The Lucid Air is probably the best electric car you can buy in the United States, if not anywhere in the world. It is extraordinarily efficient, using a smaller battery pack than most to go farther than almost anyone. It’s also now the Guinness World Record holder for the EV that’s gone the longest distance on a single charge.
This news excited me greatly. Not only am I a fan of the car, but I previously worked at a film production company that, during the pandemic, got tasked with assisting in the achievement of various Guinness World Records. While some people utilize enormous skill in order to get a GWR, most of the skill I remember utilizing was in creatively selecting records to beat and producing them in a way that the client couldn’t lose.
This isn’t to say it was easy. While the Guinness World Records organization will happily take your money to adjudicate a record attempt, the actual act of confirming the records was something the judges took quite seriously.
For the record involving the fastest car slalom, I remember there being all sorts of requirements, including having a surveyor confirm we weren’t cheating by driving downhill. There were tons of rules, and the organization asked for proof from multiple angles. We also found out, too late, that the original recordholders had used narrow poles instead of cones.
You can watch the video above. The driver was teen karting star Chloe Chambers, who is currently killing it in the F1 Academy.
My favorite one was probably the “indoor speed record” set by the Porsche Taycan:
The biggest issue here was finding a space indoors that was big enough, and finding a path through it that wouldn’t result in the driver, our old friend Leh Keen, killing himself by crashing into a support column. While this relies on the Porsche Taycan being incredibly quick, I do think this record is beatable if you’re able to get access to the Boeing Assembly plant in Washington and clear out enough space. Call ahead.
Here was a strange one: Someone found out that the lowest drivable point in America was a mine in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan large enough to accommodate a car. If you started there and drove to Pikes Peak, you’d cover more than 15,000 feet of ascent (as measured straight up).
The last attempt that I worked on very briefly before joining The Autopian was the attempt by Porsche to drive a 911 to the highest drivable point on the planet, which is up a freaking volcano. It took multiple attempts and was made into a great documentary by my old colleagues at TangentVector. If you have Amazon Prime, you should definitely go watch it.
With my background in helping produce some of these types of projects, I do appreciate the creative ways in which something is accomplished.
Here’s a bit from the Lucid press release on what the company achieved, and let’s see if you can guess how they went almost 750 miles without recharging:
Covering an incredible range of 1,205 kilometers (~ 749 miles) without charging, the Lucid Air Grand Touring1 conducted its record-breaking journey between St. Moritz, Switzerland and Munich, Germany, including alpine roads, highways, and secondary roads. Lucid exceeded the previous record for the longest journey of 1,045 kilometers set in June 2025 by 160 kilometers.
“This range record represents a significant milestone – it’s yet another clear demonstration of the technological edge that defines Lucid,” says Eric Bach, Senior Vice President of Product and Chief Engineer at Lucid. “Our Lucid products combine world class vehicle efficiency with the most advanced drive units, ultra-high voltage architecture, and battery management technology available today, which lets a Lucid travel further with less energy than any other vehicles.”
What an interesting place to start and finish! The journey begins in St. Moritz in Switzerland and ends in Munich, Germany. Let’s look at a map:
As you can see, the EV starts at the top of a mountain (over 5,000 feet above sea level) and drives down to a place that’s much lower. What’s curious here is that even the longest drive is only about 220 miles.
How did the team pull this off? My guess is that they took an extremely slow and circuitous route through Davos and various towns, so they ended up going downhill for as long as possible. Is this cheating? Nope. The Lucid Air is already one of the longest-range cars there is, so this isn’t like taking a Chevy Bolt straight downhill. I think it’s just being clever, and I respect Lucid for figuring out a route that takes them to this record.
Also, even with the assistance of a long downhill drive, the car only started at about a mile up, which isn’t even that high on the scale of mountains. In Europe, the Lucid Air Grand Touring has a range of almost 600 miles on the WLTP cycle test, so it only extended itself a little bit. The overall efficiency of the vehicle is 13.5 kwh/100 km (or 62 miles), which is incredible. That, and a reasonably large 117 kWh battery pack, are why this is possible.
Congrats to Lucid, though now I want to borrow a Grand Touring and start at Pikes Peak and try to beat this record myself. What’s the point of having the Rockies if you don’t use them?
Top graphic images: Lucid; Guinness Book of World Records
When the Lucid Air Pure gets into the sub-$30Kish range used (still a ways off) I’m going to be sorely tempted to buy one as my first electric car, even though it’s not available as a wagon or as a hatchback and only as a regular sedan. I know they have some QC issues (not as bad as early Teslas, but still…) but from every single thing I’ve read and seen, they are awesome cars made by a company with a lot of good people, and I want one.
In a fantasy universe, their next production car would be that mythical $25K MSRP EV… some kind of small wagon/hatch/crossover thingy but only RWD/single-motor/with a smaller battery pack. If they could manage to build such a thing and make even a small profit on the base version, with Lucid dynamics/engineering, they’d sell as many as they could make. Unfortunately, I expect that they don’t want to compete in that entry-level part of the market themselves, and would rather license their tech to some other company interested in doing so.
This was already done by a Tesla Model S driving around Michigan in winter
Tesla Model S Goes 752 Miles with a Prototype Battery from a Michigan Startup
Someone needs to up the ante and take a long range EV to the Tibetan Plateau. I’m not sure if the roads are smooth for rolling resistance, but seems like it would be possible to find a route that stays at 4000-5000m above sea level for hundreds of miles, to take advantage of low wind resistance with thin air. Bonus if a tailwind can be had. Then once the battery is getting into the lower end, head downhill off the plateau.
The Out of Spec YouTube channel did a 3000-mile Seattle-to-Boston trip with all the fastest EVs, as well as a gas car for a baseline measure. The Lucid Air didn’t fair so well, finishing in 53 hours vs the fastest EV, the Porsche Taycan, finishing in 46.5 hours. The cheapest and most efficient EV, the Tesla Model 3, finished in 48.5 hours and cost 25% less in Electricity costs than the Taycan. The Tesla cars are quite efficient and fast relative to the competition in long-distance driving, aided in no small part by the Supercharging network no doubt.
Here are the raw stats from the race, with my own car thrown in at the bottom for good measure:
OUT OF SPEC SEATTLE TO BOSTON I-90 EV TRIP, 3034 MILES
Fastest Car (Gas): 44h20m, $408 (26mpg, 116.7g * $3.50/g)
Fastest EV (Taycan): 46h28m, $405 (3.0mkwh, 1011.3kwh * $0.40/kwh)
Cheapest EV (Model 3): 48h38m, $319 (3.8mkwh, 798.4kwh * $0.40/kwh)
Lucid Air Grand Turing: 53hr14m, $368 (3.3mkWh, 919.4kwh * $0.40/kwh)
(My own 2012 PriusC): 44h20m, $253 (42mpg, 72.2g * $3.50/g)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1qYsVBKuH0
I think the perfect course would be flat for 300 miles or so to use up the batteries, then downhill for another 300 miles or so to refill the batteries, then flat again for 300 miles or so to use up the batteries.
Any more than that would just be ridiculous.
I have some M.C. Escher stairs to sell you.
I might have try to beat this record. I’ve got the car, but I reckon I’d need to swap wheels from 20″ to more efficient 19″.
OK, so downhill. Not cheating but certainly an astro-isk there.
As a competition for comparison purposes:
From Taos, NM (6969ft), say the Hotel Don Fernando de Taos (cool name) to the Portofino Hotel in Redondo Beach. that’s 934 miles. Car that goes the farthest wins.
I don’t think any car makes it over the Cajon Pass. Heck, there is a long uphill after crossing the Colorado River.
A more relevant record would be a round-trip. So, Portofino Hotel to Fisherman’s Wharf and back. That’s 394 miles each way.
So something not happening from Wisconsin to DC. (Or Mercedes Illinois to
Baltimore)
That driver must have been exhausted by the end of that drive. I can only assume every single creature comfort was off, no AC/Heat, no radio, screens minimum brightness, windows always up, every single power drawing component off. All while being laser focused on driving as efficiently as possible, smooth throttle, never friction braking, drafting if possible, the whole nine yards.
No phone ,no lights, no motor car,
not a single luxury
like Robinson Crusoe
it’s primitive as can be.
So join us here each week my friends,
you’re sure to get a smile,
from the peanut gallery
here on Autopian Isle!
I would assume they didn’t even start with a full battery, either. All that extra energy is just going to be turned into heat unless the battery wasn’t full.
I get zero regen when by Bolt is full (obviously). It literally has a “Hilltop Assist” feature which limits the charge to 88%, so I can fill up on my way down to the highway. In reality, I get a couple miles.
I suppose I should watch the video and find out.
Maybe better yet, they could start with the battery at 80% and take a route that gets it near 100% before needing the throttle much. That way, you could say 700+ miles using only 80% of the battery.
Yeah, basically my point, thank you for saying it better.
Start with a full battery, but a couple miles down the far side of the hill. Burn 20% going uphill to stack distance, then regen on the downhill run.
OO, I like this. Problem is they start on a pretty tall hill. But, this is certainly one way to do this.
BTW, we share one name. High five!
Is this cheating? Nope
That seems quite disingenuous. It doesn’t mean that the Lucid isn’t one of the best EVs or that the achievement wasn’t difficult, but it certainly isn’t an accomplishment that means much to any broader application.
Somebody should start at the Meyer-Womble Observatory at about 14,000′ and head toward Houston at 25-30 mph using the mildest downward slope route possible and see if they can beat the record.
To be fair, almost all of these records tend to be disingenuous or surface level, and are all only done for marketing purposes. EPA/WLTP and other standardized tests are what are done for the sake of giving consumers useful information to base their purchases off of, but records, regardless of how much creativity is required or asterisks added, make for a great marketing pitch.
For sure. But I wouldn’t call it not cheating either. Similarly, lying by omission or using marketing jargon isn’t really truthful. No reason to give undeserved credence to the marketing ploy.
That would be an interesting route to start with only 10% battery charge.
I mean, no reason to go downhill with a full charge.
That would be an interesting challenge! How little charge could you start with, and at some point, further along, downhill, end up with 100%?
You would drop about 9000′ in the 50 miles to Denver from the Meyer-Womble Observatory. How much energy could an EV recoup in that distance? Would you need to look for a more gradual descent by heading west toward Glenwood Springs and targeting Death Valley as an endpoint?
Then on the other end of the EV efficiency spectrum, our Canadian built Nova LFSe+ buses are averaging 1.6kWh/km.
Yes, you read that right. 1.6kWh consumed per kilometer traveled. Very close to the 0.135kWh the Lucid consumes.
I’m thinking that’s actually not bad!
We are talking about a 40,000lb brick-shaped vehicle that goes full acceleration, then brakes to a dead stop every city block… While running a 100k btu HVAC system pulling 13kW on full blast.
Oh they’re heavier than that. We’ve got 8400lbs in batteries alone. (6x 94kWh packs).
And there’s STILL 70L of diesel onboard, cause the cabin has a diesel auxiliary heater to help keep range in the winter.
Damn. Impressive machines.
Congrats, I guess? Nice $2 plaque though.
Thanks to the hard work of my team an AMERICAN EV has broken the range record. So MANY of these EVs have terrible range, unacceptable. People tell me, very smart people, they say SIR China has the best EVs and the best prices but this is HARD PROOF that America is better. And people ask “did they just coast in neutral” because Swaziland is neutral but NO they actually drove it, and they even carried cargo, very precious cargo for my family, which was delivered to Lichtenstein, he was such an amazing artist, folks. All those Vanday dots it’s like a magic eye poster where you don’t see it until you step back, just amazing. At the end of the trip in Munich or MUNCHIN as they call it my old friend Elon Musk was there to greet them with tears in his eyes and he said “Thank you for all you have done!” and he ordered Tesla to stop making cars and went off to his palace in the mountains GOOD RIDDANCE we’ll never hear from him again.
They say the car, very beautiful car, drove so so far on not any electricity, it’s just incredible. Not good for our beautiful oil companies, not good. The coal companies can’t feed their families because of these…EEEVEEES. Very bad. Mr. Coal comes to me, with tears in his eyes, hugs me, very big hug, strong, beautiful hug, I felt so safe. Mr. Trump, my family is dying in the mountains because nobody buys our beautiful coal, our wonderful coal. It just sits there inside the mountain and nobody buys it, we have to eat squirrels because of EEVEES, there’s no money. Who wants coal? That guy right there looks like he needs coal. Look at him. He looks like he could haul coal all day long and it would only make his muscles even stronger and more beautiful. Stand up, sir. Look at that man, wow. Just incredible. I’d like to spend a weekend in the mountains with him. You know I would. Love women, though. So beautiful, those women. Just want to kiss them all.
ICE: Do not ride brakes
EV: Please ride brakes
This one is so half-assed. Why would they do a record of that, when they can drive to Mt Evans instead and climb even higher than Pike’s Peak?
Sounds like an opportunity for you to make a new record attempt. Next year maybe.
https://www.denver.org/things-to-do/day-trips-around-colorado/mount-evans-scenic-byway/#:~:text=Guests%20get%20to%20choose%20between,Memorial%20Day%20to%20Labor%20Day.
I am surprised it didn’t do better than 749 miles. Assuming they used all 117 kwh (according to The Internet that 117 is the usable capacity of a Lucid Air, as opposed to total capacity), that is only around 6.4 miles/kwh. I have averaged up to 5.9 miles/kwh between charges in my Model 3. This happens in good weather (temperatures in the 60s) on low traffic suburban roads, but without any effort to drive efficiently and without driving downhill. A Lucid Air is supposed to be significantly more efficient than my Model 3, and they had a lot more opportunities for regenerative braking starting at high elevation.
Part of me thinks I could beat this record. That sounds painful (literally and figuratively) as it wound involve 20+ hours of low-speed driving, but possible.
Impressive, but I’m willing to bet that a Silverado EV could crush this record if driven slowly and downhill as was suggested in the article,definitely using more kwh to do it, but we are talking range here not efficiency.
i don’t think this should be in the Guinness Records book to begin with. then let’s take the smartphone and give an award to the one that keeps the longest battery charge and we can continue endlessly. this is industry achievement no doubt but to put it in the book, give me a break
Totally agree. We need to preserve the integrity of a publication with entries such as, “most cigarettes smoked at once”, “longest toenails”, and “loudest fart”.
it’s a PR stunt same as JD Power so they can say in marketing material that it has the GWR for longest EV distance.
Still not enough for my daily commute.
same, I commute 12 hours each way! I’m never home!
Consider how big and heavy this car is, and that in real-world driving it is using only 0.21 kWh/mile. This is a 5,000 lb luxobarge. This is impressive. This thing is less thirsty than a Nissan Leaf.
What Joe Sixpack in the US needs access to is a smaller, more mass-produced de-teched version of this that is repairable with basic tools, has a battery less than 1/3 the mass that is easily accessed and replaced, and for an MSRP under $25k.
Consider something sized like say, a Nissan Versa sedan, with the Lucid’s same low drag coefficient(even lower CdA thanks to frontal area reduction), and weighing around or under 3,000 lbs thanks to a 35 kWh pack or so coupled with less materials needed by virtue of being a smaller car. I bet that energy consumption can be cut by more than 1/3.
And with the packaging possibilities in an EV, a Nissan Versa-sized sedan could allow legroom and headroom comparable to a W126 Mercedes for all passengers. Range per charge on the highway would be like a base Tesla Model 3.
The theoretical car I’m describing was technically possible(or close to it) 3 decades ago with greatly inferior battery technology. Yet the mainstream part of industry which has all the money to this day won’t step up to the plate and do it. They want to bribe the government to keep us from having available affordable Chinese EVs instead of producing affordable EVs for the masses.
What a damned racket the auto industry in the USA has become. Collapse is coming. I hope Lucid can stay afloat because they actually have good ideas when it comes to the exterior design and aero of their products.
Yeah he’s going the distance, he’s going for EV’s, he’s all alone (all alone), in his time in the seat.
Lucid’ll be there someday, they can go the distance
They will find a way, if they can be strong
They know every mile will be worth their while
When they go the distance, they’ll be right where they belong!!!
That’s nice, but I routinely drive 750 miles in an unbroken stretch at a time at least four times a week, so this wouldn’t work. EVs just aren’t ready for prime time.
This is why I keep several pails (5 gallon Home Depot Homer buckets) of gasoline in my trunk to extend range – you can’t replicate that in an EV
Exactly. Me and my two buddies filled up a bunch of oil barrels at a gas station and threw those in the back of my van to extend the range. Whatever we had left we sold door-to-door until my one buddy cut the brake lines on the van and jumped out the back.
Wildcard!!
My father had a Datsun 720 diesel pickup with an 85 gallon auxiliary tank / tool box for fueling tractors. I don’t think it ever got farther than 20 miles from the house though. I guess you could’ve driven it 3000 miles or so between fillips with a little bit of hose to connect the tanks. I have no idea why someone would do such a thing. The thing was weird to drive with the tank half full of fuel sloshing around.
That is a small truck to have 500lbs or so sloshing around in! I worked for a landscaping company maintaining office park planters and hanging baskets one summer. Getting up to and down from highway speeds in a mid-90s Chevy 2500 with a 425 gallon water tank on the back required some patience and the “handling” with 2/3 full tank was pretty funky for even a simple lane change.
I commute 12 hours to work each way, it’s 1100 miles. I do an oil change a week, I’m never home. EVs won’t work for me and are therefore completely useless for everyone.
7 days a week too? I’m not sure if you’d have time for an oil change other than during the extra hour in the middle of the night during the fall time change off of daylight savings though with the 24 hour commute every day. Maybe on a leap day every 4 years?