‘The most efficient EV we’ve tested’
Lucid Air Pure remains the epitome of (relatively) cost conscious EV efficiency
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, ever Lucid I have driven — they are decidedly second rate.
Not only is the Lucid Air dramatically more powerful — the top-of-the-line Sapphire boasts 1,234 horsepower compared wth 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.
THE LUCID AIR HAS THE INTERIOR OF A TRUE LUXURY CAR
It’s not just that the Air uses better materials — more on that in a moment — but that the fit and finish is truly up to German luxury sedan standards. Gaps are precisely consistent, nothing looks like it’s going to fall off — like far too much Tesla trim — the buttonry, that which remains, feels robust. Vastly different in style to any other luxury sedan, the Lucid’s interior still smacks of quality, however.
The cabin is clothed in a combination of Purluxe synthetic leather, Alcantara and some sort of denim material, all, as one might supposed, made of at least partially recycled material.
What switchgear there is — air conditioning controls and some steering wheelmounted 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 cubic foot frunk.
That said, the Air’s Apillars are huge. Humungous even. You can easily hide a Mitsubishi Mirage or a pedestrian crossing the street in its left-side blind spot. I get that crash worthiness is an increasingly important criteria these days, but surely visibility shouldn’t take a back seat to cabin impregnability.
LUCID’S INFOTAINMENT REALLY IS A DREAM
Dreamdrive is actually Lucid’s Adas-configuration system, but it, like the rest of the Air’s digital pathways are pretty well organized. Trip monitoring — once such a basic function, but now too often complicated by submenus — is not only a doddle but wonderfully informative. And though normally, as frequent readers will attest, I hate digital controls when a physical switch or button is so much easier, the ease of adjusting the outside mirrors via too often infernal touchscreen is actually quite simple. Not only that, but the switchgear that is present — like the aforementioned cruise control switchgear — is most excellent.
Even better yet, Lucid combines the best of technology and has created, in the upper left of the driver’s instrument panel, a set of digital buttons that control everything from the charge port’s door to the main cabin door lock. Said driver’s display, meanwhile, is a gigantic 39-inch screen that contains everything from speed and charge status in the centre to navigation and audio controls in its far right.
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.
Also, the air conditioning controls are, to quote my dearly departed old man, all over Hell’s half acre. The temperature and fan speed control switches, as I said, are well constructed and situated. But then, for some reason, Lucid puts the front windshield “Max” button over on the left side of the dashboard and complements these scattered controls with more in the touchscreen.
Note to Lucid; anything we are likely to use while driving should be a physical button and all controls of a similar nature or subject should be in one place.
Nonetheless, the Lucid’s man/machine interface is, referring back to the original thesis of this test, vastly superior to Tesla’s; there’s plenty of information to be had, but it is displayed and controlled in a much more accessible manner. A single-motor Air Pure can sprint to 100 kilometres an 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.
And I ran out of gumption — you really don’t want to run afoul of California’s CHIPS — before it ran out of top speed. In other words, just because it isn’t Ludicrous — or Sapphire, Lucid’s equivalent — doesn’t make it lesser. Just manageable.
Indeed, the only reason I can think to want more Lucid is because a rear-wheel-drive luxury sedan would be such an anomaly in our winter wonder land and any move up the marque’s trim ladder would get you a second electric motor and all-wheeldrive.
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, drive, 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 too. 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 4 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 kilometres an hour Range Finder average on Ontario’s less policed 407 — it squeezed out almost exactly 500 kilometres 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 kilometres, 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 kilometres an hour — but it also costs more than twice as much. Even the Lucid’s digital trip information is quite accurate, it’s onboard computer only five per cent optimistic compared with my calculations.
Feel free — again, building on that comparison with Tesla — to experience Elon Musk‘s deliberate phantasms on predicted range and energy efficiency.
It’s also worth noting that, despite being more energy efficient than a Hyundai Kona or Ioniq5, the Air is no puny econocar. It stretches some 4,975-millimetres from bumper-bumper-to-bumper and rides on a semi-monstrous 2,960-mm wheelbase.
It’s a giant of a sedan so credit excellent aerodynamics — the Lucid boasts an incredibly slippery 0.197 coefficient of drag — and some serious lightweighting (the Pure weighs but 2,058 kilograms).
All this to say that one of the issues facing the electrification of our fleets is our continuing desire for inefficient sport utility vehicles and pickups.
The only reason that the Air is not a best-seller — and why Lucid is in some notinconsiderable financial turmoil — is that it is a sedan in a world, again, desiring SUVS.
THE PRESSURE ON GRAVITY
The only reason that the Air is not a best-seller — 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 of the company’s upcoming release, a sport brute named, you guessed it, 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.
Author’s note: To all those Tesla owners who will claim extraordinary ranges in their personal cars, please save your breath. We’ve heard it all before but seen precious actual physical proof that Tesla’s range is superior — or even equal — to its competitors. If you really want to show us up, volunteer your late-model Model S and we’ll put it to our test. You are more than welcome to witness the entire event — indeed, we encourage you to drive along with us — to certify the process. We welcome your challenge.