The Lucid Air has already arrived in production and it does so with many qualities that will make it face similar conditions to Tesla. Will it be up to the task?
As Mark Twain once said, comparison is the death of joy. Of course, being the outstanding aphorist that he was, he probably meant it in a human sense: comparing yourself and your life to someone else’s life only highlights your shortcomings.
In any case, we have the feeling that the new Lucid Air, which is already rolling off the production line in Arizona, could be a mortal joy for a few Tesla. Therefore, since we have been told that we have no joy on more than one occasion, today we are going to compare the two.
As far as you can go in a Lucid -according to US EPA tests- is 804 kilometers, Unlike the 650 kilometers offered in Tesla’s longest-range model, the Model S Long Range. That’s 154 kilometers lost, or more than 20 percent deficit. Which is considerable.
Ok, what about performance? The Model S Plaid has some puzzling 1,034 hp, which surely puts him above … No, the Lucid Air have 1,126 hp. True, that amount of power is only available in the ‘Dream Edition’ spec, but it’s still more power.
Obviously horsepower is just a number. Also, if we look at the statistics, the Model S Plaid is faster than the Air and accelerates faster. After all, 321 km / h is more than 270 km / h, and go from 0 to 100 km / h in 1.99 seconds is considerably better than the time of 2.5 seconds del Air.
Of course, the sprint of less than two seconds of the Tesla comes with nuances, as colleagues from Motor trend. And is that Tesla insisted that the magazine test the Plaid on a specially prepared drag track, which includes a super-sticky spray material at the start line to aid traction.
There is also something else to consider: Motor trend does a ‘one foot throw’. What does that mean? That the clock is not activated until the car leaves the line by a full foot -30.48 cm-, which is a great way to ensure that reaction time does not affect times.
What does affect is the effect of the output, which is usually quite consistent – between 0.2 and 0.3 seconds. So the actual time of the Plaid on a prepared surface is above two seconds. On a normal road, it is likely to be about 2.3 seconds. Of course, any time that begins with a 2 is brutal, unnecessary, almost irrelevant in normal life and very entertaining.
Refering to maximum speed, going over 110 km / h is illegal in many places, anything after 160 km / h is antisocial everywhere except on an autobahn, anything after 240 km / h is fast, even for the autobahn .. And 320 km / h? Aside from a line on your wish list, it is irrelevant, as much as the 378 km / h that an unrestricted Lucid achieved in testing.
Inside, the Lucid has more than you would expect from a luxury saloon. As we always say, taste is subjective – one man’s minimalism is another’s monochromatic monotony – but the Lucid arguably has more than that. It also includes a full steering wheel, which is nice when you’re trying to control over 1,000 hp of instant electric propulsion.
This article was published on Top Gear.