in the list, but ultimately the list yielded twelve vehicles for us to check out. My wife and I sat in them all and drove several of them. This morning our decision was down to two vehicles. The Lucid Air Pure is quite simply the best driving vehicle I have driven. I still hope to be building these cars some day, too. To me, Lucid represents the best engineering available in a vehicle. The other vehicle, however, was in some ways the vehicle I imagine Lucid building in a couple of years, when they finally enter the midsize fray. I know Lucid will do it better, more efficient, more spacious, more powerful, better steering, quieter, etc., but they can't get there soon enough. Today, we put money down on a Cadillac Optiq, and we look forward to it being delivered in about ten days. If they're right on schedule, that will be exactly two years after the day we took delivery of our Air Touring.

I hope you will all still consider me part of the extended family. I'll still wear my Lucid polo with pride, and still hope to see the Arizona crew at local EV events.