Lucid Air Pure is a joy to drive — even in Los Angeles traffic.
Lucid is facing a kind of existential crisis if you look at the raw numbers. But, numbers aside, how good is the actual car?
First the bad news. At the end of last year, Lucid was hit hard by the EV price war. As a result, deliveries and production fell year-to-year in the fourth quarter of 2023, sending its shares plummeting to a record low. The company reported $2.8 billion in losses in 2023. Then, in February, Lucid had to cut prices of its Air sedan by up to 10% to boost demand. Things improved in the first quarter of 2024, with deliveries hitting a record high of 1,967 vehicles in the January-March period. But the stock remains depressed.
The drive: But drive a Lucid and the picture brightens up a lot. Especially with the new Air Pure which starts at $69,900 for purchase or $649 per month on a lease. I’ve been driving the Air Pure for the last several days. As a longtime driver of EVs, I immediately noticed it solves two pressing issues that dog EVs. Especially non-Teslas. One, it boasts an EPA estimated range of 419 miles. That eliminates, to a large extent, the ABCs (always-be-charging), aka range anxiety, that comes standard with most EVs, even today. Two, it charges up very quickly. Charge rates are right up there with super-fast Tesla Superchargers. Those two things combined make it a good EV. Throw in a lease deal that makes it more accessible to more EV buyers and you have an even better car. This is, after all, a luxury car that competes with high-end EVs from Tesla (Model S), the Porsche Taycan, and others from Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi. The icing on the cake is the design. Its understated, unbusy elegance is stunning. Few high-end luxury cars out there can match it.
So far: It’s hard for me to write off a car (as others have done) from an American startup that’s this good. No, I can’t comment on long-term ownership and issues that may pop up down the road. But the car has so much potential — and is so fast and so adroit at maneuvering through Los Angeles traffic — that it’s really hard not to be impressed. If Lucid can keep cranking out cars like the Air Pure at its Arizona factory and can keep bringing down the price, however incrementally, it can’t lose. And there are small signs that more buyers are signing on. For the first time in my EV-saturated Los Angeles community, a neighbor has a brand new Air Pure. I expect to see a lot more Lucids in the years to come when the Gravity SUV becomes available.
