2024 Lucid Air Pure RWD a powerful, efficient EV
Superior interior, better range make this ride first rate
For the life of me, I can't understand why Tesla is considered the best maker of battery-powered sedans in the United States. Oh, the Supercharger network is an incredible feat of reward trouncing risk. But the cars themselves? Well, compared to the Lucid I'm driving — indeed, every Lucid I have driven — they are decidedly second rate.
Not only is the Lucid Air dramatically more powerful — the top-ofthe-line Sapphire boasts 1,234 horsepower compared with the Model S Plaid's 1,020-hp — but, even in this, its least expensive form — the rear-wheel-drive Pure trim we just tested — the Lucid offers more spacious seating, more repeatable range, better highway comportment and, perhaps most telling of all, vastly superior interior build quality.
It's not just that the Air uses better materials, but that the fit and finish is truly up to German luxury sedan standards.
The cabin is clothed in a combination of PurLuxe synthetic leather, Alcantara and some sort of denim material, all, as one might suppose, made of at least partially recycled material.
What switchgear there is — air conditioning controls and some steering wheel-mounted cruise control widgets — are tastefully designed and well-executed. The cruise control's rotary speed controller, for instance, should serve as a model for all such switchgear.
It's also pretty darned roomy inside. Oh, the sloping roofline does mean rear seat passengers will not be playing centre for the Knicks — rear headroom is a middling, but not terrible, 961 millimetres — but otherwise there's plenty of leg, shoulder and knee room in both rows of seats.
The rear trunk is accommodating — there's a total of 22.1 cubic feet available back there — including a little false floor cubby — and, of course, there being no engine, there's a not inconsiderable 10 cu. ft frunk.
My complaints with the Lucid's controls are few. First, the steering wheel adjuster is, like the mirrors, a part of the touchscreen system which makes it more complicated than the little toggle normally found on the steering column. Making the matter worse is that the range of adjustment is less than what I expect from a luxury car. It was the only comfort complaint I had with the Air, but it did compromise my seating position somewhat.
A single-motor Air Pure can sprint to 100 kilometres per hour in less than five seconds. Out on the open road, it'll pass lethargic semis with the same alacrity as a twin turbo Mercedes.
The only reason I can think to want more Lucid is because a rearwheel-drive luxury sedan would be such an anomaly in our winter wonderland. Even without the traction limitations of winter, the Lucid's rear traction control system has a hard time containing the permanent-magnet motor's 430 horses, the electronic nannie kicking in even on completely dry, perfectly manicured California tarmac.
According to Car and Driver, the base AWD version of the Air scoots to 100 km/h in a second less than the RWD Pure. That's not because of power — it only had 50 more hp — but the result of distributing all that torque to four rubber patches, not two. So yes, only one electric motor does offer some compromises, but a paucity of power isn't one of them.
In another bid to make the Pure more price competitive — it is, at $96,800, the cheapest Lucid available — the single motor is energized by an 88-kilowatt-hour battery. That's four kWh smaller than the twin-motor Lucid Air Touring I tested last time I was in California. And yet, in my 75 miles per hour test — just slightly below my normal 125 km an hour Range Finder average on Ontario's less policed 407 — it squeezed almost exactly 500 km out of a “tank” full. That's pretty much in line with what other independent testers are getting in similar conditions by the way; C&D, for instance achieved 480 klicks at the same speed.
Two things stand about those figures. The first is that the Pure, despite its smaller battery, eked out 38 more kilometres than the bigger-batteried AWD Touring. More importantly, that works out to an average of 17.6 kWh per 100 km, virtually identical to the new-for-2025 Porsche Taycan that I tested in late January. Now, to be sure, said Taycan Turbo is much more powerful than the Air and a mite quicker — more than a second to 100 km an hour — but it also costs more than twice as much.
THE PRESSURE ON GRAVITY
The only reason the Air is not a bestseller — and why Lucid is in some not-inconsiderable financial turmoil — is that it is a sedan in a world, again, desiring SUVs. That puts an enormous amount of pressure on the company's upcoming release, a sport brute named Gravity.
Will it — through aerodynamic sorcery and novel battery technology — break the paradigm of glutinous battery-powered SUVs or will even Lucid's mastery of the efficient electron succumb to the inefficiency that is the square-ish SUV?
We'll have our answer sometime later this year when the Gravity is finally put to the test, but in the meantime, the Air Pure remains the epitome of (relatively) cost conscious EV efficiency.