Like most startups in the history of the automobile, Lucid Motors has had what could charitably be called a bumpy history. Its first product, the Air sedan, was first shown publicly in 2017 (although I got a background, deep dive on it and a look at the first prototype earlier, in November 2016 at the Los Angeles auto show). However, challenges with raising the funds to complete development and build a factory meant that it wouldn’t get to customers until late 2021. Despite the generally positive reception, high costs, supply chain issues, and a market move away from sedans have limited sales. Lucid is now ready for take-two with the Gravity, an SUV that the company is billing as a seven-seat supercar, and we’ve just had our first opportunity to drive it.
Lucid brought us to Los Olivos, California to get a taste of this new form of Gravity, where we learned all about the technical details from subject matter experts and got to drive it in some surprisingly challenging conditions. Given that Lucid is still a relatively small company that has yet to come anywhere close to profitability, you might be forgiven for taking a look at the Gravity and assuming it’s just a taller, longer roof version of the Air.
It certainly shares family design DNA with the sedan, but the reality is that from the time I got that first behind-the-scenes look at the Air in 2016, the company has been in a constant state of development and improvement. The Air that went on sale in 2021 looked much like the one from five years earlier, but while former CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson was trying to raise funds, most of what’s under the skin was substantially redesigned, much of it more than once.
The same is true of the Gravity. The biggest theme for Lucid is efficiency and the engineering team found many ways to improve on that for the new car. They also adapted many of the lessons learned from production challenges on the Air.
What is an SUV Anyway?
Some have criticized the Gravity, calling it more of a minivan than an SUV because of its profile. In some respects, this isn’t a totally off-base call as the Gravity has a surprisingly short front end with the base of the windshield well out over the front wheels. The proportions are not altogether different from the Kia Carnival but of course Kia doesn’t call that a minivan anymore either.
The truth is as SUVs have grown in market prominence, they have become so diverse that the term doesn’t really have any meaning anymore. Is a Hyundai Ioniq 5 an SUV? Or a hatchback? What about a Toyota Crown Signia. It’s really just an overused marketing term. That said, the Lucid Gravity is a vehicle with a tremendous amount of utility and immense sporting capability.
So let’s just set aside the taxonomy.
What about the design?
Derek Jenkins has been Lucid’s vice president of design and product since work began on the Air and he continues to oversee the team that created the look of the Gravity. Aerodynamic efficiency remains a key element of the brand’s look with smooth flowing contours, but a real sense of presence on the road.
At the front, the Gravity retains the metallic nose blade above the slim, horizontal headlamps and the linear, vertical running lamps. Around the back, the slim, floating, lightblade taillamp is also echoed from the sedan. The aluminum trim from the A-pillar, across the top of the greenhouse to the D-pillar is also a Lucid signature, but here the rearmost pillar is significantly thicker than before.
Clamshell openings at the front and back are another brand signature. This time, though, the frunk opening extends down to the bumper for easier loading, but there is also a pad that can fold out to make the frunk into a bench seat for “frunk-gating” or just watching the sunset at the beach. At the rear, the tailgate also wraps around the sides as on the sedan trunk to maximize the aperture for loading.
Limiting aerodynamic drag is key for an electric vehicle because any effort that it takes to move air out of the way is taken away from the kinetic energy that can be recovered through the motors and put back in the battery for more range. But aero efficiency isn’t just about the drag coefficient, you also have to multiply that by frontal area.
Jenkins highlighted four 3-row premium competitors: the Rivian R1S, Cadillac Escalade IQ, Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV, and BMW X7. The Lucid has a coefficient of drag of 0.24, but is also the lowest with the smallest frontal area of the group. Nonetheless, only the enormous Escalade outdoes the Gravity in total interior volume at 130 cubic feet to the 114 for the seven-seat Lucid and 120 cubic feet for the five-seat version. The Cadillac also has a marginally more EPA-rated range at 460 miles vs 450 for the Lucid.
However, the Lucid is by far the lightest of the three electric utilities at 5,966 lbs compared to 9,134 for the Cadillac. The gas-engined BMW undercuts them all at 5,417 lbs. But the Cadillac and the Lucid are the only members of the group that actually offer a third row seat usable by adults, while the Rivian and the Germans have almost no usable leg room in the back.
The Gravity gets rid of the Air’s three-screen design in favor of two screens that solve some issues presented by the Air’s setup. The Air featured a 34-inch curved display and smaller, portrait-orientation screen below it that retracted into the dashboard. While this gave the Air’s interior a cleaner look when the car was off, it also added significant cost and complexity. The lower screen also required the driver to look farther away from the road when viewing it. The Gravity’s single primary screen, and its higher position versus the Air’s, is an improvement. The physical volume and climate controls that previously sat on the Air’s dash above the screen are now mounted to the lower edge of the Gravity’s display.
The primary curved display that floats on top of the dashboard is still the same size at 34 inches and has roughly the same shape as the Air. But instead of three separate LCD displays behind a common sheet of glass, there is now a single OLED panel. Light always leaks through LCD panels, but since each pixel of an OLED is self-illuminating, the dark areas of the screen will now actually be black when driving at night instead of dark grey.
Like many other newer vehicles, the steering wheel has now been squashed vertically, and sits fully below the display, leaving all of it visible instead of looking through the upper portion of the wheel to see the instrument display. The controls on the steering wheel are also new to the Gravity. On each side, there is a clickable touch panel that supports gestures in addition to clicks. When you touch the panel with a thumb, the available controls pop up on the screen directly in front of you.
Driver assist controls are on the left, and media controls are on the right. When alert widgets pop up on the display, a thumb swipe across the panel dismisses them. You can also scroll through a variety of widgets on either side of the instruments with a swipe up or down. For example, information like the trip computer, tire pressures, and other data can appear on the left with an up or down swipe, and media information on the right. A horizontal swipe with the left thumb can change display themes, including one called Zen that shows nothing but essentials like speed, odometer, and turn signals. With the optional DreamDrive Premium, engaging the turn signal will bring up a camera view of your blind spot on the cluster display area.
Another major change from the UI design of the Air is that information on the right portion of the top display is now decoupled from the central display. On the Air, when Navigation was selected, the lower screen would show an overview of the whole route while the upper display would show a zoomed-in view of your current area. Switching to media mode would show similar, differing levels of detail of what you were listening to. But in the Air, you couldn’t show the map on one screen and media on the other. In the Gravity, you can do exactly that.
One final note on the dashboard is that Lucid deserves credit for retaining manually adjustable air vents in the dashboard. No automaker should ever be forgiven for putting vent controls in the touchscreen interface.
In the second row of seats, Lucid has provided plenty of room and also built tray tables in the back of the front seats so kids can place their phones or tablets or happy meals on them without having to hold them. All Gravity Grand Touring models get a four-zone climate control system as standard. With the optional convenience package, the rear seats are also heated as are the windshield wipers. The second and third row seats easily accommodate my 5-foot-10-inch frame and offer a decent amount of headroom and legroom.
Connecting The Electronic Dots
All of the cool features included on a modern, premium vehicle require lots of software and computing hardware to run them. As part of the overall upgrade of all systems in the Gravity, Lucid has developed an all-new electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture that uses the increasingly popular zonal layout.
That means the Gravity has two central computers and 3 zone controllers. One central computer manages the driver assist and chassis controls and is powered by 2 Nvidia Orin system-on-chip (SoC) processors. Each of these provides up to 250 trillion operations per second (TOPS) for processing sensor signals, handling the AI perception algorithms, and handling path planning. The Orin is rapidly becoming one of the go-to SoCs for these vehicle control tasks and is used by Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, numerous Chinese automakers, and most recently announced by General Motors.
Currently, the Gravity offers a hands-on, eyes-on level 2 assist that handles lane centering, adaptive cruise control, and lane change on demand. In the coming months, Lucid will begin offering DreamDrive 2 Pro, which will add hands-off, eyes-on capabilities similar to GM Super Cruise, with plans for more upgrades in the future. Like the Air, the Gravity is also equipped with a Robosense lidar sensor in the front fascia that will help enable this. Lucid is running Nvidia’s Drive OS on this platform and building their own ADAS and chassis control software.
The other central compute unit uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 SoC to handle all of the infotainment and instrumentation needs, and it has 32 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage so it should have plenty of headroom for future needs. The Qualcomm system is also running a hypervisor that allows multiple operating systems to run on it in virtual machines. In this case, the left side of the display that contains the instruments is powered by a QNX real-time operating system, while the infotainment stack is running Android.
The three zonal controllers utilize Infineon TriCore TC397 chips. These chips feature what’s known as lock-step operation for safety applications. This essentially means that the same algorithms will be running simultaneously on two different cores, and they have to agree. If the cores have different results, the chip goes into a safe state for backup and an alert is given. There are two zone controllers in the front corners of the Gravity and one in the rear and they handle a variety of tasks including lighting, sensor signal processing, and power distribution. Everything is connected by a high-speed automotive ethernet network to reduce the amount of wiring in the car and improve data throughput.
Powering all of this are two independent 12V power rails and two 12-volt batteries, one for each side of the car. This way if something fails, at least half the car still has power so it can be brought to a safe stop. Finally, there is a small 75W DC-DC converter in the battery pack that is before the contactor. When the car is shut off, any systems that are still drawing power such as a sentry mode are getting that power from this supply that comes straight from the high-voltage battery. It’s 92% efficient and it means that the Gravity should never have a problem with dead 12V batteries that prevent the car from starting. It also preserves the life of the 12V batteries by not constantly cycling them.
Protecting all of this are 3 solid state power protection panels, one in the rear, one in the cockpit and one in the frunk. These are solid-state circuit breakers that replace traditional fuses. Because fuses never need to be replaced, they don’t need to be mounted somewhere that is accessible by the driver and they also respond much faster. Traditional fuses also have much looser tolerances with plus or minus 15% error from the rated current. That tolerance needs to be compensated with thicker, heavier wire for safety. Using electronic fuses allows that extra wiring buffer to be reduced.
Jean-Phillipe Gauthier, vice president of digital, provided an example of how this can be used to improve functionality:
“Let’s say that I have a heated steering wheel, and the wire that goes to it is rated for five amps. Well, it’s rated for five amps when it’s 80 degrees outside, or something like that. When I use the heated steering wheel, it’s much colder outside. So what I can do, I can compensate for temperature, and let’s send seven amps instead of five, and I know that, knowing my wiring size and the temperature of the wire, I can push more without problem. So it gives you the opportunity for a little better performance of those types of features.”
While the zonal architecture does allow for reduction of discrete electronic control units, Lucid has retained some from suppliers for certain functions. For example the three steering actuators (one on the front and two on the rear) and Bosch i-Booster for the brakes each have a small, low power ECU that actually controls the hardware. Lucid’s software running on the Orin platform determines how much steering or braking input is required to control the vehicle, and sends those signals to those ECUs via APIs and they manage the actuators to make it happen.
One other interesting electrical detail of the Gravity is the charging port. When it was originally designed, it still used a CCS charge port and the two prototypes that were revealed at the 2023 Los Angeles auto show had the charge port on the left front fender like the Air. However, around that same time, Lucid made the decision to adopt the NACS charge port. With that decision came the follow-up to move the charge port to the left rear corner, just like Tesla to make it easier to use Superchargers with their very short cables, so the engineers had to completely rework the charging circuit, a far from trivial task.
Moving Things Along
The propulsion system of the Gravity is fundamentally similar to the Air, but redesigned for better performance and efficiency. The permanent magnet traction motors have been reworked for improved thermal management for better sustained performance based on work that was done for the Air Sapphire. These motors are still incredibly small and power dense at 8.5 kW/kg. The rear drive unit including the reduction gears, differential, and power electronics weighs just 79 kg and produces up to 670 hp.
The rotor winding in the rear drive unit also serves a secondary purpose. The Gravity is designed to be able to DC fast charge at up to 1,000V and features a native J3400/NACS charge port.
However, current V3 Tesla Superchargers only operate at 500V and 500A. That rotor winding works as an inductor coil, essentially turning the rear drive unit into a transformer to boost the 500V input from the Supercharger to 1,000V. This allows the Gravity to charge at 220 kW, nearly double what the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 can achieve on the same chargers. Teslas can actually charge at up to 250-kW, but they only stay at that peak power for a short time and start ramping down when the battery state of charge gets to above about 20%. The Gravity’s improved thermal management and updated cell design can maintain that 220-kW rate to about 45% charge and ramps down more slowly, remaining above 100-kW at 80% charge.
When connected to a 350-kW or more CCS charger, it charges even faster. The Out of Spec YouTube channel recently tested a Gravity with one of Chargepoint’s new 400-kW chargers at their headquarters. The Gravity stayed at 400-kW past 20% and remained above 200-kW past 50%. They were able to add 100 miles of range in just 5.2 minutes and doubled that in 10.6 minutes. The Supercharger took 8.6 and 16.5 minutes respectively for the same charge levels.
To achieve this, the Gravity has redesigned 2170 cylindrical cells supplied by Panasonic. The chemistry remains nickel manganese, cobalt but the recipe has been revised for better energy and power density, with the latter helping on charging performance and discharge for acceleration. Lucid isn’t revealing too many details yet on the new cells, but they also feature a multi-tab arrangement for better heat transfer.
Managing the Motion
Getting all this power to the ground in a controlled fashion is no easy feat. All Gravity models get a staggered wheel set up with the base being 20-inch front/21-inch rear wheels with Hankook Ion Evo LM1 all-season tires. The first upgrade brings 21/22-inch wheels with Michelin Primacy LM1 tires and dynamic handling package bumping that to 22/23-inch wheels with Pirelli P-Zero 5 LM1 summer performance tires.
The suspension of the Gravity is also new because it needed to accommodate more wheel travel. The front remains a multi-link layout with virtual steering axis as on the Air, but all the components are new. The Air’s integral link rear suspension is replaced with a new 5-link layout with longer arms.
The Gravity Grand Touring that is available now has standard air spring suspension that can raise or lower the car from 5.2 inches to 9.3 inches. The standard setup has single-chamber springs. The dynamic handling package has three chamber springs that allow for varying the effective spring rate based on the selected drive mode. In smooth mode, the springs are softer and more compliant, while they get progressively stiffer in swift and sprint. The rear springs are also adjusted when towing. All Gravity Grand Touring models get standard electronically controlled Bilstien dampers that can adjust every 2 milliseconds.
Despite being an EV with prodigious regenerative braking capability, the Gravity also has some hefty friction brakes as well. The front corners have 390 mm rotors with 6-piston Brembo fixed calipers while the rears have slightly smaller and thinner 388 mm rotors with 4-piston fixed calipers. While most of the deceleration work in normal driving is handled by regen, you still need the brakes for maximum emergency braking. The large rotors also have lots of thermal mass which is handy because the Gravity system uses the friction brakes to handle torque vectoring which can heat the brakes up if used too aggressively. The rear corners also have a second, smaller, dry, electrically-actuated caliper on each side to serve as the parking brake.
A Bosch electric power assisted steering system is standard on the front axle while the dynamic handling package adds a pair of ZF electric steering actuators to the rear wheels, with one connected to each wheel. Like all four-wheel-steering systems, the Gravity steers the rear wheels in the opposite direction at lower speeds for tighter turning and better responsiveness and steers all the wheels in the same direction as speed climbs to improve stability. However, most systems have the crossover at somewhere around 15-20 mph. Lucid is doing this at about 40 mph to improve overall handling responsiveness of the Gravity.
Hitting the Twisties
The Lucid engineering team lead by Eric Bach created a truly second-generation product, but how well does it actually work? To find out, they let us loose on a route that took us from Los Olivos, California, a few miles up the 101 freeway and then off onto twisting mountain roads west of the Los Padres National Forest, finally emerging in Nipomo before turning back around.
The cars we had available to drive were all finished Aurora Green Metallic with the stealth appearance package, the dynamic handling package and literally every other currently available option. The one I drove had the Tahoe leather interior. Lucid was still working on an issue with the heads-up display so those were turned off during our drive, but the position of the display above the dashboard makes the HUD somewhat superfluous anyway.
While Lucid does provide physical controls for audio, climate and seat adjustments, the mirror controls and steering wheel adjustment are partially in the touch screen. They are only one level down and then the actual adjustment is made with the touchpad on the right steering wheel spoke. Individual drivers can save their profiles and this is fine most of the time, but if you’re doing a long road trip, and you need to readjust from time to time, this might be problematic.
The seats are very comfortable and supportive despite not having a huge number of adjustments. As we set out and then got on the highway, it was immediately apparent that Lucid has done an excellent job on sound management. Even on the high-performance tires, the cabin was very quiet which is great if you just want a stress free environment. If you want some music, the 22-speaker audio system sounds fantastic, even to my old tinnitus-addled ears.
But the real fun started when we got off the highway and headed into the mountains. For the next hour or so, we were on some fantastic barely two-lane roads with no shoulders. As we climbed, the gap between corners seemed to get progressively shorter and most of those corners were completely blind, meaning we really needed to stay on our side rather than clipping apexes to the left. We switched the drive mode from the soft that we left the hotel on to sport and then sprint to get the most out of the Pirelli tires.
Despite weighing three tons, the combination of good summer performance tires and a really well-sorted suspension made the Gravity a real pleasure to drive. While most of the turns were very tight with multiple hairpins, the oddly shaped steering wheel wasn’t a problem at all, thanks to a surprisingly fast variable ratio steering system.
Tesla opted to go with a fully by-wire steering system on the Cybertruck that has no mechanical connection to the wheels in order to avoid going hand over hand with its flat steering wheel. Lucid went a more conventional route with the steering ratio starting at 13:1 and gradually tightening to 8.5:1. The result was I was able to go through the whole mountain route only having to turn the wheel more than about 100 degrees in either direction a couple of times. Most of the time my hands were at 9 and 3 and stayed there. Even with the electric assist, the Gravity has surprisingly good feedback through the wheel.
The only ergonomic stumble I really experienced is that the A-pillars are quite thick, and while they don’t stretch out quite as far in front of you as in a Cybertruck, they did produce some notable blind spots toward the front corners. It wasn’t a deal breaker, but it is something to take note of and be mindful when driving. The hood is relatively short in this vehicle and isn’t really visible from any typical driving position so you’ll want to take advantage of parking sensors when maneuvering in a parking lot.
The Gravity didn’t really have many artificial sounds if any, and frankly that was fine – even though I like what Hyundai does on the Ioniq 5 N. I’ve always been skeptical of companies developing automated driving systems with cameras only and their logic that humans drive with just two eyes, so why can’t a car do it. Setting aside the arguments about such systems, the reality is humans use (or should use) multiple senses, including hearing and touch – both through the seats of their pants, and the forces through the wheel. When driving rapidly in an environment like this, it’s important to listen for the sound of the tires to know when they are approaching the limit of adhesion. Lack of fake engine sounds makes it easier to do that, and it came in handy on the early curves to help know the limits of the Gravity and they are surprisingly high.
I was also particularly impressed with how Lucid has tuned both the motor control and regen braking. While I could probably go a bit faster overall by carrying a bit more speed deeper toward a corner and braking harder and later, I had a driving partner and that sort of behavior tends to induce nausea in people who aren’t in control of the vehicle. When set to its highest level, the Gravity will pull over 3/10ths of a g of decel just by backing off the accelerator. That’s enough that I could maintain a surprisingly brisk pace through the mountains while being smooth enough not to upset other people’s tummies.
The tuning of the 800+ horsepower and the regen makes it very easy to modulate the one pedal and get smooth, brisk driving at speed. When you need more velocity, it is very readily available as I found when I was stuck behind a very large camper. I pulled out to peak if it was clear and squeezed the go pedal and left the camper behind at an absurd rate. I genuinely had a fun time with this seven seat family hauler, but the fun was just beginning.
Besides the quiet environment, the Gravity was also very comfortable despite the 22- and 23-inch tires. The triple-chamber air springs and fancy dampers no doubt had a positive effect here. We didn’t hit any Michigan-style potholes in California (I did once pop a tire on an Air Grand Touring with similar-sized wheels on a pothole near my home in Michigan), but some of the pavement was surprisingly uneven and the Gravity soaked it up with aplomb.
Playing in the Sandbox
Regular customer deliveries of the Gravity are due to start later this month, but since this is a software-defined vehicle, not every feature is fully baked yet. Such is the nature of SDVs, but it means that your car can get better over time. Fortunately for early Air owners, Lucid has lived up to this promise and fixed a lot of early problems and added new features thanks to dozens of OTA software updates.
Note: The Gravity models we used for the dirt driving portion were old development prototypes, and some of the fit and finish on trim and panels that is visible in the photos is not representative of the production models we drove on the road.
Among the upcoming features are hands-off, eyes-on driving assist similar to GM’s Super Cruise. Another is the addition of a fourth drive mode, Terrain. While the Gravity isn’t meant to tackle the Rubicon trail, its standard air spring suspension enables it to raise itself up to 9.3 inches of ground clearance.
The fully in-house developed slip control and driver assist software stack also means the engineers have more freedom to use the hardware on the car in new and sometimes very fun ways. When Terrain mode is selected, drivers can then enable one of three sub-modes. A key aspect of Terrain mode is the use of brake-actuated torque vectoring to emulate locking differentials at each axle. Having dual motors can already emulate the behavior of a locking center differential by simply controlling them in sync. By default in terrain mode, the torque bias is roughly 40/60 front to rear which will help with kicking out the tail when desired.
The default keeps all of the stability and traction control active, but adjusts thresholds to allow for better control on deformable surfaces like sand, dirt and gravel while keeping the driver out of trouble. This is perfect for taking the unpaved trail to a cabin by the lake, or heading up to the mountains to go skiing.
The middle mode opens up the thresholds for traction control and stability control to enable the car to slide around a bit more. This can be handy when you’re in some fresh, deep snow and getting extra slip can help get everything moving. Finally, the most aggressive mode pretty much turns off those controls and let’s go wild.
We started off going in circles in a horse corral to get a feel for how it changes through the three modes, and it definitely gets looser with each step. Lucid also set up a dirt hill that we climbed halfway up and then stopped. The system is designed to automatically hold the vehicle when you lift off on a grade without having to manually engage a hill hold. There’s no separate hill descent control, but with the regenerative braking on high, the control precision you get just from modulating the accelerator pedal makes a separate function somewhat superfluous. Descending the hill was easy to manage.
The cars we used for this off-road portion were shod with the standard Michelin Primacy all-season tires (no cheating with knobby all-terrains) and it still performed quite capably. Lucid has tested the Gravity on BF Goodrich K02s, and while there are no current plans to offer them as a factory option, nothing can be ruled out for the future.
After warming up with some dirt donuts, we moved over to a larger horse paddock where they set up a rallycross course (essentially an autocross on dirt and sand). After a recon lap to check out the course in medium mode, we switched over to everything off and hit the accelerator. With the electronic nannies mostly sidelined, the Gravity was an absolute hoot to hoon around the course, hanging the back end out and putting in lots of counter steer with that squared off wheel. According to Lucid vehicle controls engineer Esther Unti, when running the same course on the K02s, the Gravity could carry another 40 mph!
Is an actual paying Gravity owner ever going to a rallycross in their 3-row utility? Almost certainly not. But the beauty of an SDV is that you can add some code with the hardware you’ve already got for normal operation and get something entirely different. Given how excited Tesla owners get about their Christmas light shows and flappy bird doors, I’m sure that Lucid owners will appreciate knowing what’s available even if they only ever use the basic terrain mode to get to a ski lodge in Vail or Jackson Hole.
The Bottom Line
The Lucid Gravity Grand Touring has a starting price of $94,900. Equipped as we drove it, the fully load example came to $120,250. The Touring model coming later this year will start at $79,900 and we expect there will be a Pure edition at some point as well that drops closer to $70,000.
The base model with the 20/21-inch wheels and Hankook tires has a rated range estimate of 450 miles. With the big Pirellis on the handling package that number dips to a still very impressive 386 miles, which equates to about 3.14 miles/kWh. While we didn’t do a formal range test, we covered 145 miles and used 49% of the battery which works out to about 280 miles. Given that we were doing the polar opposite of driving even remotely efficiently, I consider that a pretty good triumph. I’m fairly confident that in more typical driving, the Gravity with the Pirelli tires could probably approach that label estimate, and a base model would be well up over 400 miles.
With the optional towing package, the Gravity is capable of towing up to 6,000-lbs, but there is the usual caveat on towing. Depending on the size and shape of the trailer, efficiency will often drop by more than 50%, which means you’ll end up with half or less of the rated range. This is true of both combustion and electric vehicles, but the charging time and layout of most charging stations makes this more problematic for EVs. We didn’t get to do any towing, so for now we’ll take Lucid at its word on towing capability and assume range will be somewhere between 150 and 200 miles.
Combined with the very fast charging capability and ability to haul a family and their stuff, the Gravity is a pretty impressive option for someone looking for a luxury three-row utility vehicle. Is it a seven-seat supercar as Lucid is calling it? That’s perhaps stretching it a bit too far. But comparing what the Gravity offers to the likes of the Mercedes EQS SUV or Cadillac Escalade IQ, it’s a no-brainer as a much better value, with better range than Mercedes and a maxed-out price $10,000 less than the entry price of the Cadillac. The Rivian R1S has less room inside, is in the same price range for comparable performance, and has worse ergonomics because everything is in the touchscreen.
I would say that at this moment in time, the Lucid Gravity is the best option among this group, even if some might quibble about whether it’s truly an SUV (and for the record, the quibblers are wrong).
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
That’s a van.
It looks a lot like my Voyager if the roof had been given the Rikishi Driver. Hell, look at that rear cargo area picture.
Oddly enough, it somehow looks more bloated and sad than my van (keeping in mind, I like vans) which seems like a rough beat for something that costs roughly 100k. But hey, are we getting to the point where 3-row SUVs can just be vans again? Are we three frames through the Animorph-esque transition back to van? Because I’m game.
First Gen Pacifica or Taurus X vibes…
Ah the Taurus X/Freestyle. That’s got to be one of the most thoroughly forgotten cars at this point. I look forward to the Torch deep dive in 20 or so years.
To me, it looks like the fifth and sixth generation Renault Espace where they tried to SUV-ify the van, ending up with an awkward hybrid of the two (and not totally unsuccessful).
yep first thing I thought was “Cool Minivan Bro”..
It’s a van, but without the best part, sliding doors.
I love how nerdy Lucid gets with its press tours. I’m 1000% sure all the details about the chipsets and operating systems they use went straight over all the journalist’s heads, but as an engineer, it’s a neat peek behind the curtain that most automakers don’t show.
Hats off to you, Lucid!
Was that a frunk sofa?
It’s clearly a Fruton.
Am I seeing this correctl? Two temp/fan speed controls, but not one for volume or a tune/track control for the audio media?
The latter is the thing I touch the most while driving. Needing a touchscreen for that is a band idea. I know I’m a broken record, but some things NEED physical control.
The volume is that knurled center roller,next/previous track are on the steering wheel. Would love that one too but this is better than nothing imo.
Not that I would ever buy a six figure vehicle, but “better than nothing” doesn’t cut it for me on a six figure vehicle.
reality of the world we live in, everyone wanted to be tesla and now they’re paying for it
Ok, so the roller doesn’t seem to have anything denoting it as volume, and the steering wheel buttons don’t have the expected ‘<<‘ and ‘>>’ symbols. So that’s not very intuitive, I guess.
I think most people intuitively would figure out the knurled wheel being the volume. the next and back might take more time i would agree.
I’ve said it before, but this makes me think charging speeds on the car side have been solved. If I could consistently add 200 miles of range in 10 minutes that would be good enough. The problem is chargers that can actually provide that are few and far between, and even when you find one it’s a crapshoot whether it will actually give you that speed.
Yeah on our Lyriq you can theoretically add 100ish miles in 10 minutes which is perfectly tenable for a trip, but very few chargers actually do that speed.
I love all the geeky info in this article, but I’m too uninformed to know if the numbers are good or bad… Like I know the Lucids are crazy-efficient, but I have no idea how efficient “8.5 kW/kg” is vs the competition.
I’m not sure many other EV manufacturers share this info, but in freedom units you could think about it in terms of HP/lb. Electric motor hp isn’t quite the same as ICE hp, but assuming 1kw = 1.34hp, Lucid’s motor pack is about 5.2 hp/lb.
A GE turbofan engine on a 777 makes ~110000hp / 19316lb or 5.7hp/lb. (Approximately, since these engines are rated for thrust output, not hp).
For direct reference, the Ford Mach-E crate engine is 281hp / 205lb, or 1.37hp/lb.
A Chevy LSX crate engine is 627hp / 568lb or 1.1hp/lb.
Just for fun, a Saturn V F-1 rocket engine is ~32million hp / 18340lb or 1744hp/lb.
Put another way, a 212cc Harbor Freight engine weighs 40lb. Applying Lucid’s output, that little lawnmower engine would make 208hp.
Basically, this little Lucid motor has about the same power to weight ratio as some of the most advanced turbofan engines on the market today. Only chemical rocket engines (solid fuel in particular) have much higher output ratios.
Thank you JP15, you are the best!
Wait until you check out the hub motors made by AMZ Technologies. They were at 50 horsepower peak for 7 lbs. 7.1hp/lb demonstrated back in 2014!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQIu5tZ0vbQ
I want such a thing soooo bad for my own projects, but these motors are not for sale.
I like to imagine a velomobile sized/shaped 3-wheeled enclosed race car with AWD using these things(3 wheels to get around USA “safety” regulations), weighing around 150-200 lbs, and so slippery you could hold 100 mph on like 6 horsepower. Except you have 150 hp and AWD to get moving.
You could go some serious distance on a 4 kWh pack of Molicel P50 in such a thing, and it would dirt cheap to replace the battery after its 150,000+ mile life.
In mass production, such a thing could be built for the price of a cheap motorcycle, and have ebike operating costs.
Until this thing parks with a 9.3″ clearance, this is a mini-van with a cool suspension. Sam, did you get a pic of it with the suspension in “SUV” mode?
It really does look like a van. I love vans, so if only they had included the sliding doors, I would be much happier.
Me too! And a van with a lift I can turn on and off is even better
Agree with the other commenter: it’s not a van because the best part of a van is the sliding door. If it was a van, it’s practicality would match it’s incredible technology.
I wonder how many of these they need to sell to make money? And how many they will sell at $120K each? They should take note of what’s happening with the Tesla truck-thing……while there are certainly plenty of outside factors with what’s happening with the Tesla, it’s also showing how limited the market is for $120K vehicles. Tesla’s big volume sellers are priced at less than half of that.
The lack of Cyber truck sales might be due to the anti Tesla sentiment right now. It might also be a terrible vehicle. It’s looks are very polarizing, to me, its about the ugliest thing on 4 four wheels I’ve ever seen, including the Fiat Multipla.
The cybertruck isn’t representative of anything, though. It’s completely and utterly unique, for better or for worse, and it’s as comparable to this as any other $100k+ vehicle of any shape.
I beg to differ, it’s like the new Hummer. Big Ugly rolling battery and too much tech.
Oh yeah, the Hummer. Eugh.
This (Lucid Gravity), should really be most comparable to the Tesla Model X. It is a 2 or 3 row (depending on how you configure it) “SUV” that is designed 1st with maximizing interior space And aerodynamic (and therefore onroad) interstate speed efficiency in mind.
Even with the option to increase the ride hight to have 9″ of ground clearance, this is not intended to be maximized for offload performance.
And even with 2nd row doors that can open 90 degrees… 100 percent this is either a sleek or ugly looking expensive ev minivan that has lots of very interesting technology
It’ll always be insane to me that car companies make these cars to be ultra-aerodynamic, and put in huge, heavy and expensive batteries to maximize range, and then slap on these gigantic wheels that reduce the range by 15% while offering no offsetting benefit besides looking cool.
They are a rolling contradiction.
Nothing says environmentally conscious like this giant over consuming machine.
6000 pounds is a lot but in this day and age that’s not even a ton for a car this size honestly. Barely more than a Tahoe and less than a grand wagoneer. I do agree giant fuckass wheels need to stop being as common of an option though
Also staggered wheels on a van/SUV is some top-level stupidity.
Safety standards require high beltlines, high beltlines make the proportions totally ridiculous with small wheels. Necessary evil unfortunately.
That, and in order to stop these 6000+ lb behemoths they need big brakes, which need big wheels.
If it can pull 3ths of 1 G from simply regen… it may not need super huge brakes.
I keep wondering how small wheels could be fit and still comfortably clear the brake calipers? And or fit better clearance calipers to fit even smaller wheels. I would love to see this with 18″ wheels all around to hopefully further improve possible range and lower operating coats for tire replacements, certainly fitting with low rolling resistance ev specific or truck tires given the weight
It would look like a shopping cart or a roll-away sofa on 18s.
Bc of a wheel size difference of 2″?
I fully would expect a higher sidewall to make up at least some of the difference.
That said… if it improved efficiency by a healthy bargain, say +8 percent or more, it could visually look like a shopping cart and I wouldn’t care.
And yes I realize I am likely an exception.
Modern cars with huge (over 18″) wheels with rubber band tires that easily blowout in potholes? I don’t consider that luxury or even desirable. Such setups are purely astatic and not practical
I was reading this incredibly long and well done review and thinking “wonder who wrote this? They did great!” and of course it was Sam!
PS, Please tell your editors your site is borderline useless on a mobile device
Man, I really like this thing a lot. It seems like it addresses about half of my gripes with most EVs, but not all of them.The fact that I just learned what “SDV” means gives me a LOT of pause. A lot. My iPhone is a thorn in my side regularly. And my laptop. Applying that same logic to my primary mode of transportation with a near-6-figure cost is appalling to imagine.I want a car I know can last 10-15 years, and I’m not sure Lucid will even be around for 5 more. I hope they are. I hope they eat Tesla’s lunch. And don’t leave a note.Part of the innate freedom of cars is a freedom from being tethered. If I’m tethered to (excessive) OTA updates or subscriptions, I feel like a meaningful piece of that freedom disappears.
Yeah the note about the car getting better over time with updates kind of glosses over the ‘car getting worse as features are arbitrarily removed’ potential.
Or SDFs (software defined features), that are by monthly subscription and or otherwise hidden behind a pay wall
Or SDFs that are ‘depricated’ and then left in place with zero support bc it is too expensive/ deemed not important enough by the auto manufacturer to support any more…
As soon as you hit “connecting the electronic dots” that’s it, I’m out. Adding massive processors and fat stacks of RAM, AI models etc you’ve lost the plot. I don’t care how many TOPS you’ve got, that shit doesn’t age well. Processors change, architectures change, network topologies change. And materials, even processors, wesr with age. People are going to laugh at this stuff in a decade when it stutters all over itself, or gets shown up by lesser hardware.
It pushes all of these into lease-only territory.
or pushes it into “great deal on a used one” territory? I don’t need the bleeding edge tech in my cars. I loved the tech in my 2007 S600 when I bought it used a few years ago.
I enjoy the “cheap ultra luxury” route, but when you build the entire infrastructure of the UI on delicate, continually evolving technology, expect a good portion of these to get scrapped while being otherwise mechanically sound.
Would you buy a bleeding edge pc from 2007? Cause that’s what this’ll likely age like. Maybe less dorito crumbs
That’s a bit of apples-to-oranges comparison, in a PC you care mostly about its compute power and how that’s gonna run the next piece of shiny next-gen software. In a car, not so much.
You can run the ‘car’ portion of this car with a lot less than a smart watch, most of its ‘brains’ are dealing with all the added tech like driving assists and AI garbage.
Well, I think all electric-only vehicles are either “lease-only” territory, or “buy super cheap once fully depreciated and DIY” territory.
We are already seeing the upgrade and restomods happening with the older Leafs and I3s as they are written about here. It’s only the beginning, but think of the battery as an engine, you can pull that boat anchor V8 making 135 hp put of that late 60’s mustang and pop in a Coyote making nearly 1000. Same basic car- Add some new plug and play modules and boom!- It’s just a new form of wrenching. That kind of stuff makes me happy!
Oh yeah, I totally agree. But not everyone is into projects. 🙂
Two grown adults can easily fit in the back of the Rivian SUV. Not sure where you’re getting that from. I specifically tested that fitment out with another friend who is also 6’1″ and we fit with no problems.
Yeah I dont get that criticism either. the third row in the R1S has just as much room as the third row in my expedition despite being shorter
I’ve seen the Air sedan in person and they look amazing, this…. does not. It’s like they just didn’t know what to do so tried to hide the back end with shadow makeup like a bad zit.
Also way too expensive and they’re still using nmc chemistry, at least it has NACS, so that’s something.
Yeah, applying the Air’s styling wholesale to this thing just makes it look generic and kind of bloated, even if it’s smaller than something like the Escalade.
It looks like Saab and Subaru jointly designed a minivan.
Great description,although it would have had to be 10 years ago with the way new Subies are looking.
QNX! I wonder which old-salt engineer brought that into the design?
Say the line, Bart!!
I’m with Toecutter: we don’t need massive luxury EVs, we need cool little light ones with clever engineering. Also, the rear quarter of that enormous Karen mobile is giving SsangYong, and i do not like it.
Bigger vehicles make more money. That is why no one is making an affordable small sedan anymore. Even Mazda has a hard time selling the Mazda3 and that is a great, somewhat affordable, car.
I don’t care. I’ve made this same excuse myself when defending car companies, but I’m done with it. Nobody has any money and we need to hold these manufacturers accountable for constantly moving upmarket and leaving normal people behind just so they can make another $50M in profit that quarter.
I am not making excuses, I am merely pointing out that car companies, in order to exist, have to make a profit. Using Mazda again as an example, they were languishing as a car company when they focused on small vehicles only. They are now on the rise as there SUVs are selling like hotcakes. This allows them to continue making fun cars like the MX-5 which is fine by me.
Amen. Sick of these enormous luxury vehicles that are only good for the lease period.
A focus on drag reduction is the easiest way to make such a car affordable and light, by keeping battery size for a given range down.
What is ironic about this massive lux-o-barge is because it is so relatively slippery compared with the competition, it has almost the same highway energy consumption as a Nissan Leaf, in spite of being twice as large!
Now, someone needs to make a small affordable RWD sports car and small affordable RWD sedan with this in mind sharing the same platform. Neither should exceed 3,000 lbs nor cost more than $25,000 when made with 1st world labor, because with correct attention to aero, you won’t need more than a 35 kWh battery for a no-bullshit 200+ mile highway range.
The squircle steering wheel plight continues.
No one:
Absolutely no one:
Not a single soul:
Techbros: what if we took *thing that has worked perfectly for decades or even centuries* and made it weirder and more complicated?
Everyone else: we don’t want that
Our society: here’s one billion dollars for your trouble, techbros!
TOUCHSCREEN EVERYTHING HAS ENTERED THE CHAT.
Horses worked perfectly from 8000 BC until something better was invented too.
I’m not saying I love squircle wheels or touchscreens, but I do unapologetically hate the reflexive negative attitude toward almost anything new or modern among a lot of people here.
I get what you’re saying, but techbros have not really done anything in the last couple of decades or so that’s improved anyone’s life in a meaningful way.
I very strongly disagree.
This just seems like using “tech bro” to define the inventor of something you don’t like.
Oh come now, that’s a silly thing to say. There are countless examples.
My son’s insulin pump comes to mind.
I don’t hate everything that’s new and modern across the board, but I do hate invention for the sake of invention when there isn’t a clear need and all of it is going on without my consent. This is probably my single biggest issue with Silicon Valley and the pervasive attitude among tech people.
No one consented to share the road with self driving cars. No one consented to the rapid, unregulated development of artificial intelligence despite not understanding much of anything about the potential consequences. No one actively consented to having every single piece of their data mined and sold to the highest bidder.
And on top of that this stupid industry is wasting hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used on actual problems rather than problems the made up ones created by the egos of a few antisocial weirdos. And finally, I didn’t consent for all of these freaks to be putting all of their social and financial weight behind an administration that’s hell bent on making the lives of regular people worse so they can concentrate even more control and force us into techno feudalism.
If Silicon Valley were eaten by a giant sinkhole tomorrow nothing of value would be lost.
I also very strongly disagree with this.
I respect your opinion regardless because I like you and I know you don’t engage in these conversations in bad faith
From reading your comments (both Nsane and V10omous) I respect both of you.
For this particular discussion O agree with both of you in there is value on both sides.
“Tech Bros” aka a small handful of power hungry billionaires Are most definitely in some cases (Zuck, Elon, Bozo chief among them), appear to be using their positions of power in an attempt to get even more power and money for themselves to the utter detriment of anyone else in the world that is not among the top 0.01 percent.
At the same time there are a Lot of examples of technology being used for good too.
I think it is a nuanced discussion better suited to an in person discussion / panel
I’ll throw my support behind this as well Silicon Valley is a lot more than just Tesla, Apple, and Amazon (which isn’t even in the Valley) there are a lot of actual useful things coming out of the valley that have made lives better, also some soul-chilling things from other places, but condemning an enitre industry for the (admittedly) terrible few never works out right IMO.
It would force a detour if you’re going from San Francisco to Monterey.
Oh no! That’s where I keep most of my stuff!
Since when does anyone need to check for your consent?
I get that it is just your take on all of it, but to come off like ” I DID NOT approve this!”, as if that is the bellwether, is kinda fucking bananas. lol
It’s not lol you’re just twisting my comment to try to rustle my jimmies
If this thing looked more like a Jimmy, and less like a Sienna…:)
Also:
“I didn’t consent for all of these freaks to be putting all of their social and financial weight…”
I’m not twisting shit. You wrote it!
I sure did! Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates, etc. are freaks. It is not normal to aspire to that level of wealthy and power.
On the contrary, it is very much the human condition.
Look at casinos and lottery sales if nothing else.
I should clarify-it isn’t abnormal to aspire to be wealthy. It is abnormal to aspire to be so wealthy and powerful that you control the world. Thats antisocial behavior and if your average Joe displayed that behavior they’d wind up in intensive psychiatric treatment rather than being held up as a celebrity.
I guess I don’t understand what any of those guys are doing that resembles “controlling the world” or even attempting to do so.
Possible exception of Elon with his semi-official government role, but even that seems to be coming to an end soon. And wealthy/influential people going to work in government isn’t exactly new or unique to Musk.
Since his retirement a quarter century ago, I can’t think of very much that Bill Gates has done that’s uniquely objectionable for example. Certainly nothing that would require “intensive psychiatric treatment”.
I don’t think there’s anything special about who these guys are, I think in general they are smart nerds with poor social skills whose every action plays out on a world stage. That’s not to excuse their bad behavior of course, but I just don’t think there’s any need to demonize them *as people* as opposed to specific *actions* that might not be so great.
Uhh, actually it is the most normal thing in human DNA.
Without dragging this out too long, name a moment in time (pick any time period in all of history), where aspiring to be at lest among the wealthiest and most powerful wasn’t a thing.
You are even free to go back to when humanity was pre-cave discovery.
The aforementioned natural urge is the reason why you and me both were born in the first place, lol.
BS. The most natural urge is procreation. Every species of any kind are naturally moved by this most natural thing.
Ok
And, how do you suppose that other person is chosen? Because, it’s not random.
A cool thing is that, sometimes, we need to push back against our own natural instincts if they’re driving us to do something morally reprehensible. Like personally control more wealth than many countries.
What is “morally reprehensible” in your world that allows someone with money to employ other people?
From what I’ve read, you seem to really enjoy communism, which is certainly a choice.
The rest of us will help others instead of dragging people down to your pit of despair, lol.
The Visigoths employed people too.
I had to google that to make sure.
What in the sam hell of fuck are you talking about?
I mean, you might wanna talk to someone about your issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ke4480MicU
Literally everywhere else could be eaten by a giant sinkhole tomorrow and I’m not sure that anyone here would notice, so the dislike is somewhere between unsurprising and expected. Possibly even warranted… That said, the thought that the millions of lives and livelihoods that would be lost in said sinkhole are not of value sounds an awful lot like something the type you’re railing against would say out loud.
I figured that the sarcasm was implied. If it wasn’t, my bad. I don’t literally wish for people to wind up in sinkholes lol.
Maybe that house on Pa. Ave. could go. We can rebuild it.
Using some colors this time.
I could say the same about wherever you live.
I live in DC so that statement is 100% valid!
It’s not that it’s new, it’s that it’s objectively worse. It’s OK to have a reflexively negative attitude towards stupid shit.
I simply don’t agree.
Touchscreens have their place and are clearly superior for some functions than buttons or switches.
The wheel is presumably that shape for better visibility. It looks awkward but may just be a learning curve. I don’t know, I’ve never been in a Gravity to judge for myself.
It may in fact turn out that the design is bad. But assuming so off the bat is what I don’t care for, personally.
It’s not a new idea though. If it were a good one it would’ve caught on after the 1960 Plymouth and everyone in Detroit would’ve been doing squircle wheels since about 1963.
I dunno about “perfectly”. I doubt you’d enjoy living in an urban area with streets dominated by horse based transport.
I have no real issue with them, people will get used to them, just like pilots got used to flying an Airbus with a left-hand sidestick with no real feedback. Now it’s just normal (for them, at least).
I just can’t imagine driving without leaving a turn using “controlled slipping” of the wheel through my hands. It’s generations of muscle memory being discarded just for a wee bit of extra visibility over the gauges. Or just change for change’s sake, which is kind of the norm now.
Lucid is the industry leader in packaging, within 5% the space and 2% the range of an Escalade IQ, with a third less weight, significantly smaller dimensions, far better vehicle dynamics, 80 kWh smaller battery, and a significantly lower price. Let that sink in, Lucid on it’s second attempt is able to improve upon the legacy EVs (looking at you heavily aged Model X and all Germans) in every single measurable way all while being cheaper. The fact this probably won’t even sell very well is a travesty, but it just goes to show that car buying is hardly a rational decision.
One of the main problems I’ve seen with Lucid (and other EV startups) is that normies don’t even know they exist. That’s starting to change and hopefully will get further along on the road to profitability.
How is the best-looking 3-row EV SUV the VinFast VF9?
New 2024 VinFast VF 9 for Sale (VIN: RLLV2CJA5RH000640) | Premier VinFast
Note that probably nobody should actually buy a VinFast. But it does avoid this weirdmobile uncanny valley look!
Tastes vary. It is a nice green though.
This is what BMW should be doing, I like what Lucid is doing from an electric architecture perspective with zonal and how everything was designed with efficiency in mind. Having the best electrical architecture will give you massive gains on efficiency on every way. Look at the Escalade IQ still using the old GM ways and how heavy and complex is to build.
Neue Klasse is exactly this.
If the Air is anything to go by, the Touring model will be the one to get.
I mean, it’s nice but maybe the old man in me is wondering what happens when that giant screen starts getting some dead pixels a couple years out. How much will that replacement be? I get new and wow factor but who was asking for screens across the whole dash? Kudos though to making it OLED so it will go black, I have no idea why more manufacturers don’t bring back the night driving modes that Saab used to have.
There’s going to be a massive cottage industry for servicing boutique EVs that pops up in the next few years. If you’re looking for a new career I have a feeling that those skills are going to be very in demand, especially with so many EV startup scams imploding seemingly every day. Picking up a Fisker or whatever for 10 grand in a couple years is probably going to be the best bang for your buck for folks that don’t have big budgets.
That could be, but I suspect that these cars will just end up being discarded like most old phones. The cost and ability to get parts are going to make it unappealing to fix these, given the massive depreciation.
Rich Rebuilds picked up a Fisker for 10 grand already.
It has begun!
I mean, I’ve never encountered a screen needing full-on replacement in a car yet, and screens have been in cars for a long damn time.
A friend’s 2015 Corolla had an issue with the touchscreen (known issue), but a replacement digitizer was $50 and 1-2 hours of my own labor to DIY fix. Not a big deal at all.
I have an LED TV from 2009 that’s seen heavy use and is still basically perfect, I have a car from 2013 owned since new with a perfect screen, my parent’s cars were older and had good screens until being recently sold, etc.
I don’t know anyone who has had a screen fail in a car.
I realize new and different scares people sometimes, but I just don’t think there’s any grounds to assume that screens are someday going to fail en masse in modern cars.
Yeah, I think at this point automakers understand they’re gonna be used in direct sunlight and need high standards.
The LCD temperature display in my w126 still works, despite being nearly 40 years old, as well.
Hey, I’m not scared, get off my lawn!
But yes, there is not a lot of examples of failures so it is really just my slightly unwarranted skepticism. Though in my defence there also haven’t been many 35 inch screens yet either.
I think it may stem more from my other big concern, how dated will that look in 5-10 years? Is there a plan for regular refreshes/updates? Old new tech looks pretty bad on small screens, when it’s everywhere you see and interact with, will it be worse? Will the generation of screens have major influence on vehicle pricing in the used market? ie, will a used 2027 model with the Gen 1 screen be worth measureably less than a 2028 model with double the miles but Gen 2 screen?
I suspect this will be true, yes.
Although it’s also possible there will be a near equal mix of screen lovers and haters which may make the prices more balanced.
The screen in my ’18 Outback is failing. It registers phantom touches, and ignores actual touches. It’s also delaminating so it’s hard to read the screen when the sun hits it.
Pretty common issue on ’18 and ’19 Outbacks.
Don’t look at like 5 to 15 year old Mazdas and Subarus or however far back you need to go when screens first started becoming prevalent; both have a relatively common problems with infotainment screens failing. Everything from flat out not working, getting phantom touches, not registering touches, as well as straight up delaminating and becoming unusable.
I have anecdotally heard of certain brands and models having semi-chronic problems with screen failures, and one of the reasons they’re such a scary bogeyman is that they’re stupidly expensive to replace if they can’t be repaired (and they’re mostly not designed to be repaired).
In fact, when I bought my truck the F&I guy was using that as a scare tactic when trying to sell me the extended warranty.
Interesting, I may not know enough people who own the proper brands/age ranges to have noticed failures.
I’ll amend my statement to say something like “the majority of vehicles seem OK, but there may be some exceptions”.
Scores of billions of screens have been made (just look up iPhone sales) and the industry has that technology down.
IPads and phones get pounded on all day and dead pixels aren’t a thing anymore.
I’m puzzled as to how they got the styling on this so goddamn wrong. The Air is busy and loaded the gills with design trends, but it’s still pretty elegant and they’re very striking cars in person. This looks like a Hyundai Santa Fe and Kia Carnival had a baby that grew up and subsides on nothing but fast food.
The fact that they want 100 grand for it is absolutely hilarious. Who the hell is buying (or more accurately leasing) six figure BEV SUVs? It just seems like a niche that doesn’t need to be filled, especially when the R1S already exists.
This thing clears the R1S in pretty much every way besides styling (obviously subjective). It’s much newer so that’s to be expected, but the interior looks better, the range is better, the space is more efficiently used, etc.
Sure, but it’s also hideous
I don’t think it looks any better or worse than most large crossovers. *shrugs*
So, hideous?
In pictures it doesn’t look any better or worse than the Kia K4 5-door (with effort to ignore the Kia’s better hero color), but in person I suspect the much bigger Gravity’s muchness will be overwhelming.
Range is basically equal. Option the Lucid to a 7-seater, and you lose trunk space vs the Rivian, and the range is 437 compared to 410. If 27 miles of range is going to make or break your purchase, you should probably not be getting a BEV in the first place. Also, the max range Rivian with 7 seats rings in like $10k cheaper than the cheapest equivalent Gravity.
Also, I think the Rivian looks way better inside (and infinitely better outside), but yeah, that’s subjective.
No amount of range is too small to be significant IMO, as long as ranges remain so short.
Lucid also seems to have much faster recharge times.
If your preference on the styling outweighs everything, I can’t and won’t say you would be wrong to get the Rivian, but I probably wouldn’t if I was in the market.
We’re comparing apples to oranges based on price and range numbers.
The Rivian is a cool looking SUV with an outdoorsy aesthetic and, as I understand it, pretty nicely put together with good materials.
The Lucid is obviously more crossover-y, which is a different look and probably draws a different crowd, but also a legit luxury vehicle.
The air is an actual S-class competitor, not just “pretty nice”, and the Gravity takes that fight to the Cadillac and Mercedes EV SUV offerings.
At the end of the day people have their preferences and these are all very expensive purchases, but my point is we know where the cost of a fully loaded up Gravity is going. It’s not just “more expensive than a Rivian” for a few extra miles of range.
The Rivian is not really any cheaper though on the low end, the Lucid just offers higher trims.
Lucid’s faster charge time is more due to their smaller battery than anything. Not a complaint. It’s actually smart engineering. Package it efficiently to make it light and smaller, means you can get away with a smaller battery. Which in turn makes it lighter, cheaper, and faster recharging.
I think that ethos will work it’s way into other EVs more and more.
That being said, the difference between a 410 max range and 437 max range is basically negligible. Most people go over 400 miles so rarely already, that it wouldn’t reduce the need to stop at road-side fast changers by any measurable amount when you break things down into the typical consumer.
But the “I need the most miles possible!” argument just isn’t justified out by most consumers. Sure, there’s someone out there that does, but again, why the hell are you buying an EV in the first place then? Who are these mythical people that are regularly driving between 410 miles and 427 miles in single trips?
They’re the same people who parse a 6% difference in fuel economy, acceleration times, base price, trunk space, ring times, or whatever.
People want the best they can get in the specs that matter the most to them.
6% farther range may not matter to you. It does to me.
Weird. A 5% price premium for the Gravity (Touring which doesn’t even exist yet) is “not really any cheaper” but a 6% max range, means all the world.
Yep, to me one matters much more than the other and nothing I’ve said has ever tried to hide that.
when in cold climates I want every mile of rated range I can get because that 410 number is going to about 275 or less if I am on the highway
Rivian supposedly only loses ~19% range in cold weather. So that’d be 332 miles.
Man, I think I’d go Rivian R1S. The Rivian looks so much better inside and out (the Lucid’s styling works on a sedan, but here it doesn’t look great). The only clear wins over the Rivian is that everything isn’t based on a screen, and the interior space is a more efficient.
Battery size and range is a non-issue at this point and these vehicles. They’ll do everything I want. I also think Rivian is a bit more viable in the long term as a company. Despite Lucid having Saudi backing, I still question if they’ll be around in 10 or 15 years. Related to that, Rivian has a better network (dealer/service, and charging though charging is less important).
The Rivian is exponentially more attractive. It looks unique and modern without eschewing classic the classic SUV shape. This looks like an over styled minivan.
Yeah, it suffers from the same issues as the first generation Toyota Venza. It’s treads some weird visual area between wagon and SUV which make look like a odd minivan.
This is a minivan without sliding doors.
Anything to not be a van in 2025, I suppose
Lucid buying Nikola’s bankruptcy assets gives me some hope that they are in it for the long haul. They added almost 1M sq ft of footprint and are acquiring a lot of Nikola’s former employees for an incredibly low price.
They also have access to the endless faucet of Saudi blood money to fall back on.
As someone who thinks legacy automakers NEED more competition, I try not to think too hard about that part … but I still don’t know if I could bring myself to buy one.
It’s tough. There are a grand total of 0 corporations that are ethical. Everything we buy in this late capitalist hellscape is going to be built on the back of some form of oppression in one way or another. Something something, no ethical consumption, etc.
That being said talking with our money is one of the very few ways left that we can fight back against our .1% overlords. The vast majority of all of their wealth is tied up in stocks. While our society is wired to take everything we have and funnel it upward forever as of now there’s really nothing that the Musks and Bezos-es of the world can do if we simply stop buying their products.
So I still think it’s important to talk with your money. We all have our own limits and there really isn’t even that much you can say that can counter to the “well what about your iPhone that’s made by glorified slave labor” retort…but when it comes to big, emotional purchases like cars that are usually driven more by our hearts than our brains?
It seems easy enough to just not buy the Saudi car or Tesla to me….especially considering they’re luxury products so it’s not like they’re the only games in town.
I do not understand big EV SUVs.
They are never going off road, certainly not with those wheels and tires. The intent is for on-road performance and efficiency – but we’ve chosen the dumbest shape possible if that’s the goal: a tall, top-heavy brick to shove through the air and try to get around corners.
Can we please just bring back wagons? With EVs there’s no need for this SUV emissions work-around that popularized the class. Most SUVs are no more capable than a car off the pavement and never venture one tread lug outside the city or highway. Despite never needing to go off road, we still use the dumbest combination of design elements.
Bring back the long, low, fast wagon.
And all the three row wagons out there are?
People like to sit up higher. People like the additional space offered by SUVs.
What additional space? Look at the interior volume of most modern SUVs compared to a wagon and the space is either the same or slightly in the wagon’s favor due to having a lower floor.
Wagons disappeared because it was easier and cheaper to make SUVs that were exempt from EPA regulations for years, not because they are a better vehicle. People have just gotten used to them and think it’s “normal” for a car to be top-heavy.
Let’s look at hatchbacks and their SUV variant:
The Mazda 3 has 47.1 cubic feet of storage with the seats folded. The Mazda CX3, the SUV variant, has 42.7 cubic feet with the seats folded. The larger CX30 is still shy at 45.2 cu ft.
You’re hating on big SUVs but suddenly your defense is small CUVs and small hatch backs? Nah, use actual competitors that theoretically exist, that give you more room than these inefficient SUVs you hate.
So, again, what are these three row wagons that have more space?
I’m not defending small CUVs, I’m pointing out the same platform in a wagon/hatch often has more space inside than the SUV variant. There aren’t any large wagons sharing platforms with SUVs anymore, thanks to companies pushing SUVs to get around EPA regulations.
And yeah, I am hating on SUV pavement queens that never do what SUVs are supposed to do, they don’t tow, they don’t haul – they are used as glorified minivans.
I said you are using small CUVs and hatchbacks, as a defense of your argument you are trying to make against large SUVs. I’m pointing out that doing that, doesn’t make sense, as neither are representative of large SUVs vs the wagons you keep talking about, but have been unable to provide any examples of.
Find me a wagon that shares a platform with a large SUV and I will show you a more efficient, better handling, more spacious option than a large SUV.
This one seems pretty low. So low that it might not “qualify” as an SUV — angles of entrance and exits and such.
Comes with a fourth row of seats (the ones in the frunk)!!
Have you been in an Escalade? X7? Lexus LX? It’s like riding around in a luxury hotel room. They have space. They have features. They broadcast wealth. They are what most wealthy families want.
I love wagons and hatcbacks and I try to keep my footprint to a reasonable level. But once you roadtrip with your kids in a Gravity, you’re not going to trade it in for an Allroad.
If they brought the lexus minivan to the US, *THAT* would be the best option for wealthy families.
(Hell, I’d probably get one myself… as it is I have to “settle” for the Sienna. Heh.)
Yeah, and they handle like a luxury hotel. For the same money I’d rather have a Panamera. As for the LX, yeah, I have. Back when it was the LX450 and actually usable as an off road vehicle (and to this day one of the best ever built).
While I agree that maybe the ground clearance is higher than needed, the issue I have with many normal height cars (and wagons) is that I prefer sitting like I’m in a nice office chair. It really is the best thing for my back on long drives. I don’t think I’m in a small minority on this, based on the popular SUV/CUV body style.
So, that means the hip height or seating area has to be higher up off the floor, which means a high ceiling. Could you have a low ground clearance, high headroom non-van? I think this Lucid is close. Its lower profile than that Cadillac. I like the way it looks.
Ford made this, it was called the Flex. It had a standard height floor and taller roof with upright seating, 3 rows and lots of cargo space. Plus, you could get it with the SHO powertrain.
The Flex was awesome. I was hoping to get one used, but it seems that they either all got junked, or the people who have them are going to drive them as long as they can.