The Press Embargo Has Been Lifted

[hmp10]

From the article: “The test drive route and my enthusiastic use of the accelerator pedal might have led to the less efficient result in what is admittedly a small driving sample.”

Yep, but 2.4 still strikes me as a bit low. I've watched every test drive video that's come up and, while I've seen plenty of frisky stints, none of them were really pushing the car hard for very much of the time behind the wheel.

I never worry about range for any amount of local or peppy "fun" driving, but I do worry about highway range on 80mph legs of long trips.

Our Air Dream is rated for 3.9 / kWh, but we've never seen better than 3.2 on highway legs, even in optimum traffic and weather conditions. If we see that kind of drop off in similar driving of the Gravity, we're right at 2.4 for road trips.

I'm hoping that the switch in EPA testing methods between the Air's rollout and the Gravity will yield something better with the Gravity.

 

[Bdr100]

JD Power posted its test drive review of the Gravity. Basically no surprises to us long-term Lucid owners.

They found the driving dynamics, space engineering, comfort, and materials to be top of the heap.

They liked the styling inside and out.

They found the software and UI to show promise but still to lag on delivery of that promise.

They found the EPA range to be, uh, optimistic.

https://www.jdpower.com/cars/expert-reviews/2025-lucid-gravity-review-first-drive

This review as well as the other reviews I have read on both Gravity and Air lead me to an impression that Lucid is a top tier mechanical/electrical engineering company but a less than top tier software company. The interwebs are full of videos and interviews with Lucid staff talking about innovative motors, batteries, suspension tuning, etc but virtually nothing on their innovative software. The good news is that getting the hardware right from the start of production is more important than having all software issues fine tuned at the start. Hopefully now that Gravity is officially in actual production, Lucid can shift focus to making the software rock solid reliable (first priority) and then deliver the promised future “features” such as a full featured ADAS system that justifies the high cost of Dream Drive 2 Pro, in a timely manner. At this time I am cautiously optimistic but look forward to future “long term” reviews and their experience in living with Gravity on a day to day basis.

 

[jered]

This review as well as the other reviews I have read on both Gravity and Air lead me to an impression that Lucid is a top tier mechanical/electrical engineering company but a less than top tier software company. The interwebs are full of videos and interviews with Lucid staff talking about innovative motors, batteries, suspension tuning, etc but virtually nothing on their innovative software.

I think this is more likely a matter of what gearheads are interested in hearing about. As a software engineer, I assure you that the *last* thing I want to hear about is their Scrum-based agile methodology which they have mapped into an ISO2626 V-model and maintained MISRA C compliance blah bah blah. The aspects of how you build the software are generally just less relatable and accessible than how you machine the motor.

I expect the functionality to speak for itself. Managing UX across a wide set of screens is a fascinating problem, but not the sort of thing that will excite Car & Driver (but maybe Coder & Sysadmin?)

 

[Bdr100]

You’re probably right. I am a (retired) civil engineer and the last programming class I had in school was in Fortran and was done with keypunch cards. So the mechanical and electrical stuff has more interest to me.

 

[DeaneG]

You’re probably right. I am a (retired) civil engineer and the last programming class I had in school was in Fortran and was done with keypunch cards. So the mechanical and electrical stuff has more interest to me.

I'm equal-opportunity between mechanical, electrical, and software architecture. For me, there has been a dearth of software detail and enthusiasm captured on video.