Automotive Engineering - September 2024 - 18

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2025 Lucid Air review: unnecessarily fast, astonishingly efficient
As amazing as the Lucid Air is to drive
- and it is amazing - it doesn't hold a
candle to hearing CEO Peter Rawlinson
explain exactly why his company's allelectric
sedans are, well, amazing.
Rawlinson isn't just the CEO at Lucid. His
history as vice president of vehicle engineering
at Tesla and chief engineer of
the Model S, as well as stints at Lotus,
Jaguar and technology consulting firm
Corus Automotive, help explain his other
title at Lucid: chief technology officer.
During a visit to Lucid HQ earlier this
year, Rawlinson eagerly held court to
explain the Air's incredible efficiency
numbers and why they matter.
" This car is 4.74 miles per kWH, so no
one else is even close to that, " he told SAE
Media. " This is the most sustainable car in
the world, in terms of energy utilization.
Going from A to B, this car will use less
energy than anything else on the market. "
Rawlinson said the Air Pure AWD
trim is more efficient than the impressive
Mercedes Vision EQXX, which
Rawlinson called " very artificial " because
of all of the compromises
Mercedes had to make in the concept
vehicle, like narrow tires and a sparse
interior. Earlier this year, Lucid announced
it had achieved tests in the Air
that returned over 5 miles per kWh,
which Rawlinson told SAE Media would
mean reaching the same range with
smaller batteries. There's much more to
be had on the efficiency front,
Rawlinson believes.
" My vision is to get to six miles per
kWh, and I think that's what's gonna
Lucid Motors CEO
Peter Rawlinson
shows off a
technical model of
the Air's front end
module assembly
at the company's
Silicon Valley
headquarters.
save the planet because then you can
have a car with 180-mile range with just
a 30 kWh pack, now you change the
design of the car, " he said. " The paradox
is that the long-range EVs of now,
this decade, and the EVs of the future
will have less range, [because] they'll
cost less and the chemistry will accept
the charge faster and the charging network
will be much more mature and
fully built out. Then, what's wrong with
180-mile EV? If you can get six miles
per kWh, that's a 30 kWh pack to get
the 180-mile range, and then it's a tiny
pack. That's maybe a $4,000-$5,000
pack, and then you can make a truly
affordable EV. I think we could do that
in the next couple of years. We can get
to five miles this year, for something like
[the Air], and for a smaller, family car,
we could do six miles maybe 18 months
from now, two years from now. "
Lucid is also improving its line-up of Air
trim levels, even as the various trims keep
their differences hidden behind matching
sheet metal. The Pure and Sapphire updates,
for example, were
developed at the same
time and Lucid engineers
had to develop their own
traction control system for
these EVs, because the
supplier version didn't perform
well enough. The
motors in the Grand
Touring trim are like version
1.5 - maybe not quite
different enough to be
considered v2.0, Lucid
representatives said - as
18 September 2024
The 2025 Lucid Air sedan.
the engineers continue to improve their
understanding of how magnetic fields
effect operation and the amount of resistance
different coatings have on copper
wires. Or take the 38-mm (1.3-in) aluminum
busbars in the Air's battery.
" We've got the shortest busbars on the
planet, " he said. " Originally, these were
about eight inches long, and I cannot tell
you the pain that the engineers went
through. 'We got them down to six inches,
Peter,' and I said that's not going to fly.
'It's down to four inches and it's killing us.'
'This is not good enough, I want them like
half an inch and it went this way for
months and months and months trying to
reduce the length of the busbars because
the shorter they are, the more efficient
they are, because the electrons don't
have to flows so far. And it's like, ' " What
difference does this make? " I don't know.
It's tiny, but you have to do it. "
Tiny improvements, huge
performance
Details of these small improvements that
Lucid engineers made throughout the Air
easily slip the mind when you get behind
the wheel. A spacious interior welcomed
me no matter which of the four Air trims
I tested on a sunny day earlier this year,
and the obvious headline is that it's impossible
to miss the difference between
the 1,234 hp (920 kW) Sapphire trim with
its three permanent-magnet motors
(one on the front axle and a twin reardrive
unit in back) and the 430 hp (320
kW) Pure base model with a single motor
mounted on the rear axle. During an
afternoon testing the Air lineup in the
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
BOTH IMAGES: SEBASTIAN BLANCO
Automotive Engineering - September 2024

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