Steve Fowler recently got behind the wheel of the all-electric Lucid Air and was very impressed.
One of the most talked-about cars in the US right now comes from start-up brand Lucid, led by Brit Peter Rawlinson. Its all-electric Air sedan famously offers more than 1000bhp (745kW) and a 0-100km/h time of 2.6 seconds.
So when I was out in the US recently on World Car Awards judging duty, the Lucid Air was one of the first sets of keys I grabbed. And as expected, it was something else.
The power and performance figures are almost a side issue; the ability of the Air to travel around 800km between charges is the bigger story. Yes, it has a big battery – a whopping 112kWh in the version I drove – but with Lucid it’s all about the efficiency, something the firm says should be the biggest talking point with EVs.
I agree. Kays per gallon is hugely important with our petrol and diesel cars, so we should all be focusing on miles per kilowatt hour when it comes to EVs. And for the record, the Lucid boasts a massively impressive figure of 7.4km/kWh – which is how it can achieve such spectacular figures for its range.
Talking to the guys from Lucid, they reference Mercedes and BMW as rivals (and the BMW i7 that I also drove for the World Car Awards is another very impressive thing). The one brand they don’t mention is the obvious one: Tesla. Yet for my money, the Lucid is head and shoulders above a Tesla Model S. It drives and rides better, is built better and the tech is more usable.
The Lucid is very much a premium product, but another World Car Award contender that impressed me was the Hyundai Ioniq 6. It’ll be a fraction of the price of the Air, but it also has efficiency at its heart and will go further on one charge than its Tesla rival, the Model 3. Tesla sales are still flying right now, but the competition’s hotting up fast.
Steve Fowler