A Test Drive with the Lucid Motors Air

I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Lucid Motors Air, and I must say it's an incredibly fun car to drive. The moment I got behind the wheel, I knew I was in for a treat. This is not just any electric vehicle (EV) - it's a car that's designed to take on some of the best sports cars out there.

I took the Air out onto the track, and let me tell you, it performed admirably. The acceleration was smooth and linear, with zero lag or hesitation at all. This is an EV that can truly deliver from 0-60mph in under 3 seconds, and it feels like a rocket ship on wheels.

I was able to get comfortable with the car's behavior on track, but I must admit that I got a little carried away at times. The Air handled beautifully, with precise steering and responsive braking. It's clear that Lucid has put a lot of thought into the dynamics of this car, and it shows in its handling.

One thing that stood out to me was how quiet and refined the Air is when you're cruising along. With the sound off, everything feels incredibly linear and precise. You don't get those usual EV rumble and drone sounds - just pure, unadulterated electric propulsion. And when you do switch on the sound, it's a subtle but effective reminder that this is an EV.

Of course, no car is perfect, and I did encounter one quirk or two during my test drive. The biggest issue was getting the sound off completely while driving around the track - I couldn't quite figure out how to disable it properly, and the session ended up finishing a little sooner than expected before I could get around to it.

Despite this minor frustration, I was thoroughly entertained by the Air. It's clear that Lucid has created a car that's designed for fun and performance - and they've certainly succeeded in achieving that goal. With its quick acceleration, agile handling, and refined electric motor, the Air is definitely a contender for our Britain's Best Driver's Car contest next year.

One thing I did want to try was the rear-wheel drive (RWD) mode, which allows you to put the car into a drift mode if desired. When I activated this mode, the Air felt like a mid-engined sports car - it was surprisingly agile and responsive, with a lot of grip and traction. However, I found that getting into a proper drift was a bit more difficult than I expected - it's a tricky thing to master, especially for an EV.

To try and get around this issue, Lucid provided me with some tips on how to initiate a slide in the Air. The first method they recommended was to come up to the steady state limit, then lift off and coast slightly until you feel a slight understeer - at that point, you can then quickly correct by turning into the slide. The second method involved building up speed, then releasing the brakes and giving it more throttle when you reach the turn-in point.

The third (and perhaps most straightforward) method was simply to give it a good kick on the throttle as you approach the turn - this worked surprisingly well, especially in low-grip conditions. However, I did find that this method could be a bit tricky to control, and the Air's instant torque delivery can sometimes make it difficult to judge just how much to push it.

Despite these minor quibbles, I was thoroughly impressed with the Lucid Motors Air - it's clear that they've created a car that's designed for fun, performance, and driving excitement. And when you combine that with its impressive specs and capabilities, you get a car that truly stands out from the crowd.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to the channel where I have a Hyundai ionic 5n spoiler alert I think it's probably the world's most fun EV there is loads to tell you right cuz it's got loads of Drive modes um so let me talk you through the technical details then I'll go through all the different Drive modes and all the options it has including the drift mode so we will see later will it drift and also what it is like to drive on a circuit because it is so much fun first then to the technical makeup of the ionic 5 which will cost £65,000 in the UK when it goes on sale early next year now we'll pop up some of these technical details on the screen as we go through as well the N team take the standard ionic 5 but on the line it hasn't had an additional 42 spot welds added and an extra 2.1 M of adhesive on the body to stiffen it that cladding on the outside makes it a little wider and longer than usual and the 5n wears 27535 21 in pelli p 0 and it has 400 MM front brake discs the steering ratio is faster and where the column mounts to the body has been stiffened and so too stiffened are the battery and motor mounts the battery is 84 KW hours which runs at 800 volts which they say can charge at up to 300 50 KW but it occupies the same space as the 77 kwh battery in the regular ionic 5 the front and rear subframes are strengthened too and there are new axles cuz power is up by a lot there are two Motors the front one generates a consistent 223 horsepower and the rear has 378 horsepower for a system total of 601 horsepower that's brake horsepower however for 10 seconds at a time that can be boosted to a system total 641 horsepower via what they call the n grin boost function and in that form it will do not 62 mph in 3.4 seconds the top speed is 162 mph and the whole thing weighs around 2.2 tons or 4,800 that precise figure hasn't been confirmed at the time I'm talking to you moving on then to the inside you can select the nrin Boost function by the top right button on the steering wheel there are three other drive mode buttons on the wheel and if you think that the regular internally combusted i30n has a lot of modes where has nothing on this so there are three normal conventional Drive modes Eco normal sport then there's the preset end mode which is a bit more Angry plus two other customizable Drive modes for which you use the two lower buttons on the steering mod to customize what you want you go into the touch screen and this is fine at its own touch screen cuz once it's set up you wouldn't need to delve into this stuff on the move you can change the steering weight the damper stiffness the motor response the electronically controlled limited slip differential which is on the rear axle only you can select how quickly that locks up uh you can change the stability control sensitivity and the head-up display layout and whether you want a synthetic engine noise or not there's also an N brake function you can select which when you lift off can give you anything up to basically almost maximum braking Force so you could use it on track and never touch the actual brake pedal you can select whether you want the power to go to all four wheels in standard form or whether you want Power to Go to the front in cornering or to the rear in cornering there's also a launch control function and a drift Optimizer which isn't meant for Fast Track use but we will come on to that a little bit later first though to some track driving this will be the first time I've sat in the finished ionic 5n on circuit so you will be learning as I do okay so welcome to the inside of an ionic 5n this is the first time I've sat in this car on circuit I did drive it on the road yesterday really enjoyed it there is is a lot to go through as I've already shown you there are a lot of modes there are a lot of things going on I'm not sure I'm going to get through all of the modes there are seven laps to go through I've got follower car in front um there is a man sitting behind me who may I may get his help to change some of the modes but we'll worry about that in a moment right so one of the things you can do in this car is change the noise I'm in ignition mode at at the moment you can go through Evolution I don't know how well you can hear it or supersonic personally quite a big fan of the uh ignition noise what I've done is I put it into one of the custom modes and then I can mess around with these um controls a little bit as we go but immediately I can tell you I've got pretty much everything turned up so I've got the motor let's put the motor in sport plus I've got the steering in Sport Plus which is as heavy as the suspension in Sport Plus which is the firmest the uh elsd I quite like that crackle on the overun that's pretty cool what is cool as well I don't know if you can hear that on a half throttle you get a certain amount of noise and as you increase the throttle it increases the sort of pitch and anger of the engine note as well which is pretty slick I think for a 2.2 ton car it feels amazingly agile and I have a reason feeling part of the reason is one the center of gravity is very low but also it can torque Vector so the elsd can uh Li to slip diff at the back confirm up as it goes through uh as you accelerate through a corner to help it turn on the way out but also on the way in it can torque Vector effectory via braking so it can it can can tug a front wheel in if it wants to I think it can tug a rear wheel in if it wants to you would not know this car is 2.2 tons I've got a round Alcantara wheel feels really nice it's a sort of long slowing corner there you just feel it want to tuck round it's really good it's really good a little hint of stabilizing under steer in that slow corner and then just as you come back on the throttle you can just feel it feeding its way back out out again oh that's really nice just turning off the throttle air and it just wants to start tucking round it's good it's really good there is a little bit of lean I think that's uh a case that this isn't a car with this isn't a car with like massively thick anti-roll bar something like that so it's allowed to have a little bit of movement well that's all right it gives you something to lean up against it's really good through there so there's this kind of sweeping Corner that tightens and tightens and tightens and just as you sort of lift it wants to turn and tuck in there is a mode where you can adjust the torque um front of rear even in um a situation where you put all the Tor on one end or the other course what it doesn't want to do is um give you enough torque to sort of over steer through a corner but then you get to the straight and you not have enough enough power of course if you had an engine at the front you put it in rear wheel drive mode you would still get all the engine power but just to the back wheels but here because there are two Motors if you make it exclusively rear wheel drive you don't have all of the Power so it will let you do your thing in the corner and then as you get back on the straight again oh that's really cool that's really cool just there as you got back on the straight again it would put power to the front uh there is a drift specific drift mode which is separate to the kind of rear drive mode you can put it in which will'll come to in a bit there is a little slower separate drift circuit elsewhere around here so we'll do that in a sec oh that's really lovely that was fourth gear if you like God it's so good I'm leaving the I am leaving the motor on in a minute I will the engine noise on in a minute I think I will turn it off but I don't know it's just of course it is slower of course it's slower if you put fake gear shifts in because it limits power at low revs uh it changes the engine braking dynamic as well so if you're at 5,000 RPM you get more uh regen than you do if you're in a lower RPM and a higher gear but it just brings more interaction in and as n says this is what you know the idea of this sub brand is it about it is about interaction and fun rather than oh my God that is so good that is so good this car is fantastic what a great thing and so the plan is ideally in the right circuit you could do 20 minutes on 20 minutes off recharging 20 minutes on again uh that's really hard to do with current battery Tech with current cooling Tech mostly um so the guys from and say look it works on some circuits it won't work on on all circuits but on some circuits you can do that they think it's the only EV that you can get to do two uh backto back laps of the ner in under 8 minutes if you put this car's battery in its Sprint mode it will go I think 10 seconds a lap faster but it won't do it for more than one lap because the battery cooling is is effectively sort of the limiting factor on performance uh for for a high performance CV you know it's just thermal management is basically the issue is brilliant checker flag has now gone out so I think that is that for this I haven't been through all of the mods here uh I haven't adjusted the talk front to rear while we've been going I haven't tried the N pedal mode which basically gives you full full whack uh as much regen as it can to try and help the car set up it's just great if you just get that nose planted and then it just messes around at the back it's just such good fun it's such good fun so he and day says they think this is the most fun Eevee there is you know they have they have they have brought it to Market before before everybody else a car that can do what this car does and because they do so many things in house you know they don't go outside to to Brembo for the brakes or to ricaro for the seats or whatever it's all in house and they think it's absolutely you know better value than most as well it's really good it's really good I would say this is the if you want driving fun this is the best EV on sale I don't think there any question for that the only thing that comes near it for me is a tyan and it just does things differently this is this is terrific this is really good we will bring this car I'm pretty sure to our Britain's best drivers car contest next year where there's only been one EV so far which was a tyan 3 4 years ago and finished I don't know not that high up the order but I could see taking this to a a sports car shootout with a load of other cars some lighter some faster some more expensive and this still absolutely holding its own it's bang on superb so I got a little bit carried away it couldn't work out exactly how to switch off the sound completely as I was going around the circuit and also the session finished a little bit sooner than I expected before I got around to it too but I can tell you on the road when you switch the sound off I mean it's an EV it makes no noise everything is incredibly linear and of course you don't get those Brakes in acceleration ation you just get full acceleration all the time it is a faster car that way but the short of it is I have not had more fun in an EV anywhere except maybe a Nissan Leaf on plastic back tires but that was a very very different experience so there is one more thing to check and one more question to answer via the drift Optimizer will it drift well it will uh you can put it in rear whe drive mode if you want to it will move around on track you've seen how it moves around um on a circuit but they tell me that an EV is really hard to get into a drift and it feels like a mid-engined car and and then control it as well so when ESC off if you're in normal mode and you turn stability control off you are on your own all right it will go round if you if you uh if you back it into a corner you come on the throttle and you want to go around you will go around but it's got what they call a drift Optimizer so I have to make sure I'm in N mode which is not one of the custom modes but end mode so that's one push on the bottom left hand button and then turn stability control all the way off and then that enables the end drift Optimizer mode on the dash I can at that point not use the rear to front bias shifter because that does it for me um I have gears and then there are various ways they tell me to initiate a slide in fact there are three ways so let's try the three different ways that you can get it to initiate a slide the first is you come up to the steady state limit and then as you lift off you probably need a bit more lateral grip than that so the steady state limit lifts nudges to under and then as I lift off Sur enough around it comes so the alternative is I build up a certain amount both paddles uh now it should say somewhere I think clutch kick if I pull both paddles and then I'm getting nothing so I'm coming on the throttle I'm getting nothing and I'm coasting just like the clutch is in so if I got a bit of throttle on release those paddles then it go there's a delay then it comes back in that's interesting so diding foot on the throttle lift and away it goes that is that is really interesting the third way of doing it is as they say just give it a boot and it does and it does it's got so much power that it can really bump through that really really quickly really easily I mean that's the easiest way in a low Mew condition I think is just to come around give it everything it doesn't really uh it doesn't really push on into under steer very much if you do that um the thing about it though is it's got really quick throttle response what it could do with almost is a slightly more a slightly softer on andof throttle response in in this mode because it's so easy to send it around and the weight distribution is low and Central it's so rap is so rapid will it drift I mean it will I mean yeah absolutely but it's very very hard to do uh even with this drift Optimizer it's so easy to give it too much so easy to give it too much anyway thank you for joining me uh in what is one of the most entertaining cars not giving it too much already in one of the most entertaining cars I've driven for quite some time um you can find utar elsewhere over ard. UK you can find the magazine atthe magazin shop.com where you can get full access to our 128e archive uh I don't know when we'll be back with more ionic 5n stuff but we will because this car deserves more from us I don't know what we'll test it against but it will do well thanks for joining me see you next time\n"