Review: 2024 Lucid Air Touring

–Los Angeles, California

When Lucid unveiled the Air back in 2016, electric cars were nowhere near as common as they are now on American roads. When it came to luxury sedans powered purely by batteries, the biggest game in town, (and frankly, the only game in town) was the Tesla Model S. And while that’s far from a perfect car, it was a high bar to set for a new company.

Kyle Hyatt

When the Air went into production in 2021, it was clear that Lucid had looked beyond its immediate competitors like the Tesla and aimed for the big names in the internal-combustion luxury world too. Because the Air was not only elegantly styled, wildly powerful, and technologically advanced, it actually felt like a traditional luxury car in the vein of a Mercedes S-Class – something that the Model S has never really accomplished.

Fast forward a few years, countless software updates, and a few thousand models’ worth of experience in actually building the Air and how does it stack up? More importantly, how does it stack up in the lower and mid-level trims that most people end up buying?

Really, really well, as it turns out.

My 2024 Air Touring test vehicle is unquestionably the sweet spot in the lineup. It offers plenty of electric off-the-line shove. And with an EPA-estimated range of 411 miles (should you opt for the smaller wheels), it will let you skip a lot of charging stations on extended trips. Even better, it does it for a starting price that seems weirdly too low, at $79,400 with the $1,500 destination fee included.

Like its more expensive siblings, the Touring’s interior looks and feels incredibly special. Non-traditional materials, like coarsely woven wool cloth on the dash for example, differentiate the car from other brands, as does using its own switchgear rather than borrowing from the parts bins of other manufacturers – something that Tesla did for years. The Air is very much its own experience from the way the door panels curve out away from you to the different colors for front and rear seats on some colorways.

Kyle Hyatt

As with any electric vehicle, the tech interfaces are a huge focal point in the Air and while the systems aren’t without quirks or occasionally annoying choices (only putting seat heating and cooling in the climate screen and not the seat control screen too, for example), everything here works and is reasonably easy to use.

When the Air launched, it did so without Apple CarPlay, just a promise that it was coming. Lucid made good on that promise, and the integration is pretty seamless – I wish it were wireless, and the Air’s unique dash layout means the screen size for infotainment is limited, however. Also pretty good is the available “Surreal Sound Pro” sound system, though the $2,900 upcharge for it feels a little tough to swallow for an unbranded system. McIntosh or Burmester this isn’t though it is full sounding, with minimal distortion at high volumes.

Despite being large (the wheelbase is 116.5 inches) and heavy (5,009 pounds), the Air is excellent from a driving dynamics standpoint. In speaking with Lucid’s chassis development engineers, it’s clear that their love of the great sports sedans of the last 25 year has bled into the Air. The turn in is sharp, the ride is extremely well calibrated, and the physical brakes are excellent in the rare event you actually need to use them, given the Air’s excellent regenerative braking calibration.

The Air certainly isn’t trying to compete with the likes of the CT5-V Blackwing, but the delta between the two on a curvy canyon road isn’t massive, at least not where driving enjoyment is concerned.

Despite being a really complete package overall (especially for a first model from a new manufacturer) the Air isn’t perfect. Some things – like the contrast stitching across the dash top that reflects in the windshield right at my eyeline – are nitpicky annoyances. Others like software bugs, sensors that occasionally think they’re broken only to miraculously fix themselves, are worthy of criticism, even from a relatively new manufacturer.

Specifically, I had an instance where the right rear radar sensor would flash a light on the dash saying it was inoperable, only to be perfectly fine 10 minutes later after getting out of the car for a cup of coffee and then getting back in. These kinds of issues aren’t necessarily serious, but they are annoying because it’s unlikely that your Lucid tech will be able replicate the intermittent issue and fix it should you take it in for service.

Kyle Hyatt

In the features department, the Air has a few big misses. For example, the lack of Android Auto compatibility is going to be a massive bummer for a not-insubstantial portion of the market. The previously mentioned lack of wireless Apple CarPlay is also sort of a downer, as is charging almost $7,000 for a highway driving assistant that, for now, is just adaptive cruise control with active lane centering. There are plans to add features to bring it closer to SAE Level 3 or 4 autonomy, but it’s tough to say whether that will happen. At least with Lucid, that charge comes down to actual hardware changes in the vehicle and not just software as is the case with Tesla, for example.

Other annoyances include my never having been able to actually hit the advertised potential charge rate of 350 kilowatts in any Air I’ve ever driven at any charger. Is this a huge deal? No. Is it entirely the Air’s fault? Probably not, but this feels like an area that could use improvement. On average, on the Electrify America stations around Los Angeles, I’ve seen between 150 and 175 kW to start, which then slows somewhat as the battery charges. There are a bunch of factors that can affect charging speed including ambient temperature, how many other chargers are being used at the station, your state of charge going in, etc.

One fairly convenient thing that the Air does is automatically start to precondition the battery pack if you have the factory navigation set to a charger. The preconditioning process uses the pack cooling system and charging algorithms to get the battery ready to accept the maximum amount of charge possible for conditions. You can turn this feature off and the option to manually precondition is available too.

Ultimately, none of the faults that I’ve found in the Air are dealbreakers (for me at least), and I suspect that plenty of them could be (and likely will be) fixed with further software updates.

The obvious competitor for the Air Touring is the base Tesla Model S, though that model offers slightly less range, a much worse interior, questionable build quality, and a pretty old platform. Areas where the Tesla wins out are with its hatchback for fitting large or awkwardly shaped items and, most notably, the Tesla Supercharger network. It’s still the best charging solution in the business. The base Model S starts at $74,630 including Tesla’s $250 order fee and $1,390 destination fee.

The other main car that gives the Air a run for its money is the Mercedes-Benz EQS, though the base EQS 450+ is considerably more expensive than the Air Touring, and it offers less interior room and estimated range. It does have a very futuristic and cool interior, and ultimately, you’re getting an EV from the world’s oldest automotive manufacturer – this pays dividends in build quality and in buying and servicing your car. The EQS 450+ retails for $105,550 including destination fees.

Electric cars, especially this current crop, are so dependent on software and electronics that it’s hard to imagine them feeling like anything but an old, slowing cell phone in a decade.

Also, the Touring isn’t likely to be a rare or extra desirable trim level in the future, unlike the Sapphire or Dream Edition models, but I suspect it will be the most common version on the used market and that works in the favor of future used buyers, giving the most choice for the most well-rounded version of an overall great car.

2024 Lucid Air Touring – CARiD Review

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Kyle Hyatt