With the final unveiling of the Lucid Air around the corner on September 9, the trickle of details about the all-electric luxury sedan is speeding up. In recent months, we’ve seen the car drive 400 miles on a charge, only to best itself with an estimated range in testing of 517 miles. We’ve learned it will come equipped from the factory with lidar for semi-autonomous driving. We’ve even learned more about potential future vehicles to come after the Air. Today, Lucid Motors is providing details about the Air’s charging capabilities, and they’re impressive.

Thanks to its 900-volt-plus battery architecture, it can hit peak charging capacity of over 300 kilowatts, making it the fastest-charging electric car to come to market (for comparison, the Porsche Taycan peaks at a similarly impressive 270 kW). On Electrify America’s 350-kW DC fast chargers — for which the Air includes a three-year subscription — it can put 300 miles of range back in the battery in just 20 minutes at the plug. In addition to the high-voltage battery, Lucid credits the battery thermal management system, custom lithium-ion cells and efficient powertrain for squeezing the most mileage out of every charge.
Speaking of range, we mentioned that 517 miles of projected range. We’re not sure what the battery capacity is, though. Originally, Lucid had been working with a 130-kilowatt-hour pack for its long-range version, but we’ve since learned from Lucid that “it’s gotten considerably smaller,” which only makes 500+ miles even more impressive.That wickedly quick fast-charging capability is well and dandy for long road trips — something this Air makes more possible for owners — but the reality is that most charging occurs at home. Thanks to the Air’s 19.2-kW “Wunderbox” onboard charger, the Air can add up to 80 miles of range per hour on AC charging. Lucid includes a mobile charger with the car, but says it will also offer its Connected Home Charging Station for Level 2 charging.

Perhaps even more interesting is that home charging station’s bi-directional capabilities, which means it can not only draw energy from the grid, it could also provide power back to the grid as that technology becomes available. It could also allow the owner to use the Air’s battery as a backup emergency power supply for their home. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology could also help balance the grid in a future based more heavily on intermittent renewable energy, and could allow homeowners with solar systems to generate income by selling stored energy back to utilities during peak power usage. Lucid says that it is currently developing static Energy Storage Systems as a way to help fill out its energy ecosystem, including giving retired electric vehicle batteries a second chance at life.

We’ll learn more about the Lucid Air, its specs and capabilities when it debuts online at 7 p.m. EDT September 9

The standard Air is said to start at around $60,000 before incentives. A flagship trim with a larger battery pack could cost over $100,000, and could deliver roughly 1,000 horsepower, do 0-60 in 2.5 seconds and have a top speed beyond 200 mph.

but this one looks like the real deal and will be launched in less than a month.

if they deliver on most of what they've promised and it isn't built with endless quality problems like T-cars then they stand a chance.

Earlier this month, Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson told Green Car Reports, "I can confirm that we're doing an SUV off the Air platform," and that the nascent automaker has already finished a road-worthy prototype. Deliveries of the Air sedan start in Q2 of 2021. Rawlinson said of the SUV, "I'm going to put that into production in early '23." It's possible we've gotten a preview of what's coming in 18 months thanks to Twitter user Coast Redwoods, who — while driving a Tesla Model Y — spotted an Air sedan and what looks like a prototype Lucid SUV parked on the side of a back road. The captions to the photos explained that the California Highway Patrol had blocked the road in Pescadaro, about 50 miles west of San Jose near the coast. Coast Redwoods didn't say so, but the setup looks like one used for a promo shoot. The Air is slated to be revealed on September 9With the SUV built on the Air's platform, that means we can expect the Air's 900-volt architecture and 350-kW charging capability. Lucid recently said the Air can restore 300 miles of range in 20 minutes when hooked up to a 350-kW CCS fast-charger, a restore rate faster than anything on the market right now. Plugged into a Level 2 charger, the Air can replenish 80 miles of range per hour. The people-hauler's range might not match the preliminary 517-mile feat recently touted for the Air, but it sounds like there's a good shot to match or exceed the 410-mile range Rivian said the R1S would get.

By the way, the 517-mile figure comes using the EPA's percentage correction to the unadjusted range. As Forbes explained, "The unadjusted range values came out to 745 miles city and 730 miles highway with a combined 738 miles. The EPA applies a correction factor that is typically 70% to account for other factors that impact real world driving. These include air conditioning, heating and for auto stop start for internal combustion engines that have that feature. With the correction factor, the Air is projected to get a range of 517 miles, more than 25% better than the current champ, the long range Tesla Model S."

After Lucid Motors recently told us it had downsized the Air electric luxury sedan’s long-rang battery from 130 kilowatt-hours to an undisclosed capacity, and still managed to get a projected range of 517 miles from it, we were impressed. Today, Lucid has divulged that new battery capacity, along with some other fresh details about the Air’s platform, and its efficiencies not just in its EV powertrain, but in interior space.

To start, we learn that the Lucid Air’s official battery capacity is 113 kWh. That pack supplies electrons to the two motors, good for a total of up to 1,000 horsepower and a 0-60 time of under 2.5 seconds. That drivetrain is packaged tightly into the Lucid Electric Advanced Platform (LEAP) skateboard to maximizes interior space.
As for cargo area, Lucid says the Air offers a total of 26.1 cubic feet of it. It lays claim to the largest EV frunk in the segment, at 9.9 cubic feet, which is more than double the Ford Mustang Mach-E’s 4.8 cubic-foot shrimp buffet. By subtraction, that gives the Air’s trunk in the back a respectable capacity of 16.2 cubic feet — the same as a Dodge Challenger’s. From the very beginning, the Lucid Air has been promising a spacious passenger area, as well.“It’s relatively easy to achieve more range by adding progressively more batteries, but gaining ‘dumb range’ that way increases weight and cost, and reduces interior space,” said Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson. “Lucid Air has achieved its remarkable range whilst also reducing battery size through its in-house technology, resulting in a breakthrough in overall vehicle-level efficiency.”

As we’ve already learned, there’s much more to the Lucid Air to find intriguing and exciting, from its factory-equipped lidar, to its 300+ kilowatts of peak charging capacity and vehicle-to-grid capabilities. We’re looking forward to September 9, when Lucid gives us the full and official reveal of the Air EV.

With the lead-up to production of the all-electric Lucid Air underway, Lucid Motors detailed the 1,080-horsepower powertrain: It will propel the 500-mile electric car to 60 MPH in under 2.5 seconds as it makes its way through the quarter-mile in just 9.9 seconds. Lucid reckons that quarter-mile time is good enough to make its all-electric Air sedan the quickest four-door EV. Once it starts building them, that is.

The Air has been a slow drip, with Lucid painstakingly highlighting all of the components of its holistic approach to performance and efficiency. We already know quite a bit about its 113-kWh battery pack, which offers 517 miles of total range. With this latest information dump, we now know just how the Lucid Air will put all of that energy capacity to work.

The Lucid Air will employ dual electric drive units (one front, one rear), each of which is capable of producing more than 650 horsepower, but total performance of the standard model at launch will top out at 1,080 hp. "But 650 + 650 is not 1,080," you might protest. Indeed. It's almost as if Lucid might have something up its sleeve, but we'll have to wait to find out exactly what that looks like.

"Our watchword has been ‘focus’ since day one at Lucid – a focus on sound engineering principles, a focus on creating efficiencies, and a focus on maximizing power to create a world-class EV," said CEO Peter Rawlinson.

"When the Lucid Air comes to market next spring, the world will see that we have developed the best electric vehicle technology possible by a wide margin and effectively created a new benchmark for EVs. The result is nothing short of a technological tour de force in every facet upon which a luxury performance car is measured." he said.

The good news is, the wait is almost over. The Lucid Air will be unveiled via a public live stream at 7 p.m. EDT on Sept. 9.