Not long after a Houston Area Cars & Coffee banned Dodge muscle cars we’ve now got one Dodge Challenger driver responsible for the destruction of four or five Lucid Air electric cars in one wild accident in North Houston. How does this even happen? Terrible luck mixed with, potentially, less-than-great driving.
Last night, a Dodge Challenger left the feeder road of Interstate 45 in the northbound direction when it lost control, jumped a curb, and wrecked itself and five cars, the Harris County Sherriff’s Department told The Autopian today. Why so many Lucid Airs?
Unfortunately for the driver, and their insurance company, where they lost control happens to be the location of the Houston area Lucid Service and Delivery Center just south of Airtex Road. Parked outside of that facility were at least four Lucid Airs by our count. It’s not clear if the vehicles were loaners or customer cars, but whatever they are they aren’t cheap.
I drove the Lucid Air last year and found it to be a highly capable, attractive, and usable electric sedan:
I’ve driven a ton of electric cars and, in terms of range and charging performance, the Lucid Air is right at the top. I put nearly 2,000 miles on one and, while I never approached the 469 miles of promised range, I consistently got close to 380-390 miles of range and returned a miles/kwh in the 3.2-3.6 range. The Lucid is stuck using the CCS public charging network so charging speeds are more limited by the charger than the vehicle itself, but I was still amused to watch it add hundreds of miles of range in the time it took me to go to Sheetz and grab a sandwich.
The downside to this vehicle has always been the price, with the one I tested costing upwards of $150,000. Lucid has since lowered its prices, with the cheapest Air costing about $80,000 delivered. That means that, in one accident, this Challenger somehow managed to write off a minimum of $320,000 worth of cars we can see. If those vehicles were AWD Grand Tourings it could be upwards of half a million dollars with the Challenger included. The sheriff’s office did say five cars were struck, but we can only see four here, so it’s possible the fifth was moved or towed by the time the video below was shot.
How does this happen? Based on this TikTok post from last night, it looks like the road was wet and the driver lost control, jumped the curb, and slowed down their vehicle using the rears of the Lucids, which were parked along the road. You can see the carnage.
@alejandrodante.00 #Houston ????????
Also, “Funky Town” is just a spectacular music choice for this TikTok, so credit to the person who filmed this.
Amazingly, the Harris County Sheriff’s Department informed The Autopian that there were somehow no injuries in the crash, though it’s currently unclear if the driver was cited. We’ve followed up with Lucid to determine if these were customer cars or loaners and will update when we hear.
Images: Alejandrodante.00 on TikTok
NO GOD! PLEASE NO!
A true tragedy has occurred… RIP 4 Beautiful Lucid Airs 🙁
I’m sure they’re all totalled simply because replacement parts don’t exist for them yet.
Dodge/Chrysler putting so much power into the hands of people who have no business driving, at all. Surprise.
You can literally say that about any modern car. Little soccer moms don’t need 300hp minivans but they exist.