The Peaks and Valleys of Owning a Lucid Air for 10,000 Miles

• Our long-term 2022 Lucid Air just crossed the 10,000-mile mark.
• A broken driver's door handle prompted our first visit to a Lucid service center.
• We ran a second range test, and the Air still underperformed relative to the EPA's estimated range.

Edmunds purchased a 2022 Lucid Air Grand Touring for our long-term test fleet almost a year ago. At $140,500, it is the most expensive car Edmunds has ever purchased. We previously recapped our first 5,000 miles of ownership, highlighting its spacious interior, eye-catching design, exceptional driving range and prodigious speed. But our time with the Air has been far from perfect.

Our Air goes to show that Lucid may be experiencing the same young-automaker quirks that we've seen in early products from Tesla, Rivian and other EV startups. The Air's tech interface has been frustrating, with slow touchscreen response and load times being our primary beefs, though the time we got locked out of the car entirely is most memorable. All of this, despite 30-plus over-the-air (OTA) software updates, which come so frequently that it's often hard to keep track of the changes. Buzzes, creaks and adhesives losing their grip called into question build quality. All of that led up to a broken driver's door handle.

Now, we've finally taken in our Lucid for its first in-person service to get the handle repaired. This provided a valuable opportunity to learn what servicing is like on Lucid's $140,000 luxury sedan beyond just OTA software updates. So let's take a look at life with the Air since our last check-in 5,000 miles ago.

Range and charging

Our Air Grand Touring has an EPA-estimated range of 516 miles, but so far we've not come close to that figure. Our best range figure hasn't improved since the 5,000-mile update, leaving 438 miles as the best we've seen. (This figure was achieved during our second EV range test of the Grand Touring, meaning we charged the Lucid to 100% and ran it until an indicated zero miles of range remaining.) It's worth noting that we managed to drive 505 miles on a single charge in another Lucid Air, but that was a different trim (Dream Edition Range rather than our Air Grand Touring) with a slightly higher EPA estimate (520 miles vs. 516 miles). That car was also borrowed from Lucid for testing rather than purchased for our fleet.

While the Air has failed to live up to its EPA estimates, 438 miles is still better than we've seen from every other EV Edmunds has tested, so credit where credit is due. It's an impressive figure on its own, though we'd be more impressed if that range were closer to what the EPA estimates. You can read more about Edmunds' real-world EV range testing as well as look at the results of our testing here at our hub. You can see how the Air stacks up against models like the Tesla Model S, Porsche Taycan and Mercedes-Benz EQS.

More about that broken door handle

The door handles on the Air tuck away flush with the door when the car is locked. Unlock the door and they flip out for you to grab; there’s a mechanism inside each door that produces this sleek motion, and the one on the driver's door failed right around 5,000 miles. So we found two alternate ways to access the car until it could be fixed. One was to leave a window down and release the door by reaching inside the car. The other was to find something pliable, like a credit card, to pry the handle up from the outside.

Service experience was average

We called our local Lucid service center on a Friday afternoon and asked for the next available appointment, which happened to be the following Tuesday. When we arrived at the service center, we were greeted by a concierge and quickly checked in. Our service adviser and a technician inspected the door handle and immediately recognized the issue. Parts had to be ordered and we were told it would take about three days to complete the repair. We waited until Friday to hear back, then finally called and asked for an update. On the phone our adviser informed us that the handle was repaired but they noticed "the driver door had stopped cinching closed properly but that was also now fixed." He threw in a new key fob battery as well. But the door handle wasn't the only thing we wanted the service center to investigate.

With the results of our two EV range tests falling well below EPA estimates, we asked our adviser to look into any potential issues. That diagnostic took another six days to complete on top of the several days it took to fix the door handle before the service center released the car to us to complete its investigation remotely. In total, the car was at the service center for nine days.

We understand there was back and forth between our adviser and Lucid engineers, and the latter asked us to share the time stamps for when our range discrepancies occurred. Ultimately, Lucid determined the battery and car as a whole had no faults. So the dealer pushed an OTA update (2.0.52), which we were told addressed the range computer among other things. It sounds like we'll be doing a third real-world range test.

It was an average experience for a premium car and didn't rise above the quality of your typical high-volume service center — even though we secretly hoped it would. Our Lucid was at the shop nine days for one warranty repair, the vehicle analysis we requested and the subsequent software update.

Edmunds says

While there's a lot to like with the Air — especially in terms of comfort and performance — Lucid's lack of experience as an automaker is showing. Build quality issues continue to crop up, and our first visit to the service center wasn't quite what we'd expect from a luxury automaker. And while we appreciate Lucid's constant work, the number of over-the-air updates that keep coming make it hard to keep track of what's changed.