Lucid Air review

It’s the Lucid Air, a luxury sedan from EV automaker Lucid. A young automaker in the grand scheme of things – the Gravity SUV will be only its second ever car, when it launches – it has made waves as a contender aggressively campaigning to unseat the Tesla Model S from its throne.

Should Tesla be worried? Absolutely, and not only them: every automaker should be paying attention to what Lucid has achieved with the Air.

Would you say it’s… taken your breath away?

Cute, but accurate. Compared to a Rimac Nevera or McMurtry Spéirling, the Lucid Air is far more terrestrial, but it still operates on a level that skirts the limits of credulity.

What makes us say that? Wait, you ask, that’s your thing.

Sigh. What makes you say that?

So glad you asked! At the top of the model line-up, the tri-motor Lucid Air Sapphire produces 1,234hp and 1,430lb ft. And knows how to use it. From a dead stop it can get to 60mph in 1.89 seconds and tops out at around 204mph. What makes this stellar beyond the impressive numbers is that it’s got a well-engineered independent suspension that gives it the kind of handling most sports cars struggle to achieve.

We've done a bespoke review on the Sapphire here, because the headline news is this: it's the best-handling EV anywhere in the world right now.

Sounds impressive but not particularly attainable.

Fair, we’re talking about a luxury car priced at $250,000, which we’ll affectionately call ‘Lamborghini money’ since that’s usually what it took to get in the door of its V10s, when it had them. The point is, this amount is far beyond what us normies would be able to swing, and while the other models are cheaper, they’re still out of reach for all but the well-to-do.

At the low end, the single-motor 430hp Air Pure starts at $69,900. Nice. Expensive, but nice. This one isn’t the mind-warp the Sapphire is, but it’s still pretty great. The Pure reveals that, stripped of the more astonishing aspects, the Air has the fundamentals sorted out.

Okay, so it’s fast. What’s the big deal?

Steel is the deal! As in steel springs. No air suspension on the… Air. This more conventional approach allows Lucid to set up and tune the Air’s ride for sport sedan handling that rivals the BMW M5 and Mercedes-Benz S-Class in what it’s capable of, all while having double the horsepower instantly on demand. Neat trick.

The end result is an incredibly robust system that’s communicative in ways the inherently muted air suspension can’t be, which means you can feel the limits – or lack thereof – of the EV and give it a proper whip around the most challenging of twisties. In short, it feels like a cheat code for an old-school racing game that unlocks a secret car with max stats.

Among the talented European engineers flown over to California to make the Air drive properly are chassis folk from Aston and Jaguar, as well as one Jean-Charles Monnet, Red Bull Racing’s former aerodynamicist. As such, you’re looking at a car with a drag coefficient of 0.20. Which matches the Mercedes EQS, sure. But we’d argue the Lucid Air looks prettier. No?

You might have a point. Anything you don’t like about it?

For all the incredible effort put into making this a top-tier luxury performance car, there is a sense that Lucid’s, um, trying too hard. The attempts to streamline the cockpit into an elegant, tech-forward space ultimately makes it overwhelmingly distracting. The cascading digital interfaces that sweep from the driver’s side down to the console is replete with just about every control you’d need – and that’s sort of the problem.

Few must-have functions are at the ready, and simple adjustments to things like mirrors, steering wheel and drive settings are all within pages of menus. In a normal drive, you find yourself fighting the urge to change anything just because of the attention it takes away from driving. Custom settings profiles mitigate some of these issues, but not all of them.

The Lucid Air is an absolute belter: an EV so dialed in, it should put other automakers on notice. From the base model to the top-tier trim, the Air excels in range, performance, power and luxury. It’s also packed with enough tech to make your eyes water, for better or for worse.

The dynamics are sharper and the interior’s more homely than any Tesla we’ve driven, and it has an air (geddit?!) of novelty value that no Tesla has arguably boasted since the Model X’s wacky doors knocked our socks off all those years ago.

The gadget glut can be entertaining, but fundamental day-to-day functions demand far too much attention, which is critical for a car that’s this expensive and powerful.

That said, Lucid coming so close to the bullseye on its first go at the Air sets the expectations very high for whatever comes next.