Lucid air car full#
Lucid air car plus#

It can manage 19.2 kW of level-2 home charging, it upconverts DC fast-charging power from 400 volts in older stations, and it can accept 300kW (or more) of the latest 800-volt “juice.” That makes the Lucid Air today’s fastest charging EV, capable of adding 300 miles in 20 minutes. It’s bi-directional, so it can provide “jump charging” to other EVs. The entire electric powertrain was designed and developed in-house, including the “wunderbox” electronic controller that manages the Air’s 900-volt electrical system. Lucid says this results in more efficient cooling and easier installation, and it eliminates heavy, costly adhesive in the pack. The cells connect to these bars via new lower-resistance ribbon connectors instead of wires, and heat gets conducted away from the ends of the cells instead of from the sides. While the chemistry of the cylindrical batteries is conventional, the pack is designed to simplify automated assembly in a patented and award-winning injection-molded case that incorporates all the power-conducting bus bars. Yes, this design requires two reduction gears, but placing a compact planetary unit on each side of the motor keeps things light and results in a complete drive unit with triple the power density of the leading competitors. Then, instead of multiplying the motor’s torque and then sending it through beefy differential gears, Lucid packages a small, light diff inside the rotor. The rotor squeezes more reluctance torque out of the same amount of rare-earth magnets by optimizing their positioning.

Lucid air car full#

To better manage the intense heat these wires generate under full power, Lucid moved the cooling passages down to the narrow spaces between winding channels, utilizing magnetic-field “dead zones” in the stator body. The tiny, power-dense motor that generates those headline-grabbing specs does so with an innovative new stator winding consisting of 24 square copper wires “woven” into a convenient assembly requiring minimal bonding.

Rather, it’s the sophisticated way Lucid achieves them in a package that ranks highly in each of our six key criteria that captured our attention and our calipers. Anyone can buy big numbers by installing giant motors and batteries. Were we wowed by the whopping numbers Lucid has been touting recently-up to 1,111 horsepower and 1,390 lb-ft of torque in the Air Dream P edition and up to 520 miles of EPA-official range in the Dream R edition? No. It’s helmed by experts cherry-picked from various successful automakers and it’s funded sufficiently to launch this Air sedan while developing its next model, the Gravity SUV. The Air sedan from startup EV-maker Lucid is just such a car, and its level of innovation and sophistication are as fresh and unexpected as multicolored tree bark.Ī year or two ago, most of you and many of us might have said, “Lucid? Are they still going? I thought they were foundering like Byton, Faraday Future, Dyson, Nio…” Lucid is very much still going. But every now and then a new car jumps off the automotive forest floor like a rainbow eucalyptus, advancing like crazy while making a colorful splash. Slowly, like a white oak sapling growing in a forest. Lucid is also using an EV-focused Pirelli P Zero performance tire that was co-developed with Lucid and designed for low rolling resistance, improved efficiency, and low noise.Automotive progress usually happens in baby steps.

Lucid air car plus#

The Air is built around a 900-volt battery pack and has developed its own battery management system and “miniaturized” drive units, plus a Wunderbox onboard charger that helps maximize charging of different voltages and permits future bi-directional charging tech, including potential home-energy use and vehicle-to-vehicle charging. Lucid is led by CEO Peter Rawlinson, who was the chief engineer behind the Tesla Model S as it neared its original launch.

Although that’s impressive as a burst rate alone-faster than the Porsche Taycan or any current Tesla product-Lucid says that the Air can recover 300 miles of EPA range in just 20 minutes. When it reaches customers it will likely be the fastest-charging EV, with the potential to recover 20 miles of range per minute of charging, via a peak rate of 300 kw. Although 500 miles is a long day’s drive, even when you do need to make a roadside stop it won’t necessarily have to be for long.