Lucid Motors is a small electric car startup based out of Menlo Park, Calif. that has big dreams for the future. But not that big. Unlike some of its peers (I’m looking at you, Faraday Future), the company steers clear of making outsized promises about the nature of its car. It won’t transform transportation. It won’t reformat your life. It just wants to make a beautiful, zero-emission car that you can drive in style.
I got to take a ride in Lucid Motors’ Air prototype during CES in Las Vegas this week. The company first unveiled the 1,000 horsepower, ultra-luxury vehicle at the LA Auto Show last year. The camouflage was still on the car I rode, but Peter Rawlinson, the company’s CTO (and the former lead engineer on the Tesla Model S) said it would be coming off in a few weeks.
Almost immediately you notice the Air’s large, luxurious interior. And it wasn’t just because the engineering prototype had been stripped of nearly everything inside. No dashboard, no center console, not even a cup holder. Exposed wires lay strewn across the vehicle’s floor. A huge metal bar ran across the width, holding everything in place. The only hint of Lucid’s high tech ambitions is three digital displays perched behind the steering wheel showing things like vehicle speed and battery power.
But the roominess! Rawlinson explained it was because of the way the car’s battery pack is stacked. Rather than lay the batteries flat across the chassis like some electric cars, Lucid has “sculpted” the battery pack to enhance the interior space. That makes the Air narrower, shorter, and lower than a Model S, but with the interior space of a long wheelbase S class Mercedes.