Our Lucid Air Grand Touring Leaves a Better Car Than When It Arrived

• We've put nearly 27,000 miles on the Lucid Air in about three years of ownership.
• At $140,500, the Air Grand Touring was the most expensive car Edmunds has ever purchased.
• Our car had some teething issues, but newer Lucids we've tested have shown that build quality has improved significantly.

Nearly three years ago, we purchased a 2022 Lucid Air for our One-Year Road Test fleet. Buying the first car from a brand-new automaker is always an exciting prospect, though as our Fisker Ocean showed, exciting isn't always fun. After nearly 27,000 miles, dozens of over-the-air updates, and a few trips to the dealership for repairs, it's finally time to say goodbye to the Air.

When we purchased our car, we went for a loaded Grand Touring model, the highest trim in the lineup at that point. Our Grand Touring set us back a cool $140,500, making it the most expensive car Edmunds has ever purchased. Since then, Lucid has both lowered the Grand Touring's price — you can get an Air Grand Touring for tens of thousands less than what we paid — and introduced the Air Sapphire, a high-performance model that sits atop the lineup. 

So what's the verdict on the Lucid Air after three years? How does it compare to the first models from other relatively new automakers like Tesla, Rivian and Fisker? While it hasn't been perfect, the Air is leaving our garage a better and more competitive car than when it arrived. 

What we liked

Everyone agrees that this is a handsome car both inside and out, something you can't say for most rivals. Jonathan Elfalan, our director of vehicle testing, was wowed by some of the Air's interior details. "File this under 'How did they do that?' One cool detail that I like about our Air is the wood-trimmed tambour-style door that covers the center storage area. It looks like a thin solid piece of trim that somehow disappears into nowhere. I'm sure it rolls and folds somehow, but the sections are so tightly pieced together I can't tell exactly how it's done."

When the car arrived, its touchscreens weren't always the most responsive, but Lucid did well with the actual user interface. Director of written content Brent Romans said, "Most everything in this car is pretty easy to figure out and operate, including the dual touchscreens. That means this is a car that you can get in and just drive without having to spend a bunch of time trying to figure out where certain controls are or how things work. It's pretty intuitive. In comparison, Teslas are definitely not intuitive, and the latest EVs from BMW and Mercedes can also require a steep learning curve."

The Air has both a front and rear trunk, so there's plenty of storage. Will Kaufman, video manager, noted, "The Lucid has way more storage space than you'd think. Count in the underfloor storage in the trunk and frunk, and maybe a little of the capacious rear footwell (especially when one passenger is a 5-year-old whose feet don't touch the floor), and you can carry a ton of stuff. We easily packed in as much stuff as the long-term Ford Bronco carried for our last holiday road trip. The only catch is that the space isn't square. There's lots of curves and angles, which means the Lucid's still not good for bulky items or if your whole family packs all their stuff in large suitcases. We used duffel bags for our clothes and personal items and then had a bunch of food, gifts, and sleeping supplies (an air mattress and a cot), on top of other odds and ends. It got a little Tetris-y, but it all worked out in the end."

The Air's in-car tech and driver aids weren't amazing when the car first launched, but Lucid pushed out literally dozens of over-the-air (OTA) updates to improve things. OTA updates were pioneered by Tesla and have been adopted by nearly every automaker.

Through software updates sent directly to the car (rather than having to visit a dealership), Lucid added Apple CarPlay, enhanced the navigation, beefed up the driver aids, made improvements to efficiency and more. There have been so many updates that it's hard to keep track of them all, but the short of it is that Lucid has been steadily pushing out free updates the entire time we've owned our car.

The one thing that truly sets the Air apart from other EVs is its range. While our car never hit its 516-mile EPA estimate, we did see 465 miles out of a single charge in the Edmunds EV Range Test. In a different Lucid Air, we drove 505 miles on a single charge. Even if it's off the estimate, that's stellar stuff, with only the Chevrolet Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV pickup trucks coming close (and those both needed batteries the size of a Honda Civic to go that far).

EV batteries, like the battery in your smartphone, degrade with time. At least in theory, the longer you own an EV, the less range it should have. But that wasn't the case with our car. In fact, every time we tested the Air, we saw an increase in range.

As senior reviews editor Clint Simone wrote, "Our long-term Lucid Air Grand Touring is still putting out some downright impressive range numbers. Keep in mind, we've yet to actually hit the EPA estimate of 516 miles, but our latest real-world range test did confirm one thing: This battery has not shown any signs of degradation. I think the car deserves some praise — which is definitely not always the case. This car has many, many flaws but the one rock-solid area has always been the powertrain."

What we didn't

The Air was far from perfect during our ownership, especially when it first arrived. Simone said, "I have driven cars one-fourth the price that rattle and creak less than our long-term Lucid Air. I was completely taken aback by how poor the quality felt inside the Air. The biggest offender is the steering wheel, which manages to produce some kind of unpleasant sound every time you turn left or right."

Efalan said, "I don't necessarily go searching for these things, but I noticed the Air's center armrest hinges have a very, very crude look to them. The metal parts have sharp and uneven edges and they just painted over it to try to hide the cruddy craftsmanship. Also the armrest slams closed like a $12,000 econobox. Details matter, especially at this price."

We had some issues with the key fob, which meant we had trouble even opening the door and getting inside. A dead key fob was a constant issue. We replaced the battery just a few months after it was delivered, and the service center put in a new one nearly every time we made a visit.

Even when the key was working, the Lucid was slow to wake when you walked close. Senior editor Ron Montoya said, "Every EV seems to have its own quirky set of door handles. On the Lucid, they will pop out once it detects you near the vehicle, then you simply grab it and tug on the door. Seems simple enough, right? In practice, however, there's a slight delay before the car wakes up and unlocks the car ... you're left standing awkwardly near the door."

When we purchased our car, all Air trims came with glass roofs. It wasn't a hit, with multiple writers noting how hot the lack of shade can make the car in the summer. Romans said, "Between the combination of the glass roof letting in a lot of heat into the cabin and the glass roof being only a few inches above one's head, the Air can seem like an oven. I got into our Air after it was sitting outside on a 100-degree day. It took a full 40 minutes for the climate system running full blast before it finally got the cabin cool enough so that the auto-set fan speed dropped." Thankfully, Lucid now offers the Grand Touring without the glass canopy.

What went wrong

Those pop-out door handles were a consistent problem during our ownership. We replaced both handles on the driver side because they stopped popping out, both times under warranty. The front trunk latches were replaced under warranty, too, as we had trouble getting the lid to latch at one point.

We had one major recall during our ownership. In 2024, the high-voltage battery was replaced. This recall was done preemptively, meaning we weren't actually having any issues with the battery. As noted above, range was actually improving the longer we owned the Air.

We only had one out-of-pocket repair during our three years of ownership, but it was a doozy. The Lucid was hit while parked, with the other car causing damage all along the Lucid's driver's side. The car needed a new rear bumper, new parking sensors, a new mirror, new trunk lid, new side glass, new paint and lots of labor to put it all back together. The final bill? $21,889.28.

Better with time

Our Lucid Air was a mixed bag, but that's the risk of being an early adopter. Building a car is really difficult, and we expected to have some issues. Our 2022 Rivian R1T was far from perfect. Same goes for our old 2013 Tesla Model S. But we've been in more recent examples of all of these vehicles, and they're much better built and less expensive than when they launched.

The Air is a better vehicle today than when we bought our car. It offers way more for far less, and its build quality has improved a lot in more recent examples that have been through our garage. It's not always been smooth sailing, but at least the Air didn't go the way of our old Fisker Ocean.