The Long Goodbye

[hmp10]

I've posted elsewhere about my brother, a huge EV fan that first alerted me to Lucid back in 2016. He has been very impressed with our Air and Gravities and was anxiously awaiting the Cosmos to replace his Tesla Model 3. However, our recent travails with software issues have turned him off to Lucid, something that was reinforced on a visit to us three weeks ago when he personally witnessed many of the issues reported here.

He has decided to start looking at alternatives and today attended an unveiling of the Rivian R2 in Atlanta. Here is the text he just sent me:

"Rivian hit a home run on design. The interior is simple and well laid out. The seats are very comfortable and the backseat has lots of leg room and overall space. The frunk is large and the area behind the rear seats is also spacious with a very functional shape. The models on display were all try-motor with large off road tires. This car is in the running for us if the driving reviews are positive. **** liked it a lot and that is a high bar. The ride quality and driving experience may not be what we want but it will be a while before we know."

 

[hmp10]

It seems that a few people don't understand that even if 95% of the Lucid Gravity owners don't have issues with the key fob, that means that it is reliable and that is acceptable.

Absurd.

How many people would plop down over $100K for a Mercedes, BMW, or Porsche that had a 5% chance of not being able to get into it, at least without first mastering some workarounds?

And you're ignoring the fact that people are reporting many software issues well beyond key fob issues.

 

[Coyote]

Absurd.

How many people would plop down over $100K for a Mercedes, BMW, or Porsche that had a 5% chance of not being able to get into it, at least without first mastering some workarounds?

And you're ignoring the fact that people are reporting many software issues well beyond key fob issues.

The post i parodied was about key fobs... nothing else. In that post, he was talking about the 5%. I chose to remind everyone that this means that 95% are good. I have had a few glitches on mine, but not with the key fob. As an early adopter, I am ok with that. Will everyone be? Probably not. But I suggest that the majority of us, perhaps even the vast majority, love their cars in spite of this.

You reference mainstream, long established manufacturers. For them, I agree. But none of them are cutting edge.

 

[drb3333]

Absurd.

How many people would plop down over $100K for a Mercedes, BMW, or Porsche that had a 5% chance of not being able to get into it, at least without first mastering some workarounds?

And you're ignoring the fact that people are reporting many software issues well beyond key fob issues.

I used to work in the spacecraft industry. You cannot recall a failed product after launch, so it has to be *perfect*.

I hope new management at Lucid embraces your point: there is no acceptable failure rate.

If I was there, I would immediately convene a Tiger Team and examine each failure in detail. I would be contacting every disappointed customer on this forum for at least a phone interview. Fly there if necessary, and not leave until I found the root cause.

Somehow a culture of "good enough" has crept in to the production, delivery, service teams. Ridiculous amounts of money are being spent on service issues, when those funds should go toward a full on delivery freeze and failure investigation, in my opinion (and working history).

 

[dbsb3233]

My deal breaker was how long it took to add the garage opening while reversing. I found it incredibly annoying lol. Life is too short to deal with the basic annoyance of opening car doors and the garage.

I haven't even bothered to try and setup Homelink, like I have in my other cars (that work). Reading how it's often one more ongoing Lucid annoyance, I said screw it. I just clipped the old fashioned opener to my sun visor like it's 1980. It works dependably.

 

[BS8899]

I used to work in the spacecraft industry. You cannot recall a failed product after launch, so it has to be *perfect*.

I hope new management at Lucid embraces your point: there is no acceptable failure rate.

If I was there, I would immediately convene a Tiger Team and examine each failure in detail. I would be contacting every disappointed customer on this forum for at least a phone interview. Fly there if necessary, and not leave until I found the root cause.

Somehow a culture of "good enough" has crept in to the production, delivery, service teams. Ridiculous amounts of money are being spent on service issues, when those funds should go toward a full on delivery freeze and failure investigation, in my opinion (and working history).

One could argue that there is no "perfection" and no one can guarantee100% of the products shipped are good. Go tell that to Lexas/Toyota. Yes, from time-to-time that might be bad parts that escape. But it is not 5%. Even if there were escapes, isn't it the Service Center's job to test out the cars and its accessories (in this case, EOBs) to make sure they don't get to the customers?

BUT: knowingly shipped 5% products that's bad and considers "acceptable" is, (to borrow @hmp10's phrase) absurd!

If you go to the supermarket to buy a box of dozen eggs and there is a high probability that one of the eggs in the carton is rotten, would you go back to the same supermarket?

Let's get back to key FOBs:

> if Lucid KNOWS that about 5% of the key FABs are defective, did Lucid screen them out or ask the supplier to screen them out? If not, why not?

 

[dbsb3233]

I've posted elsewhere about my brother, a huge EV fan that first alerted me to Lucid back in 2016. He has been very impressed with our Air and Gravities and was anxiously awaiting the Cosmos to replace his Tesla Model 3. However, our recent travails with software issues have turned him off to Lucid, something that was reinforced on a visit to us three weeks ago when he personally witnessed many of the issues reported here.

He has decided to start looking at alternatives and today attended an unveiling of the Rivian R2 in Atlanta. Here is the text he just sent me:

"Rivian hit a home run on design. The interior is simple and well laid out. The seats are very comfortable and the backseat has lots of leg room and overall space. The frunk is large and the area behind the rear seats is also spacious with a very functional shape. The models on display were all try-motor with large off road tires. This car is in the running for us if the driving reviews are positive. **** liked it a lot and that is a high bar. The ride quality and driving experience may not be what we want but it will be a while before we know."

Before deciding to jump all the way up to a Gravity, I was anxiously awaiting the R2.

Great design, but then, so is the Gravity. It's the execution that's the problem.

It's just so maddening that Lucid manages to do so well with the hard stuff, but then struggles on so much of the easy stuff.

 

[BS8899]

Before deciding to jump all the way up to a Gravity, I was anxiously awaiting the R2.

Great design, but then, so is the Gravity. It's the execution that's the problem.

It's just so maddening that Lucid manages to do so well with the hard stuff but then struggles on so much of the easy stuff.

I think you got it the other way around:
> Timothée Chalamet, paint colors, ambient lighting etc. are the easy stuff
>building in and maintaining quality of the product and servicing them properly is the hard stuff!

​

 

[Tim-in-CA]

I've posted elsewhere about my brother, a huge EV fan that first alerted me to Lucid back in 2016. He has been very impressed with our Air and Gravities and was anxiously awaiting the Cosmos to replace his Tesla Model 3. However, our recent travails with software issues have turned him off to Lucid, something that was reinforced on a visit to us three weeks ago when he personally witnessed many of the issues reported here.

He has decided to start looking at alternatives and today attended an unveiling of the Rivian R2 in Atlanta. Here is the text he just sent me:

"Rivian hit a home run on design. The interior is simple and well laid out. The seats are very comfortable and the backseat has lots of leg room and overall space. The frunk is large and the area behind the rear seats is also spacious with a very functional shape. The models on display were all try-motor with large off road tires. This car is in the running for us if the driving reviews are positive. **** liked it a lot and that is a high bar. The ride quality and driving experience may not be what we want but it will be a while before we know."

Yes, the R2 is quite nice and a good size. I have an Air and an R1S and as a single person, I don’t really need 2 vehicles. I’d like to boil them down to one in 3-5 years, R2 and R3 are on my radar. I also like the new BMW and Mercedes EV offerings, so there will be options. I’m hopeful that Cosmos and other Lucid derivatives will also be in the mix. I went to a focus group for a European manufacturer and saw and sat in (VR using Apple Vision Pro) for a future platform and came away impressed. The competition is coming and Lucid needs to resolve their issues quickly IMHO.

 

[Halodde]

Before deciding to jump all the way up to a Gravity, I was anxiously awaiting the R2.

Great design, but then, so is the Gravity. It's the execution that's the problem.

It's just so maddening that Lucid manages to do so well with the hard stuff, but then struggles on so much of the easy stuff.

I'd choose to say great concept with questionable design and troublesome implementation. There's things I've encountered in my 3+ years and 90000+ miles with my air regarding engineering and design decisions that leave me scratching my head. The multiple systems linked together causing unrelated systems to fail when they are actually fine is a good example.

 

[exxxviii]

The post i parodied was about key fobs... nothing else. In that post, he was talking about the 5%. I chose to remind everyone that this means that 95% are good.

The problem is that we really don’t have a clue what the percentage is. But I can tell you that there is nothing that remotely compares to this in any of the other forums I follow. (Oh, and the HUD, which is also an important feature to me, seems plagued with issues.)

60% of the time, it works every time. - Brian Fantana

My plan is to continue to follow Lucid’s progress with this problem until I have to make a decision by around October.

 

[tarator]

After taking a lead from a post here last night, I experimented with using the mobile app to lock and unlock the newer car. That worked better than the fob, although inconsistently. Sometimes the car responded immediately; sometimes there was a significant delay (I timed one at 28 seconds). One time the app opened only the driver door; other times it opened all the doors.

As we're heading into rainy season here, this unlocking issue has gained urgency for us. At least with the phone I can try to unlock the car before we head out to a parking lot. But the inconsistency even in using the app doesn't make me comfortable that it will be reliable.

I haven't used the app to manually unlock the car, but I occasionally use the Apple Watch app and it works, eventually. I try to unlock at least 20 seconds before I reach the car and most of the time it works fine.

 

[EVCar]

I used to work in the spacecraft industry. You cannot recall a failed product after launch, so it has to be *perfect*.

I hope new management at Lucid embraces your point: there is no acceptable failure rate.

If I was there, I would immediately convene a Tiger Team and examine each failure in detail. I would be contacting every disappointed customer on this forum for at least a phone interview. Fly there if necessary, and not leave until I found the root cause.

Somehow a culture of "good enough" has crept in to the production, delivery, service teams. Ridiculous amounts of money are being spent on service issues, when those funds should go toward a full on delivery freeze and failure investigation, in my opinion (and working history).

Completely agree.
For the early couple of years, the tendency was to cut some slack for Lucid because it's a brand new company.
Complaining too much risks being labeled a whiner or being entitled.
As an aside, my Gravity has a drive system warning and has been at SC for 1 month, untouched.
Have I experienced similar service response in the past, from a Mustang to an EQS? Nope.

 

[hmp10]

Okay, folks.

I just got a call from Emad Dlala (he was in the office on Mother's Day) that lasted well over an hour. He said he is fine with my posting about the call, so here goes . . . .

Between the 3.4 series of updates and 3.5.1 Lucid switched to a different architectural platform. This was necessary because of technical problems with the old platform (as a Luddite I couldn't quite follow all the ins and outs of this), but that is the root cause of the increase in software issues many owners are seeing. They knew this platform change might tip the tea cart over and it would take a while to put it back upright, but they're working 7 days a week on it. Dlala said these issues include locking/unlocking issues, screen freezes and blackouts, and several other issues Lucid knows owners are experiencing. There is an update coming out later this month and another around July that will address many of the issues. Although these updates will add some new features, they will apparently focus more than many of us thought on reducing existing problems.

He said one of the reasons I am seeming more problems than many other owners is that we have two fully-optioned Dream Editions, and running all those systems taxes the software sometimes beyond its limits. Lucid is working on a change that will take about 30% of the load off the system and give it more headroom to handle things without issue (again, the technical aspects of this were lost on me).

We got into an interesting tangent on the HUD, which Dlala said has been problematic on several fronts. He said that he, like many owners on the forum, has actually turned his off in his car. I told him that one of the most universal complaints on the forum is that the display is too high in the field of vision. He is investigating whether that can be at least partially addressed via software.

Although I'm not particularly exercised about promised features that haven't yet arrived, Dlala knows that many owners are, and he's really trying to pick up the pace of bringing them online. He's particularly interested in getting PAAK in place. However, he said that when he took the job he told Lucid that it was going to take six months for him to take stock of the software work to be done and how best to approach it, and he thinks things are now ready to move forward more quickly.

He assured me Lucid is fully aware of what is hanging in the balance with the software performance of the Cosmos at launch and that the work they're doing now on the Gravity with platform changes, more efficient processing, etc., is setting the stage for that.

I was extremely appreciative of his call and have a bit of restored confidence that we may yet see some light at the end of this tunnel.

 

[Golfhack]

That's amazing and great to hear!

 

[hmp10]

I forgot to mention that Dlala described several quality control protocols they're adding to software development, an aspect where he said Lucid has been sadly lacking thus far.

 

[borski]

Aside from just memory, is there a way to distinguish the key with respect to their SW/firmware versions.

Not to my knowledge, but I'd love it if I were wrong.

 

[hmp10]

Not to my knowledge, but I'd love it if I were wrong.

You can find out from the mobile app. It doesn't initially display the software version for the fob as it does for the car, but if you run the program to check for updates it will then show you. The current version is 2.35.08.

 

[borski]

You can find out from the mobile app. It doesn't initially display the software version for the fob as it does for the car, but if you run the program to check for updates it will then show you. The current version is 2.35.08.

Sorry, I think we read the original post differently; all the fobs are on the same firmware, which means there is now way to distinguish a 'bad fob' from a 'good fob' aside from checking a serial number against a list Lucid presumably has.

That's what I meant.

 

[borski]

Okay, folks.

I just got a call from Emad Dlala (he was in the office on Mother's Day) that lasted well over an hour. He said he is fine with my posting about the call, so here goes . . . .

Between the 3.4 series of updates and 3.5.1 Lucid switched to a different architectural platform. This was necessary because of technical problems with the old platform (as a Luddite I couldn't quite follow all the ins and outs of this), but that is the root cause of the increase in software issues many owners are seeing. They knew this platform change might tip the tea cart over and it would take a while to put it back upright, but they're working 7 days a week on it. Dlala said these issues include locking/unlocking issues, screen freezes and blackouts, and several other issues Lucid knows owners are experiencing. There is an update coming out later this month and another around July that will address many of the issues. Although these updates will add some new features, they will apparently focus more than many of us thought on reducing existing problems.

He said one of the reasons I am seeming more problems than many other owners is that we have two fully-optioned Dream Editions, and running all those systems taxes the software sometimes beyond its limits. Lucid is working on a change that will take about 30% of the load off the system and give it more headroom to handle things without issue (again, the technical aspects of this were lost on me).

We got into an interesting tangent on the HUD, which Dlala said has been problematic on several fronts. He said that he, like many owners on the forum, has actually turned his off in his car. I told him that one of the most universal complaints on the forum is that the display is too high in the field of vision. He is investigating whether that can be at least partially addressed via software.

Although I'm not particularly exercised about promised features that haven't yet arrived, Dlala knows that many owners are, and he's really trying to pick up the pace of bringing them online. He's particularly interested in getting PAAK in place. However, he said that when he took the job he told Lucid that it was going to take six months for him to take stock of the software work to be done and how best to approach it, and he thinks things are now ready to move forward more quickly.

He assured me Lucid is fully aware of what is hanging in the balance with the software performance of the Cosmos at launch and that the work they're doing now on the Gravity with platform changes, more efficient processing, etc., is setting the stage for that.

I was extremely appreciative of his call and have a bit of restored confidence that we may yet see some light at the end of this tunnel.

Fantastic. I really love Emad.