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Tracking Down the Mystery of Air/Gravity Locking/Unlocking

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BS8899

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Lucid Air Grand Touring
I don’t want to hijack @hmp10’s serious and sad post, “The Long Goodbye,” but @hmp10 raised an important issue regarding Lucid’s lock/unlock behavior.


What’s interesting is that owner experiences seem highly inconsistent. Some owners (including me) encounter the issue regularly, while others insist they’ve never seen it.


I’m not trying to second-guess anyone’s experiences.


Looking at this clinically, doesn’t this resemble a classic system/software/third-party hardware interaction problem that can produce inconsistent outcomes depending on configuration, environment, device state, or software versions?


For affected owners (including @hmp10 and myself), this is a significant usability and reliability concern that deserves serious attention from Lucid.


Appeal to Lucid:
Would Lucid consider identifying a small group of affected and unaffected vehicles/owners, enabling detailed event logging, and analyzing the differences to isolate the root cause?
Click to expand...
 
BS8899 said:
I don’t want to hijack @hmp10’s serious and sad post, “The Long Goodbye,” but @hmp10 raised an important issue regarding Lucid’s lock/unlock behavior.


What’s interesting is that owner experiences seem highly inconsistent. Some owners (including me) encounter the issue regularly, while others insist they’ve never seen it.


I’m not trying to second-guess anyone’s experiences.


Looking at this clinically, doesn’t this resemble a classic system/software/third-party hardware interaction problem that can produce inconsistent outcomes depending on configuration, environment, device state, or software versions?


For affected owners (including @hmp10 and myself), this is a significant usability and reliability concern that deserves serious attention from Lucid.


Appeal to Lucid:
Click to expand...
I am bracing myself to find out that @hmp10 and I live in houses that have "digitally haunted" garages! :eek:
 
I am not sure if detailed logging would be enough. But they should definitely assign a team of engineers and if needed fly them, and the necessary equipment to get to the bottom of this.

Unless they know the problem what the problem is, but don't care enough or it's too expensive to fix.
 
My experience has always been, mobile key barely works, no matter how many times I've asked service to look into it. Gave up after a few months and never looked back.

Fob works in my garage always; however, in a parking lot with lots of other vehicles around, there's a good 3 to 5 second "awkward" delay. This, to me, is not acceptable. I do not consider this to be working.
 
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LVAGT said:
My experience has always been, mobile key barely works, no matter how many times I've asked service to look into it. Gave up after a few months and look back.

Fob works in my garage always; however, in a parking lot with lots of other vehicles around, there's a good 3 to 5 second "awkward" delay. This, to me, is not acceptable. I do not consider this to be working.
Click to expand...
First service center did that to me. Second service center correctly diagnosed 3 defective door handles.
 
I have a working mobile key... it took some effort to get there, but it now works 99.9+% of the time:
- configure car to have passive unlock off (I press the door handle to wake the car, I don't want it waking just because I walked by)
- replaced all 4 door handles (some twice, one thrice) over 6 service visits over 2.5 years between 2023 & 2025 (2022 model Air GT)
- using an Android Samsung phone:
-- lock app in memory
-- configure app for unrestricted battery
-- configure app for location services always
-- always use "home" button (not "back") to "exit" the app (may no longer be needed, not clear)
-- if the app is updated, reboot the phone
-- if the app hangs (very rare) use info/force stop and restart app (or reboot phone)
-- if (rare) the car does not wake upon pressing the door handle, just wake the phone (open to the home screen is sufficient)
 
bassmaster187 said:
How can I check, if my door handles needs to be replaced?
Click to expand...
I know no way to check yourself, service determined this for me... for me the symptoms included that pressing the handles in would only sometimes wake the car (this is not about opening the car, it first must be woken(and thus powered) up, I'd see when this occurred by a light briefly coming on in the folded mirror, reflecting onto the door's window)... sometimes pressing harder would work, sometimes not... it seemed sometimes to be worse in humid weather... basically it seems that the microswitches in them were not always making contact (as it was explained to me). This seemed unrelated to the version of the handles too (thus the repeated replacements until a reliable one was found/installed). Once awake, the handles would "present" for opening, if it did not wake, then they would retract back to flush (as if the key wasn't there, but this was not a key issue, it was a handle failure only).
 
LVAGT said:
Fob works in my garage always; however, in a parking lot with lots of other vehicles around, there's a good 3 to 5 second "awkward" delay. This, to me, is not acceptable. I do not consider this to be working.
Click to expand...
I sometimes get a delay between when I arrive at the car--maybe 2 secs? Usually by thge time I reach out to depress the handle, the car has already unlocked. This works waaaay better than my Audi. It also works better the the Ford Expedition Platinum Edition that I am renting. That car just unlocks whenever it feels like it. I am fine with how my Air handles things, and find it to be reliable. I tried PAAK and it was very hit-or-miss, and my FOB didn't work as well with PAAK enabled. I haven't tried the PAAK lately, but I may give it another go.

I am fine with the way my FOB works with the car.
 
BS8899 said:
I don’t want to hijack @hmp10’s serious and sad post, “The Long Goodbye,” but @hmp10 raised an important issue regarding Lucid’s lock/unlock behavior.
[…]
Looking at this clinically, doesn’t this resemble a classic system/software/third-party hardware interaction problem that can produce inconsistent outcomes depending on configuration, environment, device state, or software versions?
Click to expand...
I’m wondering if the radar detector installation to both Gravities could be contributing to the problems. Dealing with third-party modifications is a nightmare. It’s hard to know whether or not the installers screwed something up when tapping into the electrical system or if the additional electronics are somehow causing interference.

I’m not saying this is the case, as others have reported problems and I’ve experienced some myself. @hmp10’s seem to be extreme, though.
 
bassmaster187 said:
How can I check, if my door handles needs to be replaced?
Click to expand...
Great question.

I got three new ones last week because the car wouldn’t wake up on handle press. The car came back Saturday.

Now, as of Tuesday, none of the door handles wake the car anymore.
 
socktucker said:
I got three new ones last week because the car wouldn’t wake up on handle press. The car came back Saturday.
Now, as of Tuesday, none of the door handles wake the car anymore.
Click to expand...
My last handle replacement service visit included service installing a new handle only to have it too failing (out of the box). They caught this before returning the car, and ordered & installed a 2nd new one (which worked)...
 
I find my car wakes (and doors unlock) when approaching from the back or front of the car. Approaching from the side often does not open the doors
 
Frustration rant incoming..

The root cause is Lucid chose the wrong technology for the job - the FOB and PAAK both use the BLE (Bluetooth low energy) protocol to auth with the vehicle. This protocol works fine for items that don't require direct interaction (think Apple air tags or a passive fitness tracker), but the handshake process and signal strength-based position sensing (among other quirks of BLE) can introduce too much overhead/latency for something we actively interact with like a locked door. When I push the handle it needs to present immediately, not once the Bluetooth has settled.

I strongly suspect Lucid introduced the proximity unlock "feature" in an attempt to mask the latency of the BLE protocol. In many cases the vehicle will be able to establish the BLE link, authenticate, and pop the handles by the time the user reaches the car.

There's no fixing that, unless Lucid wants to retrofit everyone's cars with a dedicated RF transmitter to handle this communication.
 
I use proximity lock/unlock on my Gravity. Since the December software update that had major fob/locking updates, the proximity unlock has been 100% reliable. The proximity lock functionality however has been about 97% functional. Just this morning I parked in a parking garage and started walking away. When I was about 50-60 feet away, I glanced over my shoulder and noticed tail lights were still on. Pulled fob out and hit lock button. Another couple times I have had car stay on and refuse to lock/shut down when I hit fob lock button. In both cases I realized that the drivers door handle was stuck open. I had to open and reclose that door to allow car to lock and shut down. Makes me think that a majority of the fob issues (at least for Gravity) are not necessarily due to the fob but rather door handles and/or car proximity sensors.
 
It's remarkable how much bandwidth has been used to express frustration with the most fundamental human-machine interaction as the unlocking the doors. I've abandoned my phone as a key and just roll with the FOB. I got one of those leather sleeves to give it a bit more pocket feel. I'll take reliable (mostly) older tech over sentient newer tech that seems to get a kick out of unlocking the doors when I'm mowing the lawn but not unlocking when it's raining and I actually want in the car.
 
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