Transport Evolved Video: We Ride In The Lucid Air Sedan With NYSE: CCIV's David Lickfold

[jsharpe]

I went back and took another look at the video and you’re 100% correct. Somehow those narrow windows had eluded me. I don’t know the height of the reviewer, but it’s clear he has adequate headroom, so I doubt he’s 6’6”. You’re correct, this issue is also manifested when he’s in the driver’s seat. Not good.

I can’t recall ever owning a car where I had to scrunch my neck to look out the windows. Now granted at 5’7” this ’may’ not impact me, but it surely will impact friends I have in the car. Claustrophobia, with that huge glass canopy, is certainly not something I ever considered in the Lucid, but.....

I feel the same way about the side glass. The crazy bulky roof rails wouldn't bother me as much, or at all, if they had been positioned more in the top plane of the roof rather than down the side. I could easily live with a slightly less wide "sunroof" but lower tops to the side windows isn't great. The taller cabin windows are one of the improvements I appreciate most in Boeing's Dreamliner. I hate having to lower my head just to look out horizontally in other commercial aircraft. Although the side windows in the Air aren't nearly that bad, the impression from the photo in my earlier post seems like a similar experience for non-height challenged people in the back seat.

Moving the roof rails to the top rather than the side would also alleviate the problem of having to warn people about not hitting their heads when getting in or out without hurting the aesthetics of the roofline or impacting CD.

 

[Lucken]

The Lucid's roofline is about 4" lower than the EQS. However, Zak Edson, Lucid's head of Retail Operations, actually is 6'6" tall, and he didn't have any problem with headroom when he sat in the backseat at the Miami studio to demonstrate the leg room. That is because the rear seat cushion in the Air is low, which causes the knees-up sitting position).

When I sat in both the front and back seats of the Air, I did notice the thickness of the roof rails. However, with the glass canopy the car didn't feel too claustrophobic. But then, again, I, too, am only 5'7" and the car was inside a showroom. No matter how you parse it, the Air does have a high belt line -- not as extreme as the old Audi TT, but hardly the expansive side picture windows of a Land Rover.

On another note, I've been going back and forth with the author of "The Driver Download" video channel. He said the Air will not have an air suspension. I found a Lucid job posting for a "Senior Engineer - Air Suspension" and September 2020 articles by both "Motor Trend" and "Car & Driver" that said the car does have an air suspension. However, the author said that in a recent visit to a Design Studio he was told the car would NOT have an air suspension. He contacted a Lucid media representative who confirmed this. He asked for more details about the suspension and is waiting to hear back.

It seems that somewhere along the line Lucid has abandoned an air suspension. More and more features of this car seem to be dropping by the wayside.

I find the lack of air suspension, if true, to be absolutely incredible in a car of this price. My just purchased Audi E-Tron Sportback most certainly has air suspension and its ride & sound supression are absolutely delicious. I just plugged in at an EA charger and put on about 125 miles in about 14-15 minutes in temperatures in the upper 30s. EA charging is free for everyone today as an 'Earth Day Event'. The only negative of the E-Tron is the 220 mile range, but considering I rarely take long drives these days, it's not a major issue. We have a Lexus hybrid if need be. However with the rapidly growing number of EA chargers, and the fast charging of the Audi, I wouldn't hesitate to take this car on a long drive.

The more I hear and see what's going on, the more it seems I'll be more than happy to hold on to my E-Tron. I won't request my deposit back quite yet, but I'm surely getting very close.

 

[hmp10]

I find the lack of air suspension, if true, to be absolutely incredible in a car of this price.

I just re-watched the "Transport Evolved" ride-along with David Lickfold, who is in Lucid's chassis engineering group. Even though he got as specific in discussing the suspension as saying the car used Bilstein semi-active dampers, he nowhere mentioned an air suspension. I also looked more carefully at the Lucid website, and under "Suspension" on the specs page, all it says is "semi-active dampers". There is no mention of an air suspension.

On the other hand, Nikk Gordon-Bloomfield discussed how remarkably compliant the suspension was in soaking up potholes and pavement undulations while at the same time praising how taut and precise it kept the car in aggressive maneuvers. I suppose it's the results that count more than how they got there. And coil spring suspensions are less problem-prone than air suspensions. It's worth noting, though, that this car was an earlier beta model instead of the gamma cars that are now in testing. I'm wondering if it still had the air suspension that was touted in September 2020 but has perhaps since been abandoned?

I got the air suspension in my 2015 Tesla when it was still an option instead of standard as it now is. I remember the car press at the time said the air suspension did not contribute meaningfully to improvements in ride or handling over the coil-spring suspension, which they thought Tesla had calibrated nicely.

At the end of the day, I want to see what seasoned auto journalists say about the car's dynamics and ride comfort when they are finally able to test drive the car themselves independent of Lucid supervision.

I have to say, though, that I'm getting more and more worried that Lucid, finding itself much further behind their production time line than they expected, is beginning to drop features that are slowing them down. I had hoped that the additional time would allow them to resolve issues with things such as power-operated doors, under-seat toe room, and maybe even add an HUD to catch up with what is happening on that front since the car's original design. It looks as if things might be going in the opposite direction.

 

[Lucken]

I'm not going to rationalize, this car at this price should have air suspension...at least that's how I feel about it. I've had it in several cars and have not had any issues. I think it unquestionably improves the ride and provides the opportunity for adjusting ride height.

 

[hmp10]

Understandable. I will say, though, that I had a 2004 Lexus RX330 with the rare air suspension option. (I took the car with it because the dealer discounted the car heavily as other customers were not willing to pay for it, and the car was stuck on his lot.) It failed three weeks after the warranty expired and cost me $2400 to fix. By then Lexus has discontinued it altogether.

If Lucid scrapped it due to cost, that's an outrage given what they're charging for the high-end models. If they scrapped it because they couldn't get it to work properly, that's a different concern. Either way, I hope this turns out to be false information.

(When I called Lucid Sales a few months back to inquire whether its regenerative braking would be set up for one-pedal driving, I had to explain to the sales rep what regenerative braking was. I'm hoping the Design Studio associate and the media rep just didn't know what they were talking about.)

 

[Lucken]

To be honest, if they scrapped it because they couldn't get it to work properly, that would be a bit of a concern too. Almost any high-end automaker knows how to develop and implement adjustable air suspension. Why not Lucid? I agree with you that if it was ditched due to cost, shame, shame, shame.

I guess in the end this is all speculation and we'll have to see how it unfolds, but I think if we're honest, there are some red cautionary flags that we weren't aware of before.

 

[hmp10]

I agree. Every one of these new Lucid-sanctioned videos that are coming out just increases questions and doubt rather than dispels them. This is not the right publicity trajectory for Lucid at this point.

 

[Alex]

I was scouring the internet to find out if Lucid air Has an adjustable suspension and came across this article in Electrek. From the supposed Driving Settings screen, you can see that the suspension high is adjustable. But this article is over 4 years old, so who knows?

Lucid Air has a really cool dev menu of driving settings which we hope makes it to production

We’ve been looking at some details of the Lucid Air this week, after seeing the car up-close-and-personal at a private...

electrek.co

 

[hmp10]

I hope the air suspension has carried through to the production car. However, the alpha cars also had a switch above the rearview mirror to activate electrochromic dimming in the canopy, and we know what happened to that . . . and to acoustic glass . . . and to full-spectrum active noise cancellation . . . and (at least at production outset) to power-operated doors. This car is losing features as time passes rather than gaining them. And time just keeps on passing.

 

[Lucken]

Muddy waters, gentlemen, very muddy waters.

 

[Draw007]

Well, yesterday I spoke with my sales and marketing associate and he talked me off the cliff. As a result, I didn’t cancel my reservation and everything’s still a go. Before drawing any final conclusions, once a job 1 unit is available I’m going take the short drive to headquarters and get some seat time. I’m not interested in any VR or preproduction examples. Need the real deal.

 

[hmp10]

Despite my growing doubts, I'm hanging in, too, until some actual production cars get into the hands of reputable auto journalists and I can test drive a car over in Miami myself.

I just wish Lucid would quit trying to drum up publicity by letting half-baked cars be put in the spotlight. It's not in anyone's interest.

 

[hmp10]

I talked to Lucid Sales today, and they confirmed the Air will have a coil suspension. I asked whether that meant the car would not have height control features that would allow it to clear parking stops or driveway rises and dips and would lower the car for high-speed driving. I was told the car would not have those features.

The Porsche Taycan, the Mercedes EQS, the Audi E-Tron GT, the Tesla Models S and X, the Jaguar I-Pace all have air suspensions.

This completely mystifies me in a car that will sell well over $100K. I understand that coil springs have certain advantages over air springs for certain track uses, but has Lucid made some breakthrough in suspension design that makes coil springs a better choice than air springs for a road-going sports sedan? Something that the likes of Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, and Jaguar have missed?

 

[Lucken]

You can add my Audi E-Tron Sportback to those cars that have adjustable air suspensions, not just the GT. I don't buy that there are any inherent advantages for non-track drivers that would motivate such a decision. Cost yes, superiority no. However the cost issue should unquestionably be a non-issue at this price point. I continue to lose interest, but I'm not yet calling for my deposit back.

The list of odd decisions on their part is mounting.

 

[hmp10]

I agree that the list of seemingly odd decisions is mounting . . . and I think Lucid should explain some of them in more detail before we have to commit to our orders.

I've been doing some digging on the internet to try to figure out if there might be some advantage to coil spring suspension over air suspension. There is a lot of opinion, most favoring air suspension. However, I did find a controlled study done by Schneider, a commercial long-haulage fleet management company. Granted they were testing how suspensions treated cargo in semitrailers, but they found that spring suspensions actually responded more quickly and more precisely to road surface changes than air suspensions and that, contrary to expectations, spring suspensions were gentler on the freight.

Remember that Rawlinson was chief engineer at Jaguar and later head of advanced engineering at Lotus, both companies famed for handling and the underlying suspension engineering. It may be that Rawlinson felt Lucid was able to attain more precise handling without sacrificing comfort with spring suspension but was willing to sacrifice ride height adjustment to get it. It seems that Rawlinson has particular aspects of performance over which he obsesses more than most most automotive engineers, and he will make trade-offs that others won't. In one of his test drive videos he mentioned that steering precision was a particular bugaboo with him. Also, he made it clear some time ago that he wanted Lucid to have a "vault-like" feel unlike any other EV manufacturer has attained. To that end, he knowingly sacrificed the storage convenience and customer appeal of a hatchback design in order to put a massive lateral structure behind the rear seats. He also opted for thickly-framed door windows over the EQS' more visually-elegant frameless windows. (I'll have to drive the car to know how well it succeeded, but the solid thunk when he closes the driver's door in the test drive video is the most substantial one I've heard in a car.)

Bottom line, I really want to see what the mainstream auto press finds when they finally get to put the car through its paces.

 

[Lucken]

We shall see, but at this point it feels like we’re bending over backwards to rationalize Lucid’s decisions. That’s not a good place to be.

 

[hmp10]

As I sat watching Ford's reveal of its F-150 electric pickup last night, it occurred to me that Rivian and Lucid might be the last EV startups that have any chance of success. When I reserved my Lucid Air almost three years ago, it was on the assumption that I'd see my car within a couple of years at the most. As delivery dates kept moving out, I swallowed my frustration and hung in with my reservation as there was no other EV on the market that fit my desire for a more luxurious EV than my Tesla. The same goes for the Rivian R1S I reserved in early 2019 as a large people hauler.

Both Rivian and Lucid started developing their vehicles in something of a marketing desert landscape. But the next EV startup that confronts a multi-year climb to production will be doing so in a market where Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, Ford, GM, VW, Nissan, XPeng, Hyundai, Kia and others will have a broad spectrum of offerings already on the market. Granted, the legacy automakers still lag behind Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian on technology, but they will soon start to catch up. And though technology gaps might linger, they will probably not be enough to induce a customer to wait 3 to 5 years or more to get a better car from a new startup. When Tesla arrived in 2012, its technology lead over a Nissan Leaf in range and performance was almost unimaginable. Leads of that magnitude -- leads that caused Tesla aspirants to wait years to have their orders filled -- no longer exist. Would I wait a few extra months to get a Lucid Air Dream Edition over a Mercedes EQS? Yes. Would I wait three years? No.

The legacy automakers have been slow to show up for the game. But they're here now, and no future EV startup is going to have the 5 or more years Lucid and Rivian have needed to bring a new car to a market niche that had thus far been void of any contenders. The legacy automakers are now rapidly filling those voids with sports sedans, luxury sedans, SUVs, CUVs, pickup trucks . . . .

I think Lucid is going to clear the barricade to finish the march to long-term success. But only just. And assuming they actually start getting cars to customers by late this year.

 

[Lucken]

Some well made points. In my case I grew tired of waiting, as I'm sure many of Lucid's potential customers have. True I haven't pulled my reservation deposit, since in the scheme of things it's quite a minimal investment.

However rather than wait, I've been driving the Audi E-tron Sportback which has exceeded my expectations. Lucid will have to prove they can engineer a car that is both as quiet as the E-Tron and with a ride as luxurious as the E-tron. They'll have to work less hard to engineer a car with a better range or one that handles better than the Audi...both not its strong points. Tipping the scales at nearly 6,000 pounds allows Audi to perform wonders for the sound-proofing and road noise isolation in the E-Tron as well as the wonderful ride! However I knew going into it that sports car handling was not to be had nor was it high on my list coming off the Jaguar I-Pace. In actuality, the Audis virtues were exactly what I was looking for at this point in time. Of course greater range would have been appreciated, but its range was a known quantity.

Obviously all models of the Lucid will far surpass the range of the Audi, but its the other qualities that I've grown to appreciate in the E-tron that will need to be duplicated or surpassed.

Time will tell, but there are only so many grains of sand left in that hourglass.