Live Thread: One week with a Lucid Air

Chris_V said:

 

Is the windshield continuous to the back seats?  Imagine having to total your car because you drove by a truck on the highway....

Tom Suddard said:

I guessed that it would shut off and lock up when I got out and walked away, and I was correct. Then some googling revealed that the key fob can be clicked (one giant hidden button) in different patterns to open and close different panels. 

Does that mean that if I have the key in my pocket and I run into the store with my family in the car, that the whole car (music/HVAC) will shut down with people still inside? Or if I run back into the house after backing out of the garage that it will shut off and cancel all my Nav/Music/Screen settings that I just configured for my upcoming drive? How is this better than a single On/Off button like the other EVs I've driven? Seems like it's creating a problem for no benefit. 

In reply to CrashDummy :

Just treat the key like a key for an ICE. Leave it in the car if you want it to stay alive while you run around doing other things.

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to CrashDummy :

Just treat the key like a key for an ICE. Leave it in the car if you want it to stay alive while you run around doing other things.

Every keyless entry ICE car I've driven stays fully functional if you walk away with the fob in your pocket. Usually it just beeps to remind you that you're walking away with the car on. That's why keyless entry is convenient; you don't need to take out your keys and leave them with your car. Usually I keep the fob on the same key chain as the things I need to do the other things (like my house key).

CrashDummy said:

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to CrashDummy :

Just treat the key like a key for an ICE. Leave it in the car if you want it to stay alive while you run around doing other things.

Every keyless entry ICE car I've driven stays fully functional if you walk away with the fob in your pocket. Usually it just beeps to remind you that you're walking away with the car on. That's why keyless entry is convenient; you don't need to take out your keys and leave them with your car. Usually I keep the fob on the same key chain as the things I need to do the other things (like my house key).

Some eventually turn off. Mine runs for 15 minutes or so and it shuts off. 

Slippery said:

CrashDummy said:

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to CrashDummy :

Just treat the key like a key for an ICE. Leave it in the car if you want it to stay alive while you run around doing other things.

Every keyless entry ICE car I've driven stays fully functional if you walk away with the fob in your pocket. Usually it just beeps to remind you that you're walking away with the car on. That's why keyless entry is convenient; you don't need to take out your keys and leave them with your car. Usually I keep the fob on the same key chain as the things I need to do the other things (like my house key).

Some eventually turn off. Mine runs for 15 minutes or so and it shuts off. 

Just thought of this as well: What if you WANT to turn the car off while the key is still in your pocket nearby (autocross paddock, car show, washing the car in the driveway, etc.)? Do you really have to "hide" the key away from the car? 

Sorry, every ICE I own has an old-school key that has to be inserted into a keyhole. I forgot about the halfway implementation and made the mistake of confusing ICE with actual keys.

Our EV acts like the Lucid. If you walk away with the key, it shuts down and locks. When you walk up to it, it wakes up. There is no user interaction to make the car go on/off. It also doesn't need a lot of configuration to allow you to drive - it recognizes the key so it sets up the mirrors/seats according to whatever key just sat down in the driver's seat. The music settings stay the way they were the last time they were changed, like a normal car stereo from 20 years ago. The nav assumes you are still in the middle of whatever trip you were in when you stopped because you haven't actually arrived at your destination yet. So it's not really a big deal if you jump out of the car and run back in to the house, the car will wake up in the same condition it did when it shut down.

The whole "leave a person in the car while you run away with the key" situation means either they have to have a key on them as well or you go to the effort of removing the key from your pocket and leaving it with them so they can play with things and run the HVAC. At least in that case the car isn't beeping constantly, which would make it dangerous to get back in the car if the person left behind was my wife :)

CrashDummy said:

Slippery said:

CrashDummy said:

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to CrashDummy :

Just treat the key like a key for an ICE. Leave it in the car if you want it to stay alive while you run around doing other things.

Every keyless entry ICE car I've driven stays fully functional if you walk away with the fob in your pocket. Usually it just beeps to remind you that you're walking away with the car on. That's why keyless entry is convenient; you don't need to take out your keys and leave them with your car. Usually I keep the fob on the same key chain as the things I need to do the other things (like my house key).

Some eventually turn off. Mine runs for 15 minutes or so and it shuts off. 

Just thought of this as well: What if you WANT to turn the car off while the key is still in your pocket nearby (autocross paddock, car show, washing the car in the driveway, etc.)? Do you really have to "hide" the key away from the car? 

I once tried to put my coat in the trunk of a rented Nissan with a keyless fob. The fob was in my coat. It wouldn't let the trunk latch because, duh, I was locking my keys in the car. This was at least 15 years ago.

I'm going to see if there's a way to shut down our EV with a key inside. There's a control that looks like it should do the job. But with an EV, "off" really means you want to shut down the HVAC since it's not doing a whole lot else. In our case, the HVAC doesn't really fire up until you start opening up doors so washing the car or hanging out nearby won't do much. The key is so short range that I doubt you'd be able to get it moving unless the key was in the pocket of someone standing right beside the driver's door. ND Miatas are like this, you can't open the trunk with the button on the car unless the fob is within arm's length.

I will say that accessing the M5 performance is a lot more work. Even trying to follow our middle-spec Tesla in the M5 is a challenge if Janel is feeling zippy, the car will launch off a corner hard with no concern about engine speed or gear selection. The M5 also needs to be nursed to full operating temp. It just makes a lot more fuss about everything. It still feels like a treat to drive - like I'm being allowed to drive it - but it also only gets taken out for specific situations because of that fussiness.

I'd love to know more about Brian's M5, though. It doesn't look like it's quite stock.

Keith - 

Do you ever consider selling the M5 because the 3 scratches a similar itch? Or are the two just worlds apart?

dj06482 (Forum Supporter) said:

I will say that accessing the M5 performance is a lot more work. Even trying to follow our middle-spec Tesla in the M5 is a challenge if Janel is feeling zippy, the car will launch off a corner hard with no concern about engine speed or gear selection. The M5 also needs to be nursed to full operating temp. It just makes a lot more fuss about everything. It still feels like a treat to drive - like I'm being allowed to drive it - but it also only gets taken out for specific situations because of that fussiness.

I'd love to know more about Brian's M5, though. It doesn't look like it's quite stock.

Keith - 

Do you ever consider selling the M5 because the 3 scratches a similar itch? Or are the two just worlds apart?

I have floated the idea past Janel and got a hard no. She likes the car. Can't think of the last time she drove it, but she likes it and its noises. It also functions as my adult car for when I need things like AC and a trunk. There's no pressure to sell the thing so the two black fast sedans will remain stablemates. We bought it at the bottom of the M5 market so we don't really have much tied up in it.
 Not really a bad problem to have.  

Time for a field trip!

Oooh, that reminds me, I have to get down there and grab some wheels for my MINI.

I drove a few cool cars:

Then said goodbye to Dan and pointed the Lucid back towards home. Along the way, I figured I'd hit a fast charger. The battery had slowly crept up to about 70% full with trickle charging each night, but I wanted to top it off before a big driving day tomorrow. And I even got complacent enough to just trust the Lucid's nav system, so I asked it to plan a charging stop on my way home. Normally I second-guess every charging stop with research on PlugShare, but I skipped that step this time. And... this is where the Lucid suggested for a refill:

Whelp, guess I'll call that a failed experiment. 

In reply to Tom Suddard :

You just have to be patient.  It's not like it's broken or busy.

What? You wanted to charge it today? 

We're headed back to New Jersey today, and need to charge on the way. Attempt number one:

Tom Suddard said:

We're headed back to New Jersey today, and need to charge on the way. Attempt number one:

Can you charge it yourself in Jersey, or does someone have to do that for you?

Attempt number two was a success, though it's currently sitting at 60kw with a 30% SOC. 

ive always wondered what would happen if a charger breaks before or during a charge, does it give you a refund from the first charge or do you pay twice if you got midway though a charge and a error messed it up.

You pay per minute or per kWh (just like paying per gallon at a gas pump) so you'd just start a second charge. 

After a few interactions across the east coast, I think I have some insight into why these chargers are so busy. Uber. One driver told me that the company rented her a Chevy Bolt to drive for Uber, then just told her "it's easy to charge" with no further instructions. I helped her learn how to use the charger, add payment, and charge her car. And I see Uber signs in many of the cars parked here. They seem to frequently be charging all the way full, too, which takes forever. 

And we're back on the road! Charger topped out somewhere around 100kw at some point.

Tom Suddard said:

After a few interactions across the east coast, I think I have some insight into why these chargers are so busy. Uber. One driver told me that the company rented her a Chevy Bolt to drive for Uber, then just told her "it's easy to charge" with no further instructions. I helped her learn how to use the charger, add payment, and charge her car. And I see Uber signs in many of the cars parked here. They seem to frequently be charging all the way full, too, which takes forever. 

Oh, that's not good. As a Bolt owner, I'm very aware of it's charging speed after 70% or so and don't stay there any longer than it takes to get there (usually from 20-70% in about a half hour on the 150kW stations). But if there are lot of Uber drivers that don't understand charge curves on EVs, we're going to see a lot more blocked chargers with people taking an hour to go from 80-100%.

And just like that, the Lucid is back home at the mothership in NJ, and we're back in our truck for the rest of the trip. I'll write up my thoughts when I'm at a computer, but TL;DR: the Lucid does a lot really, really well. But it has some baggage that I'm not sure it will overcome in a war with Tesla. 
 

Off to the next adventure!

Did you ever have a fault-free charging experience - other than the wall plug? I'd be pretty frustrated if I'd dropped $100k on what I considered the best EV in the market and I'd had to deal with all that.