From its high-sided profile to its tapered roofline and jewelry-like details
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MotorTranscript
00:00 It's been about five years since Lucid Motors started work on their first passenger vehicle,
00:05 the Lucid Air. And whilst the Air came out back in 2021 to much acclaim, not least from us,
00:10 we named it our 2022 Car of the Year, there was always the sense that Lucid's second vehicle
00:15 would be the one to propel the company to new heights. Well now, the covers are off.
00:20 So here it is, the Lucid Gravity, the company's second new product after their wicked fast and
00:26 gorgeous sedan, the Lucid Air. And this time, Lucid aren't starting from zero. They're taking
00:31 those five valuable years of production, manufacture and driver feedback that they
00:38 have from the Air sedan and going after the biggest area of the car market in America
00:43 and around the world, the SUV. The Gravity is a full-size electric SUV available in either
00:50 five or as with this one, seven seat configurations. Lucid aren't revealing full specs of the Gravity
00:55 just yet, but what we do know is this, there are going to be at least two battery configurations,
01:00 a standard and an extended range model, as well as both single and dual motor versions. We weren't
01:06 told overall power figures, though we were told that the motor units being made for Gravity are
01:10 capable of up to 670 horsepower. Whilst those units are in essence the same as the ones Lucid
01:16 use in the Air, the gearing has been altered to deal with towing and, Lucid claim, genuine off-roading.
01:23 Really though, this was a chance to get up close with the Gravity's exterior design and interior
01:28 spaces. So let's dig in. First things first, let's talk about the design. And really there is a lot
01:34 to talk about, far be it from this to just be a Lucid Air on stilts. And actually, the guys that
01:40 we spoke to here about the car made a very big point of saying this is not a Lucid Air raised up.
01:46 And they mean that both in terms of the design, but also in terms of the platform. This car has
01:50 its own unique bespoke Lucid Gravity platform. Yes, they've taken some of the architectural
01:57 elements of the Air, but everything has been re-engineered, re-manufactured specifically
02:02 for Gravity. And you can see that when you look at the car's design. Where the Lucid Air was a
02:07 slippery, sleek bar of soap, this car still has that. Yes, but it's got a far more muscular sense
02:14 to it, I think. With its high belt line and low roof line, it is all at once big and yet somehow
02:20 compact. They wanted this to have almost as they described to me, a bullet train like appearance
02:26 at the front, which I think is such a cool way to think about this car, especially when you consider
02:30 the aerodynamic element, which we'll come to in just a moment. As we move down, we come to the
02:35 first of two sets of really big, broad, muscular shoulders and also the wheels. The wheel design,
02:42 well, that's nothing special, but the size. Now, they're staggered wheels. You can either have
02:47 21s and 20s, 22s and 21s, or 23s and 22s. You're really going to be able to fill out those wheel
02:54 arches, which by the way, are in the middle right now of three different variable ride heights.
03:01 So this right now is in the middle. We expect it to raise up a little bit. The guys made a big
03:05 focus of wanting to make sure that this vehicle, when needed, could go off-road, but it'll also
03:10 drop down low. And that's because, and this is very impressive, this car's drag coefficient is
03:15 sub 0.24. That's incredibly impressive for an SUV. So the ride height, it's adjustable. You can
03:23 adjust it yourself. It'll also variably adjust depending on the speed at which you're traveling
03:27 and the conditions that you are in. So that's very impressive. Let's continue down. Now that I'm
03:32 stood here next to the side of the lucid gravity, you begin to see, I think, the scale we're working
03:38 with. It's a very interesting thing because this vehicle has the exterior proportions of, I don't
03:44 know, like an Audi Q7 or something like that, maybe a Range Rover Velar. It's not incredibly
03:50 tall. I'm about six foot tall and I can see right over the top of it. However, on the inside, this
03:56 car has the cargo space and the interior space, the dimensions for the passengers, equivalent to
04:03 a large Cadillac Escalade. I mean, that's kind of crazy when you think about it, but that just
04:08 shows the level of engineering that has gone into this car and the way that the design and the
04:13 engineering have come together and works together to make this a very, very appealing package.
04:19 So continue with me down here. As you can see, almost as soon as we're past the B pillar,
04:24 that roofline starts to taper back. We get to the second of the two big shoulders of this car. And
04:30 actually, when you get down and look at it, they stick out. It's like, I don't know, a Porsche
04:35 turbo or something. There's a good kind of eight inches of stick out there. That's pretty cool,
04:40 isn't it? This beautiful C pillar detail here. And by that point, you can see the rake of this
04:45 roofline. I mean, it's very dramatic, dramatic, and I think gorgeous. The tail end of this car
04:52 is a masterclass in minimalist design, with a single lensless light element running the entire
04:58 width of the car, framed by the sleek rear window and the large rear hatch. Speaking of which,
05:03 storage is looking great in the Gravity with a claimed 112 cubic feet of storage in the seven
05:09 seater version, which has full fold flat second row seating and third row seating, which can be
05:14 packed down completely into a space under the Gravity's trunk. And there's yet more storage
05:18 in the frunk, which is not only a great and secure place for storing things, but which can,
05:24 with the aid of this cushion accessory, also be transformed into bench seating for two,
05:29 for frunk gating, as Lucid calls it. Okay, join me, if you will, in the driver's seat of the
05:35 Lucid Gravity, where lots has changed, even though on the surface, when you look at it,
05:40 you go, "Oh yeah, okay, it's a Lucid," but no, lots has changed from the air. Allow me to explain.
05:45 The first and most prominent thing that you're faced with is the steering wheel, which, well,
05:50 it's certainly not a wheel. It's not a circle, and it's also not a square. I heard someone call
05:58 it a squircle earlier. I don't love that, but whatever. It's a beautiful steering wheel,
06:03 I will say. Driver individualization is the name of the game in here, where you can move and change
06:07 pretty much everything within the UI to suit the driver's specific needs. Two touch tablet controls
06:13 on the steering wheel allow for near infinite controllability without having to remove your
06:17 hands from the wheel, and there are even programmable multifunction buttons for you
06:22 to dedicate to whatever you're going to need quick access to. The real focus of this interior,
06:27 though, is what Lucid call their clear view cockpit, which, regrettably, is where we come
06:32 back to the squircle. Being a square, or rather having squared off edges here, doesn't interfere
06:39 with this 34-inch screen, which, again, looks very much like a Lucid Air screen, but it is
06:44 slightly different. So that's very nice. I can see the entirety of the screen. I'm not having
06:48 to peer through the steering wheel like you would on any conventional circular steering wheeled
06:52 vehicle with the big screen. The second screen is here, just like in the Lucid Air, although it has
06:57 been shifted up a bit. It's been rotated, so this is a horizontal screen as opposed to a vertical
07:01 screen, and it's fixed. It doesn't do the little movie thing like it did on the Lucid Air. The
07:06 reason for that, of course, was because there was that brilliant cargo storage area underneath,
07:11 and you needed to be able to access that, and in order to do that, the screen had to be able to
07:15 fold up and down. This no longer is required because Lucid have put a lot of effort into
07:21 this beautiful cargo space area here, which is deep and cavernous and has all these little bento
07:27 box configurations, so you can really customize it and go, "Oh, you know what? I need four cup
07:34 holders, and I need a big deep space here, and I need a little thing under here to keep things
07:38 secure." The design of this is also very nice. Of course, it's typically Lucid. We've got a mixture
07:43 of Nappa leather and beautiful textiles, which are made of reclaimed materials, recycled fishing
07:48 nets and things of that nature, but we've also got this gorgeous tempered glass. This is going
07:53 to be standard on all Lucids, not just this launch Dream Edition, but it's beautiful, and the guys
07:59 tell me it was based on a design of a mid-century modern coffee table that the guys in the office
08:04 thought was a particularly beautiful and pure piece of design. Isn't that cool? Across all
08:09 three rows, space is in abundance, as is storage and connectivity, with the second row receiving
08:15 its own independent multimedia screen, not dissimilar to the one we just saw in the Tesla
08:19 Highland, and tray tables for your electronic devices. Everything is capped by this beautiful
08:25 LED filament, which actually runs in a loop around the front, and then also there's a secondary one
08:31 that runs right around the back. I know that most every premium car today has an LED light running
08:36 through its interior, but in the Gravity, Lucid are putting it to use. One of the inherent things
08:42 about EVs is you have to sit in them idle for a while while they charge, so with that in mind,
08:46 Lucid have put a great amount of detail and thought into curating this space and making this
08:51 space beautiful and serene for the driver and the passengers. So we've got things like
08:57 mindfulness applications, we've got meditation modes in here, all of the lighting, all of the
09:03 Dolby Atmos surround sounds, stereo speakers, and of course these two beautiful screens all
09:09 adjust and will bring up beautiful images of national parks, and the lighting signatures
09:14 will match those, and the sound that comes through the speakers is that of birds chirping and leaves
09:19 rustling. It's really nice in here. I must say I am a big fan of what Lucid have done with the
09:24 Gravity's interior. Overall, the Gravity's design is, I think, really nice. The interior feels like
09:31 a conscious step up from the air, and with the exterior I enjoy how they've leaned into the
09:36 upright slab-sided look, but have worked to sculpt, smooth, and taper those lines in service
09:42 of reducing the drag coefficient wherever possible. On that subject, Lucid say they're
09:47 shooting for over 440 miles of range with the long-range version of the Gravity, a feat they
09:54 claim to be achieving through slick aerodynamic engineering, not by doubling the size of the
09:59 battery packs to account for the evident weight delta between the air and the Gravity. Whilst we
10:04 know that EVs are less harmful to the environment than combustion cars, energy is still energy,
10:09 and regardless of the medium, the less we can consume, the better. That said, Lucid did also
10:14 say that they're aiming for a sub 3.5 second 0-60 time in the Gravity, so it seems you'll
10:21 still be able to suspend your electrons freely, if you so wish.