TLDR; The customer care experience has been pretty good, but not great. I waited 2 hours for a tow and it took another hour to get it loaded, driven the 2 miles to my house and unloaded. Getting an Audi Q5 as a loaner.
My initial call was to customer care (CC) who was very cordial and empathetic to the situation. My exact location was remotely determined by CC. CC recommended that I exit the car, lock it and wait 15 minutes. She offered to stay on the line with me (I declined - I'm sure some customers want to vent). She called back exactly 15 minutes later and sounded truly disappointed that the problem had not been resolved. I was then transferred to roadside assistance (RA).
My initial call with RA was irritating for several reasons: 1) The RA appears to be a third party with little data sharing - had to get my exact location again and was not clear in what they needed. 2) The operator was difficult to understand due to a heavy accent. 3) Kept referring to 'my policy' and asking me questions about which service center it should be towed to 4) I indicated the closest SC was GI in Chicago and the RA operator wanted ME to confirm the address. It's a damn Lucid location! 5) I offered to have the car towed to my home just a few minutes away, but was ignored.
One hour later, no ETA for a tow. I received a call from RA with different operator who was extremely helpful and empathetic. She suggested towing the car to my home (Brilliant!
) and arrange transport separately. She was very concerned about my safety and initially confused me by referring to the car as her/she. Another 30 minutes passes and still no ETA - although the text messages updating me say they are still working on it. I suggest a local towing company I know is the dominate operator in this area. 30 minutes later, the flatbed shows up.
At this point it's been two hours since the failure and initial call to CC while I've been sitting in the car on the shoulder. With all this time on my hands, I refreshed my memory about towing preparation from the manual (which is out of date already - there is no Towing Mode on my screen. I disabled the Tilt alarm instead). I got the recovery eye out of the trunk and attached it to the front of the car. If you've delved into this detail, you'll know that the location for this massive eyelet for winches is off to the side - more on later.
The flatbed shows up and hooks his winch to the recovery eye. I put the car in Neutral, disable the Tilt alarm and exit the car. As the car is being pulled onto the bed, the car goes in Park locking the wheels with the parking brake (I am pretty sure the fob was in the car, but I don't remember). Here is where some fun starts... and the towing company insurance probably doesn't cover. I have to stay in the car and steer and make sure the car does not go back into Park while the winch pulls the car onto the bed (maybe the fob was in my pocket). The winch had trouble and I had to repeatedly engage the brake while the winch cable was sorted out due to the offset location of the recovery eye. After about 15 minutes, the car is secured on the flatbed. We drive the 2 miles to my house.
The driver offers to back the car into the garage - which is great since there is a lot of landscape construction going on around our house.
Plan A - I put the car in Neutral, disable the Tilt alarm and leave the fob in the car and exit the car (while the bed is tilted). While bringing the car down the bed, the winch cable jumps the spool and gets jammed in the gears with the weight of the car keeping the cable very taut (again due to the offset location of the recovery eye). I fetch a crowbar and the tow operator tries his best to unjam the cable to no avail.
Plan B - I'm nervous about leveling the bed as the car is just at the edge of the bed. So we put the car in drive and hope that it could turtle enough up the incline to relieve the cable tightness so that it can be unhooked. Nope. Turtle mode up an incline did not work.
Plan C - Holding my breath, I got in the car and put it in Park. The Tow operator leveled the bed and then pushed the car forward enough to unhook it (after I put it in N). Now, the tow operator tilted the bed with an unsecured car while I am in the driver's seat (in Park now). He got behind the car to keep it from rolling too far (I kid you not). While in N, I feathered the brakes to back the car into the garage.
Failure to garage: 3 hours.
Lucid is now bending over backwards to arrange covered transport to Chicago - could be picked up today or tomorrow. They are also arranging a rental with Enterprise (no Hertz within a 50 mile radius? There's one at our local airport!).
My confidence in the car is quite low now. I really love the car and hope there is a rational explanation for these failures.
