Would you sell your DE for what you paid

[Bill55]

This sounds like an excuse, because it partially is, but, Tesla still has issues with lock/unlock and they have a 10 year head start on software. Why does it matter? Because only Tesla and Lucid are pure EVs in my opinion.

It’s the arrogance of not buying off the shelf key fob lock unlock technology and doing it themselves instead. I don’t want Lucid to benchmark Tesla. I want them to benchmark Toyota. ICE or EV. Homelink is homelink and better on the mirror. Lock/Unlock same ICE or EV. as are mirrors, radio……. Being an EV is not a reason to implement solved car systems in a shitty way.

 

[hydbob]

It’s the arrogance of not buying off the shelf key fob lock unlock technology and doing it themselves instead. I don’t want Lucid to benchmark Tesla. I want them to benchmark Toyota. ICE or EV. Homelink is homelink and better on the mirror. Lock/Unlock same ICE or EV. as are mirrors, radio……. Being an EV is not a reason to implement solved car systems in a shitty way.

In this regard, I agree for some things that they are just fine as is. Tech for being tech sake is not something I necessarily agree with!

 

[Bill55]

In this regard, I agree for some things that they are just fine as is. Tech for being tech sake is not something I necessarily agree with!

I very much want to see Lucid succeed. I am a day 1 iPhone user. On day 1 it was not a very good phone. I‘m ok with buggy software to some degree. What I hate is Lucid’s face plant on some very basic functionality. Waiting for 1.2 and I’ll start with a fresh perspective.

 

[borski]

1.2.1 hasn’t pushed down to the car yet. If I don’t see it tomorrow, I will call and ask customer care to manually push it down. There was one previous update I had to have manually pushed down.

I look forward to seeing if it makes you happier. I have found lock/unlock entirely consistent in this version, along with much much snappier pilot panel interactions.

 

[borski]

I very much want to see Lucid succeed. I am a day 1 iPhone user. On day 1 it was not a very good phone. I‘m ok with buggy software to some degree. What I hate is Lucid’s face plant on some very basic functionality. Waiting for 1.2 and I’ll start with a fresh perspective.

I was also a day 1 iPhone user and it similarly had extremely basic face plants. FFS, how long did it take them to implement copy/paste, for example?!

Now I would never switch to Android. Give it time.

 

[Psymac]

I very much want to see Lucid succeed. I am a day 1 iPhone user. On day 1 it was not a very good phone. I‘m ok with buggy software to some degree. What I hate is Lucid’s face plant on some very basic functionality. Waiting for 1.2 and I’ll start with a fresh perspective.

Given where iPhone, as well as Mac, was several years ago, I'd say you won't have long to experience a different perspective. And given the competition (Tesla, EQS), why settle for less? Lucid appears to have exactly the right idea, "Post Luxury" and in many ways they are already there, so no worries for me about future implementations.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

The unlocking/locking thing will drive me nuts. But I’m ok with that. I’m a realist. Tesla has shipped cars with no USB ports, missing brake pads, and mismatched tires and all of those things happened more than once. My only other high end EV options are the EQS which looks like a suppository, and the Taycan which has half the range, half the storage, just as many software bugs and is slower (but by most accounts drives the best). I’ll take what I can get. I believe in Lucid as a company, invested back when it was CCIV, and in my experience my DA as well as the rep in the studio in NYC were very focused on quality service, and they’re not half-assing it like Tesla or lying to customers like Faraday or Fisker. They really want to get it right, so if the door handle is glitchy and Alexa is half baked, I’ll accept that, because I don’t think it’s that they don’t care, they’re just in year one of building the most advanced EV on the planet.

 

[Bill55]

I was also a day 1 iPhone user and it similarly had extremely basic face plants. FFS, how long did it take them to implement copy/paste, for example?!

Now I would never switch to Android. Give it time.

The analogy only goes so far. The iPhone was a touch screen computer, that also had connectivity. Lucid’s replacement for the ICE is awesome. They literally did not try to reinvent the wheel, or brakes, or suspension. The team doing the rest of the car in my opinion bit off more than they could chew when there were off the shelf systems that were fully baked.

 

[CLTGT]

Lucid’s future has to be more than “better than, or equal to, Tesla”. Lucid needs to displace traditional ICE buyers s well. As such, it needs to be benchmarked against those cars as well, just as Peter Rawlinson has said many times in the past. We, on this site, don’t need to be giving Lucid a pass in this respect. Peter has said many times that his competition is the MB S Class and not Tesla. Last I checked, MB has these things down pat. If Peter himself says the MB S class is his competition, well, we should hold him to that.

 

[hydbob]

Just as a comparison if we are talking MB here...this thread here https://mbworld.org/forums/eqs/837174-my-new-eqs580-3-week-owner-review.html

I've had my EQS580 for about 3 weeks now and thought I now have enough seat time to post a review. As context, I took delivery of an EQS580 Premium Trim with only one option - the heated steering wheel. While I have a more loaded EQS580 scheduled for production in about 10 weeks, I have been very impressed with the equipment level of the base model, and even in this configuration I find it stands up very well against the competition.

Overall NPS Score: 10 - I would buy this car again and I plan to in 120 days. Nonetheless there is some room for improvement - Mercedes please take notice.

Things I love:
1) Mercedes build quality and attention to detail. This car has incredible attention to detail throughout. Hundreds of neat touches which make the car extremely livable and convenient. A few of my favorites are the AR navigation, the touch-id and face recognition driver profiles, the traffic light in the hyperscreen, the thought put into where to use physical buttons, the detail and design of the door handles. Also the fact that they didn't skimp on a roof blind which is something I have been using a lot and enjoying after driving a Tesla which was often flooded with too much sunlight on a bright day.
2) Hyperscreen and Zero-Layer MBUX. The Hyperscreen is amazing. I generally hate the proliferation of touch screens in cars, and generally preferred the scroll wheel like in iDrive - until now. The Hyperscreen version of MBUX with its zero-layer design is the best car UI I have ever used. I am amazed how intuitive and easy to navigate it is. Also the sheer size of the screen and the giant icons makes it easy to see and touch things without much distraction. The features you need are always within single click reach as shown in photos below.
3) Power delivery. Like all EVs the power delivery is excellent. The car feels fast, sporty, and incredibly responsive. While it is not as fast as my 680hp Panamera Turbo S e-Hybrid, in day to day driving (non launch control) the EQS580 feels faster. Because the power band is instantly accessible at any time. The car also feels really planted. I was driving in 20 degrees using summer tires over the weekend's winter blast, and the car always felt totally planted.
4) Design. The car is beautiful. I am not saying that some aspects of the design couldn't be better, however the car gets noticed and draws excitement. I was at the St Regis in Atlanta for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and people were coming up to the car and taking photos. An older French guy called his son over and was raving about the amazing design. I've had some of my colleagues at work do the same. I even have people come over and talk about how they love the front end (which is not the forte of this design). The Interior design is a true work of art. So are the wheels, the exterior and interior lighting, etc. There is so much design excellence here and more than in any other EV.
5) Handling, steering and ride quality. The ride quality is amazing, and the handling is pretty good. The last time I drove an S-Class for an extended period of time was a W221 S-Class in Germany which I rented from Hertz. I hated that car. It felt like driving a boat. The EQS has that incredible magic carpet ride, but at the same time it feels alive in the corners. The steering is amazing - responsive, sharp, precise. I have taken this car on a spirited drive on a winding country road, and I enjoyed it. It's not a Porsche, but it in Sport Mode it is as good as a BMW 550i. That is pretty amazing. At the other end of the spectrum, in comfort mode it is so smooth. My 20 month old son sleeps better in the back of the EQS than in any other car. I love that. It's an S-Class in Comfort mode and a BMW 550i in Sport mode. Amazing. The turning radius has been mentioned a lot, but I have to say it is also amazing.
6) Configurability. This is normal for German cars, but since many cross-shop this with Tesla, I have to highlight the ability to configure drive modes is quite special and really amazing.
7) Comfort. The car is very comfortable. I already mentioned the ride quality. I don't even have the best seats on my base model, and yet the seats are still excellent. The rear seat has a higher rise than Tesla S and Lucid Air, and as such it is a much more comfortable rear seat and the best of any EV sedan I have been in. The sense of space is also amazing. I installed a Nuna Revv revolving convertible car seat (takes up a lot of space) and even then there is bags of room. The retractable roof blind is a huge convenience that I open and close every day. I like having the glass roof, but in direct sunlight at midday, it is not so cool. I'm still dumbfounded that Lucid has no way to block out overhead sunlight.
8) Very stable software. The Hyperscreen has never crashed on me after 3 weeks. I couldn't say that about my 2021 Tesla.

Things that could be better:
1) Brakes. I have another post on this. The first couple of days I found myself having to slam the brakes a couple of times due to underbraking. While the brakes are large and capable of rapidly slowing the vehicle, the programming of the brake pedal makes the brakes feel laggy and unresponsive. This is an issue specific to the non-AMG EQS. I think this is a huge fail in terms of brake pedal calibration and Mercedes needs to rethink this and update it. In fact I might write a letter to the NHTSA to see if they can force Mercedes hand.
2) Voice recognition. For some reason MBUX Voice recognition does not work as well as on our 2020 GLE. If anyone has any tips on this please let me know.
3) A few Tesla features like walk-away lock, phone key, gps suspension height, and GPS garage door opener. I am not a Tesla fan - i find their cars so basic and under-equipped that even a Ford has more features. But these specific software features are really well implemented and I would love if Mercedes copied them. The phone key and walk away door lock in particular are things I miss every day. I often find I forget to lock the car, and then lock it from the app later. At least the app reminds you.
4) Laggy UI in some instances. There are two instances where lag is evident and i fear the issue may be a substandard graphics processor. One is the red light camera view, where the cars crossing the screen appear to be choppy. The second is when i stream Disney Plus on the web browser and the video is choppy.
5) Audio System. The Burmester 3D is good, but when you are used to the Burmester 4D, then you find this sounds like a Bose or a Harman Kardon in comparison.
6) Side window shades - or lack thereof. Side window shades are not as important as roof shade, so Mercedes did slightly better than Lucid which has the side shades but no roof shade. But it is nonetheless a surprising omission. My much cheaper 2012 BMW 550i had side window shades. I don't understand why the EQS does not - not even as an option.
7) Multicontour massage seats, heated steering wheel and 4-zone climate should be standard even if it raises base price. These features I think should be standard on a $120k car. Even if that means they need to make the price $121k vs $119k they should have done that.
8) Traditional buttons vs capacitive touch ones for seat memory. For some reason I always find myself struggling with the seat memory button. The capacitive touch buttons on the steering wheel work fine, but the seat memories are so closely spaced, that I often get the wrong response.

 

[Bbq9]

In this regard, I agree for some things that they are just fine as is. Tech for being tech sake is not something I necessarily agree with!

this is what I meant above

I believe / feel that lucid is being slightly more pragmatic in the partner vs reinvent that say Tesla.
however there are obviously some things that weren’t broke, are not core differentiator, and didn’t need to reimagined (badly)

 

[digiboxer]

Because every other car maker in the world has lock/unlock that works flawlessly. We are not talking about level 3 self driving or anything sophisticated. We are talking about unlocking the car, closing the garage door, and changing sources on the entertainment system.

This is exactly the point. The person who claimed (believably from experience) that the best software releases are at best only 75% good, misses the point: which 75%?? If you miss on the 3D imaging I can wait. If you miss on opening the damn doors--or my garage door??

 

[Bunnylebowski]

That was helpful to read the owner EQS review. Sounds like there's plenty of positives (I have MBUX in my car and his review is accurate, I'd add the capacitive buttons on the wheel mess it up all the time by accident though if you bump them). But the EQS still looks like a lozenge and the brakes don't work like brakes according to everyone. My college girlfriend had a Merc 300D and it took about 2 miles to stop that car, I don't want that feeling ever again. The Lucid's 800hp + more than 100 miles more range + faster charging + big frunk + elite handling with glitches in other areas works for me. I can wait 0-3 seconds for the door handles to open. And my MB didn't home link correctly to my garage door, so I use my garage door opener button. Or phone. That has never once bothered me. Also has anyone experienced Mercedes active lane keep assist? If your turn signal is on and you steer over a solid white line it will auto-brake and steer back into your current lane that you were trying to merge out of. It's a nightmare when you have to merge from an on-ramp onto a multi-lane highway. I complained to MB about that like 5 times and there has never been an OTA to adjust the sensitivity or extreme jolt when it activates. I'd rather have a car with predictable brakes and that doesn't try to steer me out of the lane I'm trying to steer into.

 

[Mountain Man]

Because every other car maker in the world has lock/unlock that works flawlessly. We are not talking about level 3 self driving or anything sophisticated. We are talking about unlocking the car, closing the garage door, and changing sources on the entertainment system.

I found a solution to closing the garage door: I’m going to replace all my garage doors with Alexa-enabled openers. That way I don’t have to deal with Homelink popping up or disappearing at inopportune moments. I’ll just say “Alexa, close the garage door.” . (Or else just yell to my wife out the open window to close the garage door!)

 

[hydbob]

I found a solution to closing the garage door: I’m going to replace all my garage doors with Alexa-enabled openers. That way I don’t have to deal with Homelink popping up or disappearing at inopportune moments. I’ll just say “Alexa, close the garage door.” . (Or else just yell to my wife out the open window to close the garage door!)

Ooh I didn't even think of that...do they make those for gates as well...

Also my reasoning for posting the EQS review is to show that even these legacy guys and who Lucid is competing against still is having issues and one of them specifically being the lock/unlock thing with doors.

 

[borski]

I found a solution to closing the garage door: I’m going to replace all my garage doors with Alexa-enabled openers. That way I don’t have to deal with Homelink popping up or disappearing at inopportune moments. I’ll just say “Alexa, close the garage door.” . (Or else just yell to my wife out the open window to close the garage door!)

That’s exactly what I did. I don’t mind the Homelink thing because what’s a couple button presses, but I have a MyQ garage opener and I hooked it up to Alexa through an IFTTY routine, so now as I drive away I just ask the car’s Alexa to “close the garage” and I can do it at *any* distance away.

 

[MarathonGuy]

The analogy only goes so far. The iPhone was a touch screen computer, that also had connectivity. Lucid’s replacement for the ICE is awesome. They literally did not try to reinvent the wheel, or brakes, or suspension. The team doing the rest of the car in my opinion bit off more than they could chew when there were off the shelf systems that were fully baked.

At some point in time Lucid had to fire their software head (you can assume why) and had to start back up with M. Bell and M. Burgraff and play the catch-up game.

 

[hydbob]

It's worth noting that they know the lock/unlock is a big issue as it's been addressed in 2? Updates already.

 

[Mountain Man]

My friend, who is a VP of software development at Starz, says it will be virtually impossible to fully “fix” any software problems in any car (Tesla, Lucid, etc) because the OTA updates are just “patches” and they’ll never be able to identify all of the necessary patches in billions of lines of code that only sporadically cause glitches. A patch here causes a glitch elsewhere, on and on for infinity.

I have no idea what any of this means, but it seems like he might be right…

 

[borski]

My friend, who is a VP of software development at Starz, says it will be virtually impossible to fully “fix” any software problems in any car (Tesla, Lucid, etc) because the OTA updates are just “patches” and they’ll never be able to identify all of the necessary patches in billions of lines of code that only sporadically cause glitches. A patch here causes a glitch elsewhere, on and on for infinity.

I have no idea what any of this means, but it seems like he might be right…

No offense to your friend but that might explain why STARZ sucks, haha.

That isn’t true at all. You could update the entire OS of the car with an OTA update if necessary. The fact that it’s written in Java can cause challenges, as it’s not inherently a memory-safe language, but the idea that fixing a bug necessarily causes bugs elsewhere is hogwash.

It is true that making a truly perfect bug-free system is extremely hard, because provable software is hard, but that’s true of literally anything. That’s why it takes years to build things we send to space, since patching the software on something in space is… quite a bit harder, but even that is still doable.

Bugs will get fixed, and not every bug fix causes a new bug.