Before I get into the details, let me first state, emphatically, I love Lucid’s Highway Assist feature. It allowed this 72 old fella to drive multiple days in a row +/- 600 miles a day. I discovered that it made the long drives very pleasant, arriving each evening at our hotel with enough energy and get up and go to run over to the local EA station and charge up for the next day.
Here is a secret I discovered. First, if I hang my left hand, using just the three middle fingers on the lower, left most portion of the steering wheel, then just the weight of my hand puts enough torque on the wheel where the HA would steer the car by itself for hours. It was very comfortable to keep my hand there.
Now, with the above stated, let me also share that there are a few driving conditions where using the HA by itself could be very dangerous. These are all fixable, in my opinion, with a software upgrade so I have high hopes Lucid will address these issues in future updates. But, until they do, please be aware of these hazardous situations.
First, and this is the most dangerous in my opinion, is that the HA tends to keep the car closer to the right side of the lane you are driving in. If you are driving in the slow lane (or right lane), this typically does not present a problem. However, if you are driving in the speed lane (or left lane) and are passing a truck, you can very easily find that the truck you are approaching or passing will impinge on your driving space and the HA doesn’t adjust for this. As one who has driven a 40-foot RV bus about 20,000 miles, I believe that this can happen when the truck driver starts to watch you in his left side mirror. His slight turning of his head to the left results in a very slight increase in pressure on the left hand, resulting in the truck edging over to the left and, sometimes, into your lane. In using the HA, I found that this happens around 10 to 20% of the time I would pass a truck. I would need to jerk the Lucid’s wheel to the left to avoid getting pinched or even hit by the truck. I would like to have the HA hug closer to the left lane stripe instead of the right lane marker when I am in the left-hand lane. It would give me about a foot more space to allow for the truck driver to correct his impingement.
Here are a couple of hints to deal with this until Lucid corrects the software. First, if passing a line of trucks, simply switch to ACC as you approach. This keeps your speed up and allows you to steer the car smoothly if one of the trucks starts impinging on you space. My wife would get annoyed with my jerking the wheel over if I was still using the HA when this happened. The second hint is to watch the front left wheel of the truck you are approaching. Where this wheel goes, the rest of the truck will immediately follow. If it starts to edge toward your lane, be ready to pull your car to the left. Sometime, you can add a little torque to the wheel and move the car a bit to the left without breaking off the HA, but more times than not, I would still breakoff the HA in a jerky manner and get dirty looks from my wife..
The second potentially dangerous situation in using the HA is when going around shaper curves at a relatively high speed. The Lucid just loves taking curves at higher speeds and it is very easy to simple rely on the HA feature where this happens as you're driving down the freeway in mountainous areas. However, if the speed is too fast or the curve too sharp, the HA simply releases without telling you. Unless you are paying close attention, you are will discover that you are beginning to run off the road and need to quickly correct.
The third potentially dangerous situation is when approach exit lanes or entrance lanes. Here the right lane marker is moving to the exit ramp or is missing as the entrance lane starts to merge with the freeway. The former situation happened to me numerous times and I found I was heading for the exit when I wanted to go straight. In the latter situation, the car sometimes gets confused and the HA rudely jerks the car around or even shuts off.
If you have experienced other situations, please let me know as I wish to keep track of them for future references. Thanks
