Lucid announces new lower priced sedans | Hacker News Reader

Lucid announces new lower priced sedans

ir.lucidmotors.com

33 pointsrising-sky53 comments

Priced the economical Lucid Air with a few upgrades. Came out to be $99,900. I think they're gorgeous, but I can't do it when, surprisingly, e-bikes gets me where I want to go locally without fuss.

Short / medium trips: e-bike

Long trips: rent a very high-end car. This whole industry can be improved so much. I think a lot more people will fall into this category as micro-mobility takes off. I want to splurge on a fancy car for a week, not own one.

Medium trips / hauling cargo: ??

If I were to buy a car again I think it'd be a pick-up to haul things.

Where do you live?

I loved my ebike and scooter, but on the 10th anniversary of me waking up in an ambulance after a car struck my bike I was hit by a car while on my scooter.

I’ve given up on micromobility in SF. It’s not worth me dying over.

NYC, which isn't the best bike city in the world, but for where we want to go (~2-3 miles at most, in Manhattan / Brooklyn) it works out well.

I completely agree. I'd love to see long trips: ride a train added here as well.

> I think it'd be a pick-up to haul things.

Small trucks or transit vans are great for this, but similarly you can just rent a truck or have delivery. Probably would be cheaper than buying a vehicle. Depends on the use case.

"Lower price" being $87,400 – $107,400 (starting)

So still firmly in luxury car territory.

Just can't imagine spending as much on a car as many people spend on a house.

> as many people spend on a house

Where are houses $100k, these days? Or do you mean down payment?

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/36-Fenderson-St-Painted-P...

When people ask me where I grew up, I tell them "Big Flats, between Horseheads and Painted Post." Then they usually ask if that's in Australia.

Lots of places in the US in between the coasts. Not at all difficult to find on the usual real estate websites. You don't get much land, of course, for that kind of money. But you can certainly find a place to live.

Very large portions of the country outside of coastal cities.

Detroit.

Not just Detroit.

Indeed, much the so-called 'rust belt' remains much cheaper than the coasts.

Am I the only one that thinks the pricing on cars these days is ridiculous!? $100k for a car? I guess that’s what you get for printing money for over a decade.

The cheaper EVs like the Chevy Bolt start at $26,500.

To put the $26,500 in perspective, in 1972 that would have been $3,700.

That's within the same ballpark of a 1972 Ford Torino with some options (like air conditioning).

Unless you really need that extra 20 cubic feet of cargo capacity, the Bolt is superior in nearly every aspect.

I picked 1972 because that was the last year before the oil crisis, which caused car prices to start skyrocketing year-over-year until the late 90s.

The Lucid Air is a low-production (fewer than Porsche 911s) luxury/performance sedan that exceeds most performance figures of supercars from the 90s/2000s and is not a valid price floor to compare against.

There are plenty of inexpensive cars. The Chevy Spark is cheaper today than almost any car in US history, even stripped-down VW Beetles from the 60s and 70s-- which had been the cheapest bare-bones cars in the US for decades.

If you go to a lot asking for a Spark the salespeople will do the "jump in the air and kick their heels together" thing because lots are full of them, rotting away.

People don't want cheap cars, though.

> will be followed next year with a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive variant

This will be more reasonably priced and more interesting for most people, who have little need for 3.4s acceleration to 60mph.

I was excited about Lucid enough to buy a tiny bit of stock before the car came out. This change to a newer, more expensive model, is the exact opposite of their announced strategy of reducing price thorough successive iterations.

The Air Sapphire is a quarter of a million dollars. How is this company helping attract wide attention for affordable electric cars in America, where it produces them? I'm not thrilled.

This company is a spin-off of many disgruntled Tesla engineers in a fairchild-esque way (they are rather open about that). Right now they are repeating almost exactly the method Tesla entered the mainstream car market with in 2012, specifically a method where they went in from the top-down by creating a lower volume luxury sedan and gradually incremented downwards into lower margin more affordable segments from there. This is more-or-less their do-over of releasing the Model S Signature at ~$100,000(2012) in low volumes >5000, and as such they will probably make the same moves from here on.

The article mentions both more expensive (Sapphire) and less expensive (Pure) models...

I know. And the less expensive version is part of the original plan. What disappoints me is that adding another, more expensive model can only consume resources that could have gone to bringing it down further.

> more expensive model can only consume resources that could have gone to bringing it down further.

I don't think this is how it works. That more expensive model probably has much higher profits, and may be subsidizing the less expensive one.

They are way behind on their volume goals. Without volume, they can't afford lower margin vehicles.

Affordable electric cars aren’t profitable currently. Go where the margin is.

In Europe, many of the same companies offer a wide variety of electric models -- and at much lower prices than electric cars here in the US. As one of the few companies to have purpose-built both electric car and battery factories in America, I had hoped Lucid could be a vector for moving things in that direction. But the market here seems to only want and care about ever-more-premium electrics. Even Nissan, with arguably the best plug-in EV in its Leaf model, decided to discontinue the entire line in order to make more expensive Ariya models. This is not the case in Europe, where all of the top brands have multiple electrics on offer.

There has to be a learning curve. Building a manufacturing company, a first production facility and a car at the same time is VERY HARD.

You are doomed to low volumes as you attempt to figure out the design, so you might as well charge for it. Tesla followed the same model, they just didn't go deep enough. Now Tesla is backtracking with the roadster and they are directly competing on the segment.

I have faith in Lucid, they'll deliver eventually. Also, there is a ton of turnover from Tesla to Lucid so the team is strong.

I was able to look at one up close in a showroom. I was really impressed with the interior design and overall feel of the vehicle. Its definitely a niche market product in the US, though. The US is very much an SUV driven market.

I expect the Gravity to be very successful, especially if they can get their early software issues out of the way by then.

marcus brownlee did a great review of their car (not this one specifically). I recommend everyone take the time to watch it if they're interested. He's a big tesla fanboy but definitely gives lucid a LOT of credit on things they do better than tesla. Came off as very balanced and fair

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yjRIcRc9qY

MKBHD is an awesome reviewer of many things. I just love his videos.

> MKBHD is an awesome reviewer of many things.

I want to disagree with you there, but if I do basically all other YT reviewers get thrown into the mix too.

Let me preface this with: I haven't watched his reviews, or most reviewers in a year or two.

So many of them just read the spec sheets to a camera, then add something like "It's amazing to me, personally I've loved (insert some aspect of the device the marketing department is focusing on this year)."

Now, to be specific with him, to me it seems like he just doesn't care anymore. So many flubs that should have just been reshot, or him reading a spec sheet wrong.

But I think this is a symptom of nobody (ok, the general public) really wanting in depth testing reviews. They want eye candy that reassures their pre-made decision.

Most people I know that want electric cars are stuck with underpowered electrical service and panels and too much redtape and delay involved with upgrading their service. My current utility (PG&E) just told me it is 1.5 to 2 years to get my service upgraded.

You shouldn't need help from the utility to add a charger in your garage. An electrician can do it. It's the same as adding an outlet for a dryer or oven.

You need help from a utility if you have an old home without adequate service from the electric company. Common example is your home is on 100amp service and that is entirely consumed by TVs, kitchen appliances, HVAC, etc.

I believe the OP is saying that the service to their house is underpowered. Meaning the wire conductors that run from their house aren’t rated for a lot of current.

For example my house is only rated for 120 Amps total, and to upgrade that I would have to contact the electrical company and have them install new wires to my house.

this isn't necessarily true. Ford's Lightning has an 80A charger that many homes can't support. They do offer a slower charger, but it impacts charge times.

https://chargers.ford.com

Do you really *need* an 80A charger if you're charging daily and overnight?

240V * 80A = 19.2 kW.

The F-150 has a 98kWh battery.

At 80A it charges in about 5 hours, though you likely wouldn't see 80A due to needing a current spike safety margin.

If you halve the current, the car could charge in ~10 hours, and that's assuming you actually use the entire battery every day. I'm not saying it's ideal to have to charge every day, but IMO it's not a deal breaker. If you are fully charging every day, you can probably save a bit of gas money by getting an EV-favorable plan from your utility that encourages energy consumption at night.

Anyway, I own a Tesla and I love never going to a gas station.

I have a Tesla S85 and Tesla's 80A charger (on a 100A circuit because of the safety margin you mention). I don't normally have to charge my car quickly, but there has been a few times have 80A available has come in super handy.

To install the 80A charger, I had to upgrade the service panel on my house from a total of 100A service to 250A service. I also had to have a dedicated 100A circuit line run from the panel to the garage. Thankfully, I was able to do that using the same service line to the house that I already had. However, the power company wouldn't let me go higher than 250 without significant cost and time.

Anyway, all that is to say, I LOVE my 80A charger, and you'll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.

A Lightning is a bit of an extreme example as trucks are going to get pretty bad efficiency compared to something smaller. But we'll still use it to look at what charging is like with a smaller charger.

The F150 Lightning is roughly rated for ~50kWh/100mi by the EPA, or ~2mi/kWh. A 60 mile daily round trip commute would then be ~30kWh.

At home, I have a 32A J1772 charger. That's ~7.68kW its rated for, we'll call it 7.2kW after charging inefficiencies. 30 kW/h / 7.2kW = 4.166h. A 60 mile commute would easily be recharged in less than four and a half hours.

Let's say you can't even handle a 32A charger overnight. A 20A charger, 4.8kW rated, we'll say 4.2kW after inefficiencies, would still get it done in just a bit over 7 hours.

Obviously, this is assuming a 60-mile commute, and assuming that commute isn't where its super cold. That's higher than the average commute, but there's definitely a lot of people who drive more than that in an average day. But how long does your car stay parked? I usually get home from my day of being out before 7:00 PM or so, and then it has about 12 hours of sitting still before it is needed again. How long does your car sit most days?

YMMV, different people have different transportation needs, EVs don't make sense for everyone in every situation today. That said, plenty of Lightning buyers don't need an 80A circuit to charge their truck, even a 32A circuit would often be more than enough to meet their realistic needs. Sure, it impacts charging times, but I imagine in most cases for a person who could be satisfied by an EV it won't make that much of a difference.

Even with the Lightning, very few people would need an 80A for their daily usage. Though the dryer plug mentioned above would be a little on the low side. Even that would be good for between 100 and 150 miles per day.

Yup. Every page on the PG&E site is pushing moving to electric cars and home charging but actually getting a panel upgrade that can support it has been a nightmare. Weeks between emails, no explanations for what steps we need to go through, now waiting for a few months for a technician to come out to check "flutter" on the nearest transformer. It's been nine months so far and I don't expect to have the project finished over a year from start.

I managed EVs for about 10 years on 120v service using 8-12A service in my garage using regular outlets. It’s generally enough to recharge from daily usage. If you need to occasionally charge more and faster you can use a commercial charger.

The vast majority of people will only need a standard outlet overnight. Ours adds about 70 miles of range in the 14 hours it sits in the garage charging on a standard 120V/15A plug, and that’s more than we drive most days.

Title is "Lucid Air Touring and Air Pure Now Ready for the Road with Market-Leading Range"

I have trouble supporting a company that's backed by Saudi Arabia. I'm not currently in the market for a luxury electric car but this company would be a non-starter for me

Continuing the trend of all cars looking the same.

Is this sameness driven by aerodynamic constraints? Design has always been such a significant part of automotive development…

There are various other hard and soft constraints (aero, weight, safety, general component placement) that are all fed into a constraint solver to generate the basic design of the car.

Each class of vehicle tends to have the same set of constraints, and they more or less use the same constraint solver software industry-wide, so they all get the same basic shape at the end.

Hardly, that trend is reversing IMO.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/2/23434740/weird-cars-gimmi...

Aside from them (mostly) having four wheels... do you really think they look the same?

I can usually guess the make of a car from its headlights and grill in my rear-view mirror. There's plenty that differentiates the look of a car. And I'm far from a car buff.

Yes, they do look the same. I have to look at the decal and text to tell one model from another.

Kia, Hyundai, Peugeot, Citroen, Honda have some pretty unique looking cars on the market.

Kias look just like Fords unless you're comparing a sedan to a pickup truck.

Only if you really squint your eyes and ignore details.

EV6 https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.6a1fbdbf2c19407a9a3707142cbd65f1...

Soul https://media.autoexpress.co.uk/image/private/s--anPXhP3S--/...

I see this occasionally and I wonder when cars didn’t look somewhat similar.

A ‘57 Chevy and ‘57 Ford look very similar if you don’t know what to look for.

Can’t be the 80s either.

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