After launching the Lucid Air as a fully-loaded electric ultra-sedan, its makers are turning their attention downmarket with more attainable trims (well, if you define that word broadly enough), and we now finally know what the absolute base model has to offer. The Lucid Air Pure RWD starts at $89,050 including a strong $1,650 freight charge. That’s still a lot of money, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than an Air Grand Touring.
What’s more, although many features are stripped out, a sense of style and tech remains intact. Essentially, the Pure is the ID to the Grand Touring’s DS, and anyone shopping for a mid-size luxury sedan should consider the following.
Range anxiety is still a very real thing. While the Lucid Air Pure RWD won’t cure it, an estimated range of 406 miles should go a long way to allay fears. That’s longer than the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which is about as long as you’d want to drive without a bathroom break unless you’re some sort of cannonball maniac. It’s also about on par with the range of a Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive Tesla Model S, while being several thousand dollars cheaper—and a lot newer.
Driving enthusiasts will love to hear that this range at this price point doesn’t mean a compromise on acceleration. Despite only supplying torque to the rear two wheels, the entry-level Lucid Air is said to be good for a 4.4-second zero-to-60 mph time. That’s Mustang GT levels of quick. But it’s also worth noting the aforementioned Model S has the Lucid handily beat on speed, getting from stop to 60 mph in just 3.1 seconds. (Speaking of comparison cars, the E39 was a benchmark when developing the Air, so let’s hope that translates to driving dynamics somehow.)
Right, time for all the stuff you don’t get as standard for that $89,050. There’s no glass roof, but instead a simple aluminum affair. Metallic paint comes with an eye-watering $1,000 surcharge. Small 19-inch wheels with all-season tires take up residence in the wheel wells. The upholstery isn’t actually the hide of a beast. Oh, and the sound system isn’t the upgraded Surreal Sound Pro affair. Still, that’s about it for decontenting, which seems quite reasonable.
If you do wish to have summer tires or a premium sound system or the most advanced driver assistance systems Lucid has to offer, you can add them all back as options. They won’t come cheap, so it’s best to keep the Pure trim superleggera. Come to think of it, that makes this version of the Air the sort of sports sedan the internet dreamed of. Sure, it’s not fitted with a fire-breathing V8, but it’s a fairly no-nonsense big sedan capable of carving a canyon.
Expect the base-spec Lucid Air Pure to be available later this year, with pre-orders open now. While it’s not as sharply honed around straight-line performance as the Model S nor as cushy as the Mercedes-Benz EQS, it’s still a welcome addition to the big EV sedan world and the price tag is more enticing than ever.
(Photo credits: Lucid Motors)
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Wonder will these be sold in Europe? I think it’s much better looking than a Tesla on top of everything mentioned above.
I’ve done road trips in both the top level Air and the S100D– The Air’s range was accurate, while the tesla is a damn liar. Otherwise I like both, but the Lucid really is a fair bit better to drive. You can tell the designer doesn’t subscribe to the mantra: “input is error”.
I definitely prefer the lack of the glass roof and the 19” wheels. Plenty of range and it’s such striking car in person.
Too bad the Saudis own such a big chunk of Lucid. I like my cars without attachments to murderous regimes…
hope you don’t use gas, like at all.
Or anything made in China
Given that the US imports less than 0.5% of gas from Saudi Arabia, maybe using a little gas is okay ????
It’s so wonderful from the front and so woeful from the back. After watching Jason Camissa wax poetic about the brilliance of this car it irks my soul that it’s got such a disastrous booty. File it with the Corvette C8 in my heartbreak butts bin.
I love Lucid because as I’ve said before they feel like one of the only EV startups being run by adults, instead of tech bros with the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old in the throes of puberty. But I do have one request: Knobs. *waits for the 13-year-olds to stop giggling* The interior looks nice enough, but it’s also a touchscreen dystopia. I guess I’d have to drive one to decide how much of a problem it is, but it’s the one thing that would give me pause about buying one of these.
Heh. Knobs. https://youtu.be/qRkHO5ERzvA (A compilation of knob fiddling on Top Gear.)
This car is more aerodynamically slippery than a Tesla Model S and also slightly more efficient on a Wh/mile basis, which helps both its range and its cost per mile of range. Drag coefficient is 0.197, wheras the current Model S is at 0.208. Yeah, it’s splitting hairs, but even that still makes a difference. Couple the drag coefficient reduction with a frontal area reduction, and it gets significant quickly.
Things get really interesting once you start streamlining it into the low 0.1X Cd range, and go downmarket by removing all the luxury features and then shave off a ton of weight by using a much smaller battery pack. Modern EVs consume 2x what is needed. Want a $20k EV sedan with 250 miles range? This is how it must be done.
Going from 0.208 to 0.197 is a 5% difference. That’s not insignificant in engineering.
This looks really big for a “mid-size” luxury sedan.
Of course, everybody likes to think they’re in the “middle” (89% of people consider themselves to be “middle class” after all). It can be perceived as gauche to spring for the big one, and I’ve never even seen anything advertised as a “small luxury sedan” (Maybe the Catera back in the day? And we all know how that turned out.) because nobody wants the little one.
A lot of people mistake middle income as being middle class. In actuality, “middle class”, at least lower middle class, is being able to afford a starter home, at least 2 modest cars(an entry level new car and a decent used car), community college, vacations, healthcare, and to be able to set money aside for retirement/savings/future expenditures, ect without being in debt for the rest of your life to “afford” it. Which ends up being the upper quintile, at least in the U.S. People who are middle income are actually working class. The real middle class has been rapidly shrinking.
This car, is unreachable by the lower middle class. It’s a “maybe” for the upper middle class. $90k is a lot of coin.
Its about 3 inches longer than a Toyota Camry, and about 3 inches shorter than a Chrysler 300, FWIW
I don’t view the smaller wheels as a downgrade here in the midwest. The potholes eat low profile tires for lunch, forcing some acquaintances with low-profile German made wheels to add rubber as a near monthly expense.
Yeah, big wheels may give a person the look they like, but I always want more tire and less wheel if I can get it. Not just for tire durability, but comfort and the difference in risk of losing the wheel if something goes wrong.
And smaller wheels are more efficient to boot.
Losing the glass roof for an aluminum one should help shed some weight, too, along with shifting the center of gravity slightly lower.
I’d say the smaller wheels and aluminum roof are an upgrade.
At that price point, I r=would probably chose the ER Rivian, 70 miles difference is not that much between pee beaks. you can get there faster with a larger family to boot.
God it’s so beautiful.
(but i do wish wheel designers would walk away from all scythe/swastika motifs – i know i’m overly sensitive about that particular design, but i cant help but see it and that there car is a beautiful exemplar of all that’s right and good in ‘Merca, damnit.)
I’m seeing more of an Etruscan shield pattern in the wheels, but YMMV: https://live.staticflickr.com/3859/14407397482_010485dd95.jpg
If I were in the market for a Lucid, this is the model I’d get. When I got my Polestar 2 recently, I intentionally got the base model with no enhancements because I genuinely didn’t want the glass roof (CO sun is brutal), the driving aids, the larger wheels or the performance boost (0 – 60 in 4.6 seconds is plenty fast for me). I sorta wanted the upgraded sound system, but the base level system is so good I’m glad I didn’t spring for it and get a bunch of stuff I didn’t want in the bargain.
You see swastikas I see craptastic 80’s movie props:
https://img.moviesrankings.com/t/p/w1280/aRscj6J2TnUqORcJdda8erbSsai.jpg
that movie fucking ruled when i was 7.
I mean, when you stop to consider that Krull is about a white dude and all his white knight friends going on a quest to rescue his wife from the woman-stealing black enemies, whom he defeats by shooting fire from his hand whenever he mimics a Nazi salute, you might wonder if the vaguely swastika-esque shape of the famous glaive is an unfortunate coincidence or not…
I hope I haven’t ruined Krull for anyone. It’s a fun movie! And yes, it’s entirely possible everything above is harmless coincidence; an all-white cast was pretty standard for fantasy films of the era, and the colors of black and white have been used to denote good and evil for centuries. That gesture when he shoots the fire, though, still makes me uncomfortable, because anyone at the time doing that with their arm (especially before the special FX were added) would definitely have noticed the similarity.
Agreed. The symbology might be subjective, but I hate hate hate that these asymmetric directional designs that are always turning the ‘wrong direction’ on one side of the car. It just feels cheap and lazy when perfectly symmetrical wheel design exists and is more attractive.
I finally saw one of these in person the other day, and the proportions are just a bit off. It’s awkward looking in a way that’s hard to describe, but easy to notice when you first see it.
Nonetheless, I appreciate that someone is considering actually useable range in their EVs, and if I was forced to buy an electric car today, some version of a Lucid would be it, bar none.
really? i’ve only seen two IRL, both while driving, but I was struck by how beautiful it was.
(that said- i love LOVE french car design, and the Citroen SM is probably my favorite car design, so i’m probably classified as some sort of car pervert)
I wonder if there’s a correlation between liking French styling and liking Lucid styling. Because I’m decidedly against both lol.
That said, I think you will have more supporters around here than I will. I got torn to shreds in the comments the last time I called a Citroen ugly.
The Citroens have a beautiful type of ugly to them. The best analogy is chocolate – the cacao bean is horribly bitter and tastes worse than awful, but in small quantities with a bit of sweetener, it’s fantastic.
I think both can be true. I love the old Citroens, but they are a bit awkward. I don’t know if that’s why I like them or in spite of. What got me with the Lucid, though, is it looked wide and low. Maybe because everything else is tall and ungainly, but it reminded me of what I thought a car of today would look like back in the ‘90s. I like that better than what we got.
“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.” – Francis Bacon, apparently.
There is definitely some DS inspiration in the design of the lucid, even on the dash somehow. So you’re not wrong my friend.