The Name of the Game: Aerodynamic Design and Efficiency

The name of the game when it comes to creating an efficient vehicle is about shrinking the exterior of this car right. If you have a giant truck, you know that it's pushing out a big block of air as it drives down the highway. A very aerodynamic design is key to minimizing drag and maximizing efficiency on the highway. On top of that, shrinking the outside as much as possible while still giving the occupants plenty of space is crucial. This is achieved by punching out as small a hole of air as necessary as you're driving down the highway, resulting in an extremely efficient aerodynamic design.

This design also allows for minimal outer packaging, which further contributes to excellent energy consumption on the highway. The Lucid Motors vehicle is currently one of the best-selling vehicles in America when it comes to efficiency on the highway. All of this packaging is made possible by looking at all of the components and shrinking them down as much as possible. Super energy-dense electric motors and tiny inverters have been optimized to be as small as necessary, allowing for maximum space to be freed up from unnecessary elements.

Aerodynamic Efficiency through Diffusers

Historically, many car companies have placed diffusers on their vehicles, but they often don't live up to their potential. Instead of having a flat underbody, the diffuser starts way back and has a steep angle that doesn't make much of an impact. Lucid Motors takes a different approach by starting the diffuser at the top right side of the blue piece of tape, creating a gradual slope as it moves towards the back of the vehicle. This design reduces lift and drag, achieving a significant improvement in aerodynamic efficiency.

By starting the diffuser here, the battery pack has to be raised slightly, but this is designed into the battery pack itself. The cells at the back of the battery pack are raised to accommodate the diffuser's start point, allowing for the gradual slope that increases static pressure at the back of the core and reduces lift. This sacrifice may seem minor in terms of complexity, but it results in a significant gain in aerodynamic efficiency.

Lighting: A Key Component of Efficiency

One of the great examples of optimization is found in the headlights of this vehicle. There are six modules on each side, totaling 12 modules. The center module is the high beam, shining directly at the lens, while the other five modules on the outside are low beams. What's impressive about these modules is that each one has approximately 900 optical channels, allowing for a wide range of light adjustments.

Lucid Motors cites this feature as a key driver behind their design choice. The ability to alter the light in specific areas allows for a homogeneous lighting effect in front of the vehicle, with increased light in some spots and decreased light in others. This balance out the light creates a smooth, evenly lit road surface ahead. Another innovative feature of these headlights is that they can turn the light into the corner using these optical channels. As the wheel turns, the light adjusts to shine into the desired area, reducing the amount of light directed outward.

Compact Design and Packaging

The compact design of this vehicle extends beyond just the front end. The attention to detail in every component has led to an incredibly efficient packaging system. The headlights are a prime example, being both compact and highly functional. These modules are designed to be as small as possible while still delivering exceptional performance.

This focus on efficiency has far-reaching implications for the overall design of the vehicle. By optimizing each component and minimizing unnecessary elements, Lucid Motors has created a vehicle that is not only efficient but also packed with features. The result is a truly impressive vehicle that sets a new standard in terms of energy consumption and aerodynamic efficiency.

Driving Experience: What It's Like

As disappointing as it may be, the driving experience for this vehicle was not extensively covered in the transcription. However, I'm sure many would like to know what it's like to drive this exceptional vehicle. Unfortunately, that information is not available at this time.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enno production vehicle currently sold in America uses less energy on the highway to travel a certain distance than this the Lucid air this is it the most efficient on the highway and one of the most interesting things about this vehicle is the powertrain arguably the electric motor used in this car is the most advanced electric motor in a production car today but we're not going to talk about that we're going to talk about something far more boring Tesla no I'm just kidding we're going to talk about packaging and with any other car talking about packaging would be extraordinarily boring and maybe it'll be extraordinarily boring in this video too however Lucid has made the discussion about packaging somehow interesting oh yeah hello everyone and welcome foreign about the packaging and yet that was a pretty tight squeeze so the reason why I want to talk about packaging with this vehicle is basically everything about it every single component is designed with packaging in mind and there are many benefits to packaging I want to talk about three of them in this video some obvious some much less obvious but we're going to start with one that is very obvious and that is Cargo space and so just looking here at this front trunk to give you an idea of how good of a job they did and of course you know I was inside of it this is a five gallon bucket you could fit several of these in here and comparing this to the Tesla Model S that is a car which has extraordinarily good packaging Tesla does an extremely good job at packaging and yet this is just a leap ahead of that this is three times over three times the volume of the front trunk in the Tesla Model S the current generation Tesla Model S it is and extraordinary effort that they have done to have this much space up front and if you look at cars like the Mercedes eqs no front trunk if you look at the BMW IX no frunk if you look at the Volkswagen id4 no frunk and this is just lazy engineering right it's just lazy design they could be there and you might say okay what is what are some possible reasons why they might not have a front trunk and I'm trying to think through different scenarios and kind of give them the benefit of the dealt and I really have landed on it's just lazy design reason being okay let's say maybe by removing this and not having this useful space and having direct access to components we have a slight Edge on maintenance not a huge Edge realistically because it doesn't take that long to get this thing out and then access components but a slight Edge on maintenance right maybe that's why it's done well look at the vehicles and look at the design and then you can very obviously find it's not for a maintenance reason right like if you look at the Mercedes eqs they don't don't even want you popping the front hood in fact it requires tools to do so and the reason why they don't have a frunk you know they have a large air filter up front right well Tesla has a large air filter up front they still have a front and with that air filter that Mercedes uses there's three tabs so you have to have three hands if you want to pull it out I'm sure there's some specialized tool for doing it but it's made the opposite of Maintenance friendly the eqs front trunk they really don't want you opening that front hood and then look at okay the BMW I4 for example so this is a car where you pop the front and you're like okay well maybe their packaging just didn't allow the space for this kind of thing to have this there and then you remove that engine cover that front trunk cover and you realize there's all this empty space that isn't used I could fit a carry-on bag in the empty space in the front of the BMW I4 it is just lazy design the space is there it could be useful space it could be usable that you can can store things up front one of the huge benefits of storing things up front like this people say like oh why do I need more cargo space it's like well why don't you want more cargo space first of all I'm passionate about this subject but also one of the things I really like about front trunks is that they're very secure in comparison just leaving stuff in your car or in the trunk so anybody can smash a window grab stuff real quick with this close you can't smash a window and then suddenly gain access to the front you got to grind your way in take a cutting tool and get your way in here right that's going to take some time and it's going to be very loud and noisy and disruptive versus just smashing a window grabbing something and running that's very quick right so I really like front trunks because they're a very secure way of storing things and that is a you know Common feature that is coming along with this new wave of electric cars that I really like and yet there's so many electric cars out there that don't put in the effort to do it it's just pure lazy design and it's such a bummer to see especially with these dedicated EV platforms coming out there brand new and yet they haven't even thought to incorporate space up front now a few additional comments on how Lucid was able to achieve this and again it goes back to basically every component needs to think about packaging so they basically redesigned headlights we'll get into that a little bit later this is a very sophisticated front end of the vehicle they have these Vortex intakes which are really compact but help spread that air evenly over the radiators you've got lidar you've got radar you've got all kinds of different sensors all kept in this very narrow window up front and then when you get to the bulkhead here you've got your tiny electric motor yet extremely powerful your different electronic components all kept in a very clean packaging design so that you have all of this space that you can use here you might say well why not just make the car smaller if I'm wasting all this space and just using it for storage well this space must be here for crash purposes you have to have a distance between the driver and the occupants and the front of the vehicle you need all this space so you have that crumple Zone to slow down the acceleration when you hit something and give yourself time for the passengers to be safe alright so there's a monk but there is also also massive trunk and so an interesting comparison if you look at this versus a Mercedes S-Class large luxury sedan this is a foot shorter the Mercedes S-Class is a whole foot longer in length and yet this with the trunk plus the front trunk combined has two and a half times the cargo space as the Mercedes S-Class a much longer vehicle so then naturally you might think well okay the sacrifice is in the passenger space which leads us to our second part of packaging passenger space so I'm gonna open up the front here open up the rear and one of the cool things about this you'll notice is that the door is almost at a 90 degree angle so you have really easy Ingress into the vehicle there so I have this seat adjusted for me up front and I'm about six one and a half and as you can see I've got plenty of space for my legs here plenty of space to sit in this space and as I get out and then go behind me again six one and a half 1.87 meters you can see there's an extraordinary amount of leg room back here so what's really interesting about this Headroom it could be a little better let's be honest but the leg room is extraordinary so what's really interesting about this is versus the S-Class which again is a vehicle that's a whole foot longer and it has a 10 inch longer wheelbase Lucid says if you measure the interior from where your foot rests on the front foot well there to the back of your butt here sitting in this seat that is two inches longer so the inside of this car is longer even though the whole vehicle is a foot shorter and the wheelbase is 10 inches shorter so two inches longer interior yet in a smaller court that is incredibly clever packaging all right now the third benefit regarding packaging I want to discuss is efficiency and I'm going to throw in a fourth which is handling and yes this is a very heavy vehicle so don't get me wrong that has its uh you know challenges in regards to handling however if you make a vehicle smaller if you have the weight of that battery lower these are things that benefit you from a handling standpoint make you more agile so packaging does matter in making your vehicle smaller and thus giving you better handling now regarding efficiency the name of the game is about shrinking the exterior of this car right so if you have a giant truck you know big block of air that it's pushing out of the way as it drives down the highway this is a very aerodynamic design and on top of that you've shrunk in the outside as much as you possibly can while still giving the occupants plenty of space to give yourself the smallest hole of air that you have to punch out as you're driving down the highway so really efficient aerodynamic design as well as small outer packaging and that gives you really good energy consumption on the highway again this being the best vehicle currently sold in America as far as efficiency on the highway now again all of this packaging is made possible by looking at all of the components and then just shrinking them as much as you can so super energy energy dense electric motors tiny inverters they've done so much to make sure every component is small so that you can shrink everywhere that you don't want stuff and then give the maximum amount of space to the occupants and storage all right so we're talking about efficiency and one of the ways that you can improve aerodynamic efficiency is through the use of a diffuser now historically plenty of car companies have put diffusers on their cars right but then you look underneath and you see oh maybe it doesn't even have a flat underbody and then the diffuser starts way back here and then has this really steep angle and it doesn't end up being all that useful well instead of starting here Lucid starts their diffuser way up here on the right side of this blue piece of tape so the diffuser starts here has this really gradual slope as you get towards the back of the vehicle that increases the static pressure at the back of the core which reduces lift and reduces drag which is what they're going for so it's really impressive one of the crazy things about this is because they they start here that means the battery pack has to be raised slightly right so the battery pack is designed with this shape so that you raise up the cells at the back of the battery pack in order to allow for the diffuser to start here and when you look underneath it's a very gradual amount right it's nothing crazy but they're starting that diffuser here rather than way in the back to improve efficiency and it just seems like this sacrifice that you know that they didn't have to make from a complexity standpoint you would feel like every other car company out there would be like whatever make the battery pack flat get it to here then start the diffuser and yet they didn't they go the extra mile and they start the diffuser here just for that little bit of efficiency gain in aerodynamics now as I've mentioned there's so much effort that goes into each individual component to optimize for packaging and one of the great examples of this are the headlights so there's actually six modules on each side 12 total this Center module right here on the inside being your high beams you can see it's shining right at the lens and then these other five on the outside here are your low beams and so what's interesting about this is that each of these five modules here have like 900 Optical channels so about 9 000 across the front end of this with your low beams here and these Optical channels are allowing you to alter the light so you can choose you know do you want it to be dark in this area brighten this area and choosing where you shine that light and how intense that light is and so what Lucid says the Big Driver behind this is is that it allows them to have a very homogeneous Lighting in front of the vehicle so as you're driving down the road everything looks very evenly lit because you can increase light and some spots decrease in other spots and have it be this nice balanced out light in front of you and another really cool thing about these is that although this is solid state so these modules don't actually pivot you can turn the light into the corner using these Optical channels that are part of these lenses and so these Optical channels can shine that light as you turn the wheel it's turning that light into the corner so you can better see into that corner and then as you turn back that light comes back with it and reduces the amount that you're shining out to the outside there so you're always keeping the lights pointed and giving you this homogeneous view in the direction that you are driving and so as cool as these are from a lighting standpoint they're also extremely compact which again gives you flexibility in the design of the front end of this vehicle as well as giving you more space for things like this front oh right well looks like we spent all our time talking about fronts instead of what it's actually like to drive I'm as disappointed as you are if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watchingno production vehicle currently sold in America uses less energy on the highway to travel a certain distance than this the Lucid air this is it the most efficient on the highway and one of the most interesting things about this vehicle is the powertrain arguably the electric motor used in this car is the most advanced electric motor in a production car today but we're not going to talk about that we're going to talk about something far more boring Tesla no I'm just kidding we're going to talk about packaging and with any other car talking about packaging would be extraordinarily boring and maybe it'll be extraordinarily boring in this video too however Lucid has made the discussion about packaging somehow interesting oh yeah hello everyone and welcome foreign about the packaging and yet that was a pretty tight squeeze so the reason why I want to talk about packaging with this vehicle is basically everything about it every single component is designed with packaging in mind and there are many benefits to packaging I want to talk about three of them in this video some obvious some much less obvious but we're going to start with one that is very obvious and that is Cargo space and so just looking here at this front trunk to give you an idea of how good of a job they did and of course you know I was inside of it this is a five gallon bucket you could fit several of these in here and comparing this to the Tesla Model S that is a car which has extraordinarily good packaging Tesla does an extremely good job at packaging and yet this is just a leap ahead of that this is three times over three times the volume of the front trunk in the Tesla Model S the current generation Tesla Model S it is and extraordinary effort that they have done to have this much space up front and if you look at cars like the Mercedes eqs no front trunk if you look at the BMW IX no frunk if you look at the Volkswagen id4 no frunk and this is just lazy engineering right it's just lazy design they could be there and you might say okay what is what are some possible reasons why they might not have a front trunk and I'm trying to think through different scenarios and kind of give them the benefit of the dealt and I really have landed on it's just lazy design reason being okay let's say maybe by removing this and not having this useful space and having direct access to components we have a slight Edge on maintenance not a huge Edge realistically because it doesn't take that long to get this thing out and then access components but a slight Edge on maintenance right maybe that's why it's done well look at the vehicles and look at the design and then you can very obviously find it's not for a maintenance reason right like if you look at the Mercedes eqs they don't don't even want you popping the front hood in fact it requires tools to do so and the reason why they don't have a frunk you know they have a large air filter up front right well Tesla has a large air filter up front they still have a front and with that air filter that Mercedes uses there's three tabs so you have to have three hands if you want to pull it out I'm sure there's some specialized tool for doing it but it's made the opposite of Maintenance friendly the eqs front trunk they really don't want you opening that front hood and then look at okay the BMW I4 for example so this is a car where you pop the front and you're like okay well maybe their packaging just didn't allow the space for this kind of thing to have this there and then you remove that engine cover that front trunk cover and you realize there's all this empty space that isn't used I could fit a carry-on bag in the empty space in the front of the BMW I4 it is just lazy design the space is there it could be useful space it could be usable that you can can store things up front one of the huge benefits of storing things up front like this people say like oh why do I need more cargo space it's like well why don't you want more cargo space first of all I'm passionate about this subject but also one of the things I really like about front trunks is that they're very secure in comparison just leaving stuff in your car or in the trunk so anybody can smash a window grab stuff real quick with this close you can't smash a window and then suddenly gain access to the front you got to grind your way in take a cutting tool and get your way in here right that's going to take some time and it's going to be very loud and noisy and disruptive versus just smashing a window grabbing something and running that's very quick right so I really like front trunks because they're a very secure way of storing things and that is a you know Common feature that is coming along with this new wave of electric cars that I really like and yet there's so many electric cars out there that don't put in the effort to do it it's just pure lazy design and it's such a bummer to see especially with these dedicated EV platforms coming out there brand new and yet they haven't even thought to incorporate space up front now a few additional comments on how Lucid was able to achieve this and again it goes back to basically every component needs to think about packaging so they basically redesigned headlights we'll get into that a little bit later this is a very sophisticated front end of the vehicle they have these Vortex intakes which are really compact but help spread that air evenly over the radiators you've got lidar you've got radar you've got all kinds of different sensors all kept in this very narrow window up front and then when you get to the bulkhead here you've got your tiny electric motor yet extremely powerful your different electronic components all kept in a very clean packaging design so that you have all of this space that you can use here you might say well why not just make the car smaller if I'm wasting all this space and just using it for storage well this space must be here for crash purposes you have to have a distance between the driver and the occupants and the front of the vehicle you need all this space so you have that crumple Zone to slow down the acceleration when you hit something and give yourself time for the passengers to be safe alright so there's a monk but there is also also massive trunk and so an interesting comparison if you look at this versus a Mercedes S-Class large luxury sedan this is a foot shorter the Mercedes S-Class is a whole foot longer in length and yet this with the trunk plus the front trunk combined has two and a half times the cargo space as the Mercedes S-Class a much longer vehicle so then naturally you might think well okay the sacrifice is in the passenger space which leads us to our second part of packaging passenger space so I'm gonna open up the front here open up the rear and one of the cool things about this you'll notice is that the door is almost at a 90 degree angle so you have really easy Ingress into the vehicle there so I have this seat adjusted for me up front and I'm about six one and a half and as you can see I've got plenty of space for my legs here plenty of space to sit in this space and as I get out and then go behind me again six one and a half 1.87 meters you can see there's an extraordinary amount of leg room back here so what's really interesting about this Headroom it could be a little better let's be honest but the leg room is extraordinary so what's really interesting about this is versus the S-Class which again is a vehicle that's a whole foot longer and it has a 10 inch longer wheelbase Lucid says if you measure the interior from where your foot rests on the front foot well there to the back of your butt here sitting in this seat that is two inches longer so the inside of this car is longer even though the whole vehicle is a foot shorter and the wheelbase is 10 inches shorter so two inches longer interior yet in a smaller court that is incredibly clever packaging all right now the third benefit regarding packaging I want to discuss is efficiency and I'm going to throw in a fourth which is handling and yes this is a very heavy vehicle so don't get me wrong that has its uh you know challenges in regards to handling however if you make a vehicle smaller if you have the weight of that battery lower these are things that benefit you from a handling standpoint make you more agile so packaging does matter in making your vehicle smaller and thus giving you better handling now regarding efficiency the name of the game is about shrinking the exterior of this car right so if you have a giant truck you know big block of air that it's pushing out of the way as it drives down the highway this is a very aerodynamic design and on top of that you've shrunk in the outside as much as you possibly can while still giving the occupants plenty of space to give yourself the smallest hole of air that you have to punch out as you're driving down the highway so really efficient aerodynamic design as well as small outer packaging and that gives you really good energy consumption on the highway again this being the best vehicle currently sold in America as far as efficiency on the highway now again all of this packaging is made possible by looking at all of the components and then just shrinking them as much as you can so super energy energy dense electric motors tiny inverters they've done so much to make sure every component is small so that you can shrink everywhere that you don't want stuff and then give the maximum amount of space to the occupants and storage all right so we're talking about efficiency and one of the ways that you can improve aerodynamic efficiency is through the use of a diffuser now historically plenty of car companies have put diffusers on their cars right but then you look underneath and you see oh maybe it doesn't even have a flat underbody and then the diffuser starts way back here and then has this really steep angle and it doesn't end up being all that useful well instead of starting here Lucid starts their diffuser way up here on the right side of this blue piece of tape so the diffuser starts here has this really gradual slope as you get towards the back of the vehicle that increases the static pressure at the back of the core which reduces lift and reduces drag which is what they're going for so it's really impressive one of the crazy things about this is because they they start here that means the battery pack has to be raised slightly right so the battery pack is designed with this shape so that you raise up the cells at the back of the battery pack in order to allow for the diffuser to start here and when you look underneath it's a very gradual amount right it's nothing crazy but they're starting that diffuser here rather than way in the back to improve efficiency and it just seems like this sacrifice that you know that they didn't have to make from a complexity standpoint you would feel like every other car company out there would be like whatever make the battery pack flat get it to here then start the diffuser and yet they didn't they go the extra mile and they start the diffuser here just for that little bit of efficiency gain in aerodynamics now as I've mentioned there's so much effort that goes into each individual component to optimize for packaging and one of the great examples of this are the headlights so there's actually six modules on each side 12 total this Center module right here on the inside being your high beams you can see it's shining right at the lens and then these other five on the outside here are your low beams and so what's interesting about this is that each of these five modules here have like 900 Optical channels so about 9 000 across the front end of this with your low beams here and these Optical channels are allowing you to alter the light so you can choose you know do you want it to be dark in this area brighten this area and choosing where you shine that light and how intense that light is and so what Lucid says the Big Driver behind this is is that it allows them to have a very homogeneous Lighting in front of the vehicle so as you're driving down the road everything looks very evenly lit because you can increase light and some spots decrease in other spots and have it be this nice balanced out light in front of you and another really cool thing about these is that although this is solid state so these modules don't actually pivot you can turn the light into the corner using these Optical channels that are part of these lenses and so these Optical channels can shine that light as you turn the wheel it's turning that light into the corner so you can better see into that corner and then as you turn back that light comes back with it and reduces the amount that you're shining out to the outside there so you're always keeping the lights pointed and giving you this homogeneous view in the direction that you are driving and so as cool as these are from a lighting standpoint they're also extremely compact which again gives you flexibility in the design of the front end of this vehicle as well as giving you more space for things like this front oh right well looks like we spent all our time talking about fronts instead of what it's actually like to drive I'm as disappointed as you are if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below thanks for watching\n"