Results of first road trip with Lucid Air somewhat disappointing

[bsnyder]

Let me start off by saying, as the owner of a Tesla Model S for 10 years, I have a certain set of expectations in mind already for the driving and charging customer experience. I will admit that Tesla has set a high bar and I can only hope that Lucid is working on improvements to match and eventually exceed such expectations. As a new owner of a 2025 Lucid Air Grand Touring as of May 2025, and I believe the car is a Tesla killer. Lucid still has many issues to solve, but the car itself is a feat of engineering and finesse. I have a lot to say based on my first road trip with the car last week (2000 miles) -- from the integrated navigation experience, to the choice of charging destinations to the need to juggle different charging vendors, I'm going to cover several topics. So, hang on while I go on a bit of a rant regarding my first road trip experience.

Integrated Charging Experience (or lack thereof)
With the Model S, I could enter my destination into the navigation system and the car would tell me exactly where to charge and for how long to charge throughout the entire trip. This integrated charging experience was available from day one when I purchased the vehicle in 2015. With the Lucid Air, there is no such integrated experience today. When I enter my destination into the navigation system, the car does not tell me where there are chargers available by offering me all charging options from Electrify America (and some other vendors) but it does not provide me prominent recommendations on where I should charge and for how long. The Lucid Air Grand Touring has the ability to provide 520 miles of range (theoretically) but it does not tell me things such as, 'if you charge at this particular destination, you will need to charge for this specific amount of time to gain this specific amount battery charge.' Instead, it subtly provides a recommendation but it's rather cryptic and it's buried down in the navigation on the tab for that charging station instead of making the recommendation very prominent to the driver and and fully integrated into the the user experience. It should also show the progress toward the recommended charging goal within the scope of the overall trip as the vehicle is charging. Tesla provides this user experience very well and has for many years, so Lucid really needs to up its game here. Lucid vehicles should provide a very prominent and opinionated recommendation that doesn't allow the user to deviate easily. I admit that this is difficult to do when it does not own and control it's charging network but instead relies on third parties. And don't even get me started on the anemic amount of features related to charging that are missing today in the Lucid app.

The Choice of Charging Destinations
As the owner of Tesla Model S for 10 years, I became very used to most of the superchargers being located nearby clean, well-maintained locations such as Kum-n-Go convenience stores, hotels and shopping malls where you can find clean bathrooms, food and beverages suitable for people who are able to afford a Tesla EV. This is the level of user experience that Tesla is able to provide because it owns its entire charging network and does not rely on third parties for this vital function. Lucid took a different approach by partnering with an existing charging vendor with existing charging locations. However, it chose to partner with a charging vendor that itself partnered mainly with Casey's convenience stores throughout the midwest USA. Mind you, Casey's provides a very different overall user experience than Kum-n-Go. Here are some issues I see with many Casey's locations:

• Casey's stores are often rather dirty and messy (there's a difference)
  • One Casey's location where I charged in Iowa had such a messy coffee bar area with so much spilled liquid on the floor that I avoided the area entirely for fear of slipping
  • I have been to many Kum-n-Go locations (now transitioning to new parent Maverick) and they're usually pretty clean, sometimes messy, but never dirty
• Casey's bathrooms are often dirty (sometimes disgustingly so) and poorly stocked (i.e., no toilet paper, no paper towels, no soap in dispensers, etc.)
  • Some Kum-n-Go locations' bathrooms can be a bit worn, but I haven't seen them be disgustingly dirty and poorly stocked
• Casey's locations are often maintained by 1-2 employees who are so busy at the register they are not maintaining anything in the store or servicing Casey's patrons beyond the register
  • I have not seen a Kum-n-Go location ever staffed by 1-2 people unless it's a very small location; they are typically large enough that 3-4 people are working unless it's the middle of the night
• Casey's patrons don't seem to representative of a typical buyer of a high cost EV. Most of these patrons are seeking the cheapest possible products which means junk food
  • Generally speaking, Kum-n-Go locations do have ample amounts of junk food, but I can also find fruit, cheese, appetizing sandwiches, etc.

It's not encouraging when I pull into a charging location and I see it's a Casey's because, after this road trip, I have little faith that it will be a positive experience. From the 1-2 employees working, I won't get much more than them ringing up anything I purchase after I wait in a very long line (given this long line, I knew I shouldn't mention the state of the men's restroom because they were clearly not staffed well enough to clean up the beverage area, let alone the restroom).

Juggling Different Charging Vendors
The available chargers from Electrify America (and others) are not spaced apart appropriately to take full advantage of the range of the vehicle. They're spaced apart enough to support lower range vehicles but not appropriately for higher range vehicles. Tesla's charging network has enough chargers to support its vehicles of all ranges including me choosing to skip different chargers and continue along to the next one based on my vehicle range. Lucid provides a faint recommendation but it's so buried so as to not be prominent to provide a fully integrated and opinionated experience. Because of this, I found myself resorting to not only Electrify America chargers but also Tesla chargers which means that I'm then required to do the math myself and wind up guessing in many cases (which is an awful experience when you're driving, so I resorted to pulling over to mull over my options on several occasions). This guesswork almost got me in trouble because some Tesla superchargers support Lucid vehicles and some simply do not and you won't know until you search the Tesla app for each supercharger you are considering using.

On this road trip, one of the Casey's locations had chargers that were owned by the local electric utility instead of Electrify America, and it was a time-consuming headache to create an account in some third party app and then get it to work with my car. I was eventually successful but the whole process took me at least 30 minutes to figure out to begin charging.

On another occasion, at about 1am, I arrived at a Tesla supercharger in Nebraska only to find it would not support my vehicle. I really thought I was sunk because I had only 1 mile of range left! (although I know this does not mean the battery is dead yet, typically there is 10-20 more miles of hidden range available that is not stated by the vehicle). The trouble was that the Lucid Air was reporting that the closest Elecrify America charger was showing up as 20+ miles away. As I was thinking I was going to need to contact roadside assistance to be towed to the Electrify America charger when the Pilot Panel flashed and updated only to show me that the Electrify America charger was not 20+ miles away, it was only 1/2 mile away! So, I drove to that charger and it saved me. So, I don't know why the Pilot Panel was not updating (it seemed to be operating from cache), perhaps it was the vehicle's connection, not sure.

Conclusion
As I finish my rant here, let me be clear. I still see many opportunities for Lucid and I still believe the car is a Tesla killer. The charging user experience certainly still needs many improvements (as does the Lucid app). Although it can be quite difficult to follow a major player in your product space who has set such a high bar, it can also be somewhat liberating because you know the expectations you must meet versus when you're the pioneer in the space and you have a blank slate as this requires a different strategy. Catching up to the bar set by the first mover in the space means your goal is to meet (and eventually exceed) the expectations that they already figured out and set. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm saying it can be a bit easier to follow the lead set up by your competitor. That is, until you get your product to the point that it is now leading the space. Then you will need to shift your strategy from playing catch-up to becoming the leader in the space. Make no mistake, shifting your strategy and plan of execution from being a follower to being a leader can be a very difficult and fraught endeavor.

 

[TahoeMichael]

Interesting, thanks for the write up! As a person who hopes to have a Gravity as my first EV in a few months, I'm interested to learn more about navigating long road trips. Obviously the Gravity benefits from native NACS integration. But I would hope that the in-car navigation would do a better job of helping me trip plan. I know I can fall back to something like A Better Route Planner on my phone, but I'd hope to not have to do so.

 

[borski]

Integrated Charging Experience (or lack thereof)
With the Model S, I could enter my destination into the navigation system and the car would tell me exactly where to charge and for how long to charge throughout the entire trip. This integrated charging experience was available from day one when I purchased the vehicle in 2015. With the Lucid Air, there is no such integrated experience today. When I enter my destination into the navigation system, the car does not tell me where there are chargers available by offering me all charging options from Electrify America (and some other vendors) but it does not provide me prominent recommendations on where I should charge and for how long. The Lucid Air Grand Touring has the ability to provide 520 miles of range (theoretically) but it does not tell me things such as, 'if you charge at this particular destination, you will need to charge for this specific amount of time to gain this specific amount battery charge.' Instead, it subtly provides a recommendation but it's rather cryptic and it's buried down in the navigation on the tab for that charging station instead of making the recommendation very prominent to the driver and and fully integrated into the the user experience. It should also show the progress toward the recommended charging goal within the scope of the overall trip as the vehicle is charging. Tesla provides this user experience very well and has for many years, so Lucid really needs to up its game here. Lucid vehicles should provide a very prominent and opinionated recommendation that doesn't allow the user to deviate easily. I admit that this is difficult to do when it does not own and control it's charging network but instead relies on third parties. And don't even get me started on the anemic amount of features related to charging that are missing today in the Lucid app.

I’m confused; it literally does exactly this. It will automatically add a charging stop, and when it does, it will tell you precisely how long you will charge for and up to what SOC and from what starting SOC. It shows you that right in the nav interface.

The Choice of Charging Destinations
As the owner of Tesla Model S for 10 years, I became very used to most of the superchargers being located nearby clean, well-maintained locations such as Kum-n-Go convenience stores, hotels and shopping malls where you can find clean bathrooms, food and beverages suitable for people who are able to afford a Tesla EV. This is the level of user experience that Tesla is able to provide because it owns its entire charging network and does not rely on third parties for this vital function. Lucid took a different approach by partnering with an existing charging vendor with existing charging locations. However, it chose to partner with a charging vendor that itself partnered mainly with Casey's convenience stores throughout the midwest USA. Mind you, Casey's provides a very different overall user experience than Kum-n-Go. Here are some issues I see with many Casey's locations:

• Casey's stores are often rather dirty and messy (there's a difference)
  • One Casey's location where I charged in Iowa had such a messy coffee bar area with so much spilled liquid on the floor that I avoided the area entirely for fear of slipping
  • I have been to many Kum-n-Go locations (now transitioning to new parent Maverick) and they're usually pretty clean, sometimes messy, but never dirty
• Casey's bathrooms are often dirty (sometimes disgustingly so) and poorly stocked (i.e., no toilet paper, no paper towels, no soap in dispensers, etc.)
  • Some Kum-n-Go locations' bathrooms can be a bit worn, but I haven't seen them be disgustingly dirty and poorly stocked
• Casey's locations are often maintained by 1-2 employees who are so busy at the register they are not maintaining anything in the store or servicing Casey's patrons beyond the register
  • I have not seen a Kum-n-Go location ever staffed by 1-2 people unless it's a very small location; they are typically large enough that 3-4 people are working unless it's the middle of the night
• Casey's patrons don't seem to representative of a typical buyer of a high cost EV. Most of these patrons are seeking the cheapest possible products which means junk food
  • Generally speaking, Kum-n-Go locations do have ample amounts of junk food, but I can also find fruit, cheese, appetizing sandwiches, etc.

It's not encouraging when I pull into a charging location and I see it's a Casey's because, after this road trip, I have little faith that it will be a positive experience. From the 1-2 employees working, I won't get much more than them ringing up anything I purchase after I wait in a very long line (given this long line, I knew I shouldn't mention the state of the men's restroom because they were clearly not staffed well enough to clean up the beverage area, let alone the restroom).

I’ve never heard of Casey’s, but this seems entirely irrelevant to Lucid. There are charging networks with great amenities. There are also “Casey’s”.

If you really feel like it, you can charge at a Supercharger at 50kW.

Juggling Different Charging Vendors
The available chargers from Electrify America (and others) are not spaced apart appropriately to take full advantage of the range of the vehicle. They're spaced apart enough to support lower range vehicles but not appropriately for higher range vehicles. Tesla's charging network has enough chargers to support its vehicles of all ranges including me choosing to skip different chargers and continue along to the next one based on my vehicle range. Lucid provides a faint recommendation but it's so buried so as to not be prominent to provide a fully integrated and opinionated experience.

I simply don’t understand what you mean by Lucid burying it. Can you take a picture of what you mean?

Because of this, I found myself resorting to not only Electrify America chargers but also Tesla chargers which means that I'm then required to do the math myself and wind up guessing in many cases (which is an awful experience when you're driving, so I resorted to pulling over to mull over my options on several occasions). This guesswork almost got me in trouble because some Tesla superchargers support Lucid vehicles and some simply do not and you won't know until you search the Tesla app for each supercharger you are considering using.

The Lucid app will also show you which ones do and don’t support Lucid.

On this road trip, one of the Casey's locations had chargers that were owned by the local electric utility instead of Electrify America, and it was a time-consuming headache to create an account in some third party app and then get it to work with my car. I was eventually successful but the whole process took me at least 30 minutes to figure out to begin charging.

Yes, this is annoying. This is why NEVI-funded stations have to have a credit card option.

 

[dwfallin]

sounds like your problems are mostly with the charging vendors, not lucid? outside of the apps recommendations not being strong enough. personally, i just use plugshare and manage my own stops/charging times, so prolly not a good reference, but i think the app did give charge times last i checked? maybe not...

 

[DrK]

I, too, have 10 years of Tesla Model S ownership (3 new ones). And have made a long 2280 mile roadtrip in my 2025 AGT this spring. My experience is different.

Yes Lucid monitoring of energy consumption and trip planning could/should be better. BUT interim solutions abound.

First in 2015, the Tesla app mislead. PlugShare saved the day. On our second 2015 over 1000 mile trip. Tesla messages screamed insufficient range which only made my wife scream louder. We were in the Blue Ridge mountains and had not hit the crest yet. We were fine. We learned to use multiple apps and some in the head calculations. And telephone calls to Tesla roadside assistance to find out which chargers were slow or down. And Tesla predictions got better. But Tesla sold a 2020 Model S to us that wouldn’t charge at early model destination chargers! And never told the public or the hotels that had them. And their in car Nav indicated I could use them!

In 2025 we meandered in our AGT up from Florida to New England and then across to Chicago. Never saw a Casey’s. But learned that HERE MAPS were not optimal, charging companies listed their claimed specs and not real performance ( or out of service), and that Plug Share and ABRP as well as preloaded apps for many charging vendors all were really useful. Had to plan, but no way as much as in 2015.

We also learned the car CHARGED FASTER than app or onboard dash first indicates! One of us had to rush toilet/ coffee stop or we had idle fees! THE CHARGE RANGE AND SPEED just radically reduced our time devoted to charging.

There is one other thing we learned, just as driving the Tesla on long trips was less fatiguing than driving our Porsche or BMW, driving the LUCID was even less fatiguing than driving the Tesla. And the difference was even larger.

What a joy to drive.

Can’t wait for our GGT!

Our RANT? Why do so many of us tolerate and even some contribute to filthy public service facilities and toilets? Why is ‘green’ infrastructure once again generally second class in location and reliability? Why portray this as a LUCID problem, when it’s a USA problem.

Many problems are vendor problems. But all companies need vendor’s components. And Casey’s is even like a vendor of space to a vendor of LUCID.

 

[L-Dude]

I haven't had a long road trip in my AGT, but you can plan a trip in ABRP and it will tell you what your arrival SOC will be and how long you need to charge. It also lets you modify recommended stops, and provides real-time consumption/SOC info. I'm not sure how this is different than the Tesla route planning.

FWIW, I don't really use in-car nav since phone-based nav is so much better.

 

[Ron_Burgundy]

It seems the utility of Air’s access to Tesla SC’s is greatly diminished by slower charge speed.

Gravity is a road tripping beast compared to our X. But a lot of that has to do with the NACS port and how fast it charges at a Tesla SC.

The onboard app for charging nav is poor for Gravity, so I can only guess it’s the same for air.

As @borski said, the phone app is spot on, so I use that.

 

[californiaboy935]

The superchargers are so expensive I’ll route to a EA. Guess I’m cheap. But min .51 a kWh across the nation. When in rural area I got .13 per kWh at EA fast chargers.

 

[thyname]

This is why NEVI-funded stations have to have a credit card option.

Is this still a thing? I thought our Glorious Leader gutted it

 

[azguy]

2 day old AGT owner here. Not much in depth to say compared to my late Model S. Seats are far more comfortable in the AGT, and far more adjustable to get a good driving position.

The navigation seemed OK, I wish the voice would mute when I am on the phone, as Tesla does. At least I'd like the option.

The Surreal Sound Pro is disappointing, as has been talked about many times. Doesn't fit the vibe of the car.

Still, many great things about the AGT.. comfort, quiet cabin, I love the lower screen, and how it interacts with the screen above it.

Both cars have their pros and cons, but I would not want to go back to the S. In my mind the Lucid Air in any of its incarnations is the car Tesla should have built to refresh the Model S. My theory is the S and X are not long for this world, and it's a great opportunity for Lucid. Hope they grab the ball.

 

[AbhinavAir]

Pretty sure thats why Peter left Tesla to join Lucid/Atieva...and in my humble opinion, succeeded

 

[borski]

Is this still a thing? I thought our Glorious Leader gutted it

Still a thing. Most of the funding had already been deployed to most of the states, and it’s on track. That said, I’m sure there will be other roadblocks.