Why The Lucid Air Is About To Take Over! (Tesla Vs. Lucid)

Let’s talk about Lucid Motors - the American based, Saudi owned, luxury electric car startup with a smooth talking British CEO and a product that has been getting a lot of attention these past few months, Motor Trend’s Car of the Year for 2022, the Air sedan.

And yes, I hear you saying it, the word Tesla is literally in the name of this YouTube channel, that’s true. We started the channel because electric cars are the future and we really like talking about them. Well the Lucid Air is an electric car that we really like so we want to talk about it. The Lucid Air is awesome. Tesla is also awesome. There is plenty of room for everyone.

So with the recent release of the Lucid Air Grand Touring Edition, this is a very appropriate time to check in with the company and see how things are going these days for Lucid Motors. Let’s get going.

A Brief history of Lucid Motors

So Lucid actually dates back to the year 2007, when the company initially formed as a silicon valley startup that focused on developing batteries and electric vehicle powertrains. In the early days, the company wasn’t interested in making their own cars, just developing the guts to put into other people’s cars. That infant stage of the company was called Atieva.

By 2013, the company had accomplished their first goal, they had successfully developed and produced a highly capable battery and powertrain solution. They started having the idea that they might want to try building their own car. Enter Peter Rawlinson. He joined the team as Chief Technology Officer, having just come from Tesla where he worked on the Model S development.

Let’s take a quick side tangent to discuss some controversy here. Elon Musk and Peter Rawlinson have very different takes on what exactly Peter did at Tesla. Rawlinson claims on his resume that he was the chief engineer on the Tesla Model S project. And if you listen to the way he tells it, you might get the impression that Peter had basically created the Model S. However, Elon Musk would disagree, saying that Rawlinson did next-to-nothing on Model S engineering and then bailed on the company.

This was all a very long time ago, going back at least 10 years, so it’s hard to say what the truth really is, both of them are probably having a bit of selective memory. 

Anyway, regardless of what Peter Rawlinson did or didn’t do at Tesla, he found his home at Atieva. And by 2014, the company had secured a nine figure funding round to pay for development of its own, unique vehicle. 

By 2016, the company had made the infinitely smart decision to change the name to Lucid Motors, and announced their plan to produce an all electric luxury car. That same year, Lucid made plans for a 700 million dollar manufacturing plant in Casa Grande Arizona - the first dedicated electric vehicle factory constructed in North America.

Now we get into even more controversy, and this one has a bit more weight than a personal feud with Elon Musk. In 2018, Lucid Motors revealed it was in talks with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia regarding a funding investment of over 1 billion dollars.

Lucid said it planned to use the huge round of funding to complete the final engineering and testing of the Lucid Air model, fund the first-phase construction of the manufacturing facility, begin commercial production of the Lucid Air, and implement a worldwide retail strategy. This deal was completed in April of 2019. Now, the power structure of Saudi Arabia is pretty strange by modern standards because it is a monarchy ruled by the Saud dynasty - I think this might be the only major country left on earth that is actively ruled by a monarch with zero democratic oversight. So it is very important that we separate the rulers of Saudi Arabia from the people of Saudi Arabia, because the people have no say whatsoever in the operations of the government, they don’t even have the illusion of having a say, the royal family hold total control. And this particular Saudi Royal family has a tendency to use that control to do some pretty awful things, like murdering a journalist and cutting him up into pieces… Anyway, regardless of all that, thanks to that 1 billion dollar investment Lucid was able to complete development of the Air, and in return they will forever be linked to Saudi Arabia, the good and the bad.

The Lucid Air

As the newly minted CEO of Lucid Motors, Peter Rawlinson began shopping around his Air sedan to potential buyers in September 2020. The Air is an all electric, full size luxury sedan with 4 doors, a large trunk, a glass roof and an earth shattering amount of horsepower and torque.

Sounds like a Tesla Model S, right? It does, in theory. But in practice, the Lucid Air is far away from just a Model S clone - the Air is its own beast entirely. Rawlinson has always said that the designers at Lucid were targeting the Mercedes S Class as their real competitor - a true luxury product. 

And one of the smartest things that Lucid did over the course of their final product development on the Air was to document the entire process on their Youtube channel. So fans and customers could see the attention to detail that was being put into the final product, from track testing for maximum performance, to videos of Rawlinson driving the release candidate on the streets and making particular notes on things like the ride quality, the wind noise, the feel of the materials, even obsessing over the clock action of the buttons on the dashboard. That’s not the kind of thing that everyone is going to care about, but for those that appreciate these little details, it’s all very satisfying.

So when the first deliveries of the Lucid Air went out in October 2021, the car was extremely well received. By November 15th 2021, Motor Trend had named the Air their Car of the Year - a much coveted designation in the auto industry that was also enjoyed by the Tesla Model S after it debuted in 2012.

One of the standout features of the Lucid Air at its launch was the range per charge. Lucid had always promised that they would deliver by far the highest range ever in an electric car with their Dream Edition. And that’s exactly what they did. To the surprise of many, the real world numbers lined up with the marketing hype, with the long range version of the Dream coming in with 520 miles of EPA certified range and the performance optimized version still managing to go 471 miles. The next closest competitor to those numbers would be the Tesla Model S Long Range, which is sitting back at 405 miles EPA range.

Now, that’s for the Dream Edition, which was limited in production to something like 500 units and they’re all sold out. You could maybe pick one up used, but you can’t buy one new anymore.

So what we’re really talking about when we talk about the Lucid Air is the Grand Touring package - these were just released to the public on April the 12th, and this is the trim level that Motor Trend evaluated in their Car of The Year review. The Dream Edition was everything that Lucid could do at maximum flex, the Grand Touring is their sustainable, top tier option. And even still, the Air continues to dominate in terms of range - the performance optimized version of the GT is EPA rated for 446 miles, with a 0-60 time of 2.6 seconds.

The Battery Technology

Until Lucid came along, Tesla was always known for having the longest range electric vehicles by a pretty wide margin. So how did Lucid come out of nowhere and leapfrog Tesla by an equally wide margin? According to Peter Rawlinson, the secret is in the engineering.

Like we said earlier, Lucid uses their Youtube channel to very good effect. And about a month ago, they released a video where Rawlinson himself did a very thorough walkthrough and explanation of the Lucid Air battery pack and powertrain system. And I mean thorough, it’s over half an hour long… But honestly, this is the best explanation of how electric car batteries work I’ve ever seen on Youtube, from any channel. He explains the physics and the engineering of how battery cells work, and shows us how Lucid exploits those physics to get the most out of their batteries.

This is the kind of thing I wish Tesla would do. Or maybe I don’t because it might put us out of a job? Tricky one.

Anyway, Rawlinson explains that Lucid uses the standard 2170 cell that is found in most versions of the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, and is also being used by Rivian in the R1 - a very popular choice for electric car battery. But Lucid put a ton of work into the way that they package those cells. 

The Lucid module has some unique features like a bottom cooling plate that pulls all of the heat out of the cell through the negative terminal - most other 2170 modules, like those used by Tesla, will have side cooling channels, it’s like a wavy strip of material that runs between the rows of cells and wicks heat away through the side of the metal cylinder. This method is generally used because the path for heat to get out through the side of the cell is shorter than the path from the top to the bottom. But getting heat out through the side is less efficient, and it’s more difficult to get a solid contact point when using those wavy cooling channels. So Lucid concentrates on getting a solid contact point at the bottom of the cell and using an advanced aluminum heat sink panel that is liquid cooled with water glycol solution.

On the top of the cells is another unique design to Lucid, they use single piece, injection molded aluminum housings that both hold the cells in place and act as a bus bar connection point. Then they use ribbon connectors, not wires, to bridge the positive and negative terminals across the tops of the cells.

To achieve their 900v architecture, Lucid uses a combination of series and parallel wiring within each module. So, by removing the side channel heat sinks from the module, Lucid is able to pack cells in a very tight honeycomb structure. Each module has 300 cells that are set up in 10 groups. Each group of 30 cells are wired together in series to maximize voltage, and then each group is wired together in parallel to complete the module. Watch Peter’s explanation if you want to get any deeper into how that works - but it is a clever trick, and it is something that is unique to Lucid.

So obviously when you buy any car there are going to be tradeoffs in terms of the practicality, the features, the price tag - all of it. And with electric cars that balance of trade offs is even more difficult - you can’t have maximum range and maximum power at the same time, you can’t have a large vehicle with a long range, you can’t have a high quality luxury product without paying a colossal amount of money.

Tesla have always been pretty good at handling this balance, you get a very nice amount of range that was class leading until Lucid came along, but Tesla still lead the pack in maximum power - if you want the fastest car ever made, you want a Tesla. Tesla’s aren’t cheap, but they’re not the most expensive vehicles in their product class and they offer a very good level of quality, fit and finish.

Lucid comes in with a different order of priorities. They maximize range above all else, and because of that they can’t offer the fastest car ever, but they do make a very quick vehicle - any 0-60 time under 3 seconds is going to feel terrifyingly fast. And the company chooses to spare no expense when it comes to high quality interior materials and fit and finish - which leads to a very expensive product with a very limited production capacity.

Car reviewer Doug Demuro summed it up pretty well in his video on the Lucid Air, saying that it’s easily the best all around electric car ever made, but it comes at a cost. The price for a Lucid Air Grand Touring has crept up to around $170,000 USD right now - which is the same price that the top tier Dream Edition was advertised at back in 2021.

So what the Lucid Air shows us in 2022 is essentially the pinnacle right now of what an electric car can be when a team of very smart and talented people are given a very large amount of money and free reign to design and build the best EV that they can muster. Without worrying about the price or the production rate. And they can only do that because of the place that Lucid is at right now in their company story, they’re a startup, they have no established expectations or reputation. The company has one chance to make their mark on the world and establish their place in the automotive world, and the Air is that statement.

It’s the same kind of statement that Tesla made with the Model S back in 2012 - it wasn’t just a car with batteries and an electric motor, it was the most high tech, futuristic, spaceship car that the world had ever seen - and it gave Tesla the legitimacy to reach the heights that they were only able to attain 8 years after the Model S.