Hello all,
I'll first provide details of my experience, as well as a comparison to a 2017 Tesla model S I owned, and my more recent 2022 Tesla M3P. Then I'll provide a summary, Ars Technica style, with the good, the bad and the ugly. As a bonus some extra info I managed to obtain on the Air Pure. This is quite a long post.
So my appointment was at noon on Friday, in downtown Montreal. The test drives were scheduled for 30 minutes only, and that includes spending some time looking at the car, so the drive portion was really short. Also, slight disappointment, the drive was only in town, no highway. Apparently when the Design Studio opens, supposedly in December, they will start offering test drives including a highway portion. I'll definitely want to do that as I could not really evaluate sound insulation and power just driving in town (in busy traffic as well).
I was lucky however that the next appointment, at 12:30, got cancelled and so I had an extra 15-20 minutes to drive the car.
We started by inspecting the car, frunk, trunk, interior. I sat at the back as well.
Overall impressions are that the car is definitely feeling luxurious, more so that my Teslas. The choice and quality of materials is very good, and fit and finish (both inside and outside) is very good as well, again better than the Teslas I've had. Lots of space in the back seat.
Nice touch also with the shades that can rise for the rear and back windows. Although I'm not sure if these would be in the Air Pure.
With respect to the trunk, I realized that although it's wide it's not so high. I don't think I could stack my two big suitcases (when going on long trips). They might fit side to side. Worst case I would put one in the large frunk. My S was definitely more accomodating for the trunk due to its hatchback design. But this is not an issue, as the huge frunk compensates.
Going to the front seat, which has a zillion of adjustments and includes massaging (will this be in the Air Pure?), no complaints except for the position of the armrest of the center console. I don't know if this car was designed for very tall people (I'm 5'7") but I felt that the armrest was too far back and struggled to find a comfortable position. I'll definitely want to revisit that point this winter on my second test drive.
Maybe a second nitpick here is the extended front glass above the head. Yes it looks cool. But during my test drive the sun was like just high enough to be above the sun visor which was useless in that case. No doubt I would want to have a cap handy in such situations and wear the cap inside the car.
Screens are very nice and sharp. Oh and one feature I definitely loved was the 360 view around the car. So useful when going through tight spaces!
Now, one aspect I like from the Teslas, and especially my most recent M3P, is the map on the screen and its ease of use, snappiness and readability. In that sense the Lucid was a bit of a disappointment. I didn't quite like the map layout (maybe it can be changed?), and the responsiveness was really bad, trying to zoom in. Also I wish there was more screen real estate in the up part on the right, as the map was really small. It was better (bigger) when it got duplicated in the second screen below (the one that can tilt, not sure how it's called). But then you have to look quite low, on your right, to check the map. Maybe I'm nitpicking. I'm curious to hear other people about this aspect (the positioning of the map and the responsiveness).
Still on the topic of maps, I tried to set a route to navigate to a remote location (Gaspé for example which is some 930km from Montreal). And there we hit a fairly bad point for the Lucid. No infos on chargers, like how many are available and how many are in use. I don't know if this is an issue just here in Canada, but this is not good. The manager was all apologetic about this, and mentioned that there were apps that could be used on your phone to get that info. So yeah, a $215,000 (CAD) EV with subpar navigation is a big miss here.
I didn't have enough time to interact with the rest of the UI so I can't say I saw anything buggy over there. We listened to some music. I'm no audiophile but it sounded fairly good (though the one in my M3P is also damn good).
Now on to the test drive as such.
As mentioned aboved this was a downtown drive only, with traffic all over the place, so really not the best conditions to experience the car dynamics.
For sure the car feels quieter than my current M3P and my old S, at least for tire noise. We didn't go fast enough that I could appreciate the noise insulation at speed however.
Comfort, over our rough roads in Montreal, was also very good despite the car having the 21in wheels. Reminded me of my old S (on 19in wheels) which had Air suspension but no active dampers. I tried the 3 modes, comfort, swift and sprint and indeed one can feel the difference in stiffness of the suspension. I think sprint would be my favorite as the other two modes almost felt too soft.
One pedal driving was working well, although when coming to a stop I could feel the transition to the disk brakes to stop the car. My M3P is definitely much smooter in that respect. Not a deal breaker but I was expecting better from the Lucid. Could a software update improve this?
The manager also mentioned, during the test drive, that the base Dreamdrive didn't have lane centering. Ouch! This means I would have to fork $13,500 (CAD) to get that option. I would definitely skip it (and miss it certainly).
Finally with respect to power delivery. It definitely has power when you push it (especially in Sprint mode), although given the traffic conditions I was not able to test that much. One thing I noticed though was a certain lack of initial throttle responsiveness. I think I would have liked something more agressive or nervous, like in my M3P. I'll want to check that more in my winter test drive, along with the feeling of the direction since downtown was not really a place I could check this out.
So that's it, nothing else comes to mind. I'm definitely looking forward to hear about the final specs of the Air Pure (range/power), and have that second test drive in the winter, because at this point I'm not convinced. There's a lot to like, but there's a number of points as well in need of improvements as outlined in the summary below. Some can be fixed through software updates, some cannot and are design choices.
Summary
The good:
Bonus!
In the test drive I took the opportunity to ask a couple of questions about the Air Pure since it's the one I have on order.
There is still a lot of unknowns at this point, and some of what I learned is not official in any way.
For the AWD option the power should be comparable to the Touring (or maybe just a tiny bit below) and definitely way above the RWD 480hp. Hoping this one gets confirmed.
Order finalization should get done between Jan and March, with a delivery in the (early) summer of 2023.
The glass roof would be offered as an option on the Pure as well. Although as I realized, with the glass already extending so much above the front seats, having a metal roof at the back would not be a deal breaker to me. In fact my wife, sitting at the back, complained a bit about the sun during the test drive. I think she rarely sits at the back in our Tesla.
I'll first provide details of my experience, as well as a comparison to a 2017 Tesla model S I owned, and my more recent 2022 Tesla M3P. Then I'll provide a summary, Ars Technica style, with the good, the bad and the ugly. As a bonus some extra info I managed to obtain on the Air Pure. This is quite a long post.
So my appointment was at noon on Friday, in downtown Montreal. The test drives were scheduled for 30 minutes only, and that includes spending some time looking at the car, so the drive portion was really short. Also, slight disappointment, the drive was only in town, no highway. Apparently when the Design Studio opens, supposedly in December, they will start offering test drives including a highway portion. I'll definitely want to do that as I could not really evaluate sound insulation and power just driving in town (in busy traffic as well).
I was lucky however that the next appointment, at 12:30, got cancelled and so I had an extra 15-20 minutes to drive the car.
We started by inspecting the car, frunk, trunk, interior. I sat at the back as well.
Overall impressions are that the car is definitely feeling luxurious, more so that my Teslas. The choice and quality of materials is very good, and fit and finish (both inside and outside) is very good as well, again better than the Teslas I've had. Lots of space in the back seat.
Nice touch also with the shades that can rise for the rear and back windows. Although I'm not sure if these would be in the Air Pure.
With respect to the trunk, I realized that although it's wide it's not so high. I don't think I could stack my two big suitcases (when going on long trips). They might fit side to side. Worst case I would put one in the large frunk. My S was definitely more accomodating for the trunk due to its hatchback design. But this is not an issue, as the huge frunk compensates.
Going to the front seat, which has a zillion of adjustments and includes massaging (will this be in the Air Pure?), no complaints except for the position of the armrest of the center console. I don't know if this car was designed for very tall people (I'm 5'7") but I felt that the armrest was too far back and struggled to find a comfortable position. I'll definitely want to revisit that point this winter on my second test drive.
Maybe a second nitpick here is the extended front glass above the head. Yes it looks cool. But during my test drive the sun was like just high enough to be above the sun visor which was useless in that case. No doubt I would want to have a cap handy in such situations and wear the cap inside the car.
Screens are very nice and sharp. Oh and one feature I definitely loved was the 360 view around the car. So useful when going through tight spaces!
Now, one aspect I like from the Teslas, and especially my most recent M3P, is the map on the screen and its ease of use, snappiness and readability. In that sense the Lucid was a bit of a disappointment. I didn't quite like the map layout (maybe it can be changed?), and the responsiveness was really bad, trying to zoom in. Also I wish there was more screen real estate in the up part on the right, as the map was really small. It was better (bigger) when it got duplicated in the second screen below (the one that can tilt, not sure how it's called). But then you have to look quite low, on your right, to check the map. Maybe I'm nitpicking. I'm curious to hear other people about this aspect (the positioning of the map and the responsiveness).
Still on the topic of maps, I tried to set a route to navigate to a remote location (Gaspé for example which is some 930km from Montreal). And there we hit a fairly bad point for the Lucid. No infos on chargers, like how many are available and how many are in use. I don't know if this is an issue just here in Canada, but this is not good. The manager was all apologetic about this, and mentioned that there were apps that could be used on your phone to get that info. So yeah, a $215,000 (CAD) EV with subpar navigation is a big miss here.
I didn't have enough time to interact with the rest of the UI so I can't say I saw anything buggy over there. We listened to some music. I'm no audiophile but it sounded fairly good (though the one in my M3P is also damn good).
Now on to the test drive as such.
As mentioned aboved this was a downtown drive only, with traffic all over the place, so really not the best conditions to experience the car dynamics.
For sure the car feels quieter than my current M3P and my old S, at least for tire noise. We didn't go fast enough that I could appreciate the noise insulation at speed however.
Comfort, over our rough roads in Montreal, was also very good despite the car having the 21in wheels. Reminded me of my old S (on 19in wheels) which had Air suspension but no active dampers. I tried the 3 modes, comfort, swift and sprint and indeed one can feel the difference in stiffness of the suspension. I think sprint would be my favorite as the other two modes almost felt too soft.
One pedal driving was working well, although when coming to a stop I could feel the transition to the disk brakes to stop the car. My M3P is definitely much smooter in that respect. Not a deal breaker but I was expecting better from the Lucid. Could a software update improve this?
The manager also mentioned, during the test drive, that the base Dreamdrive didn't have lane centering. Ouch! This means I would have to fork $13,500 (CAD) to get that option. I would definitely skip it (and miss it certainly).
Finally with respect to power delivery. It definitely has power when you push it (especially in Sprint mode), although given the traffic conditions I was not able to test that much. One thing I noticed though was a certain lack of initial throttle responsiveness. I think I would have liked something more agressive or nervous, like in my M3P. I'll want to check that more in my winter test drive, along with the feeling of the direction since downtown was not really a place I could check this out.
So that's it, nothing else comes to mind. I'm definitely looking forward to hear about the final specs of the Air Pure (range/power), and have that second test drive in the winter, because at this point I'm not convinced. There's a lot to like, but there's a number of points as well in need of improvements as outlined in the summary below. Some can be fixed through software updates, some cannot and are design choices.
Summary
The good:
- Fit / finish / luxury.
- Clean UI and sharp screens.
- Really good looking car.
- Very smooth ride.
- 360 degree view.
- One pedal driving not as smooth as expected.
- Lack of responsiveness in initial acceleration.
- Armrest too far back.
- Trunk opening heigh limited.
- Sun in the eyes due to extended glass roof at front.
- Laggy nav screen.
- No info on chargers on navigation.
- Need to fork an extra $13,500 just to get lane centering.
Bonus!
In the test drive I took the opportunity to ask a couple of questions about the Air Pure since it's the one I have on order.
There is still a lot of unknowns at this point, and some of what I learned is not official in any way.
For the AWD option the power should be comparable to the Touring (or maybe just a tiny bit below) and definitely way above the RWD 480hp. Hoping this one gets confirmed.
Order finalization should get done between Jan and March, with a delivery in the (early) summer of 2023.
The glass roof would be offered as an option on the Pure as well. Although as I realized, with the glass already extending so much above the front seats, having a metal roof at the back would not be a deal breaker to me. In fact my wife, sitting at the back, complained a bit about the sun during the test drive. I think she rarely sits at the back in our Tesla.
