Before AI dominated the headlines and capital investments, electric vehicles and autonomous driving were poised to be the defining technologies of the 2020s. It’s been a fascinating industry to follow: first Tesla and their rise to prominence, then the Cambrian explosion of EV companies and infrastructure both domestic and abroad, the brief era of optimism following the COVID shortages, and now the pullback and grind towards acceptance and inevitable ubiquity.
I’ve been an early adopter of both the Tesla Model 3 and, when it was refreshed, their Model X. Arguably, cars are one of the worst consumer product categories to pay to be a beta tester: they’re expensive, they’re extremely complex machines, and automobiles are critical for getting around day-to-day, particularly in Amercian cities lacking robust public transportation options. To that point, the early Model 3s exhibited plenty of build quality problems, and we eventually had to replace the MCU to maintain Full Self-Driving capabilities; the Model X stayed at the service center 4 times within the first year to deal with everything from seat squeaks, faulty mechnical doors, and a nasty infotainment system crash that blasted a monotone beep in the cabin for hours1.
But what makes these cars worth the effort is the new automotive technology they introduce, and how that offers a glimpse of how cars will be designed and built for the decades to come. The Model 3 had a pretty simplistic version of Autopilot at launch; what was exciting was the instant torque and acceleration, and how it handled with a low center of gravity with batteries stacked on the underfloor platform. The refreshed Model X introduced a high-end GPU to render multiple screens and had so much excess capacity that it supported Steam games designed to be played while the car was charging…well, before they eventually removed that feature.
The Tesla of 2025, though, seems less interested in pushing the envelope on new cars. Previously announced vehicles like a refreshed Roadster, the Semi, and the low-cost Model 2 seem to be languishing in design and manufacturing limbo; the cynical take is that they’ve done their jobs to keep the public interested and present a breadth in Tesla’s lineup, a bridge to their current plans of going all-in on automation via robotaxis and robots. A more charitable take is that their stock price got a bit too rich, and that is forcing the company to place massive bets on creating new markets.
Enter Lucid Motors.
Lucid is one of several American EV startups that emerged after Tesla’s success with the Model 3 rollout, but one of only a few surviving the grueling manufacturing and production ramp. The company started as a battery and electric powertrain developer, but pivoted to EVs sometime in the mid-2010s and brought on a bunch of ex-Tesla folks, including their (now-former) CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson, who served as Tesla’s chief engineer during the development of the Model S. The playbook certainly feels similar: start with a luxury sedan (the Lucid Air/Model S), leverage the learnings from that vehicle to introduce a luxury SUV to cater to families (the Lucid Gravity/Model X), and then downsize the SUV to a more affordable midsize crossover to across the largest market segment in the US (the upcoming Lucid Earth/Model Y).
I’ve been driving the Lucid Gravity for the past month or so, trading in my Model X for one of its rivals. Comparing the 2026 variants of the two cars, the Model X refresh this year was underwhelming—indicative of the aforementioned loss of focus on their actual vehicles—while early reviews of the new Lucid Gravity were universally positive. Lucid’s emphasis on drivability, efficiency2, and build quality made me excited to take an early adopter role. Despite everything that comes with a brand-new vehicle and platform, it reminds me of Tesla’s first vehicle launches a decade prior—the sheer audacity of the Model S, and how it leapfrogged over every other EV at the time.
Physically and mechanically, the car is as good as advertised. The build and design quality in the cabin is substantially more refined than Tesla’s cars, with an emphasis on luxury and ergonomics that I didn’t realize made so much of a difference until I spent some time in the former. The interior is much more spacious than the Model X, with more frunk and trunk room plus good-sized third row seats, and it achieves this feat while being slightly shorter in both length and height. The exterior is a little more controversial: some label it a minivan with the flatter, lower height that definitely looks squat compared to other, boxier SUVs. I personally don’t have an issue with the shape, and if it’s a cross between a minivan and a station wagon, that’s not a bad thing3. Driving the car has been a treat as well; Lucid Engineering’s emphasis on suspension, handling shows on winding roads, while the cabin stays calm and quiet during road trips.
However, it has not all been smooth sailing. As some reviewers have reported, the key fob has been unreliable in unlocking and enabling the car to drive; I’ve encountered this once so far and had to reset the fob by pulling out and reinserting its battery. The infotainment system takes too long to boot and sometimes stalls, more often than I’d like. There seem to be errant notifications popping up on the dashboard; I was scared at first from seeing multiple systems fail all at once, but since everything actually seems to drive and run properly, I’ve concluded that it’s more hardware blips creating overeager signals than actual, constant hardware failures.
Bugs and gremlins aside, Lucid’s real disadvantage to Tesla is the immaturity of its software. Granted, pretty much all manufacturers are also playing catch-up, but Lucid’s DNA and target market make them a natural comparison, and their software maturity is not quite a decade behind but will require many over-the-air (OTA) updates in the years to come. Shown features like AR-enhanced HUD and CarPlay/Android Auto and even Phone-as-a-Key (PaaK) aren’t available yet on the Gravity, and their mobile app functionality is a few steps behind Tesla’s refined app experience. Lucid won’t put in the same types of easter eggs and “just for fun” items in their infotainment system updates, but right now the interface is pretty barebones, lacking even a couple of music and video apps that consumers have come to expect from tech-forward vehicles.
The good news is that all of this is solvable, with the vast majority of it solvable within software; the foundational elements of the car are solid. What’s more challenging for Lucid, as a company, is that they need to fix this quickly before they develop a reputation for unreliability, and not lose so much money and goodwill with recalls and service center appointments that they never make it to their mass market phase. On top of this, the company loses a hefty $200–300k per vehicle sold, and the business is so reliant on cash that they’ve sought repeated investments and capital injections from the Saudi Public Investment Fund. The optimistic thinking is that both sides are in too deep now not to see it through, but being able to sustain this amount of capital expenditure is itself a major challenge; all those car startups a few years ago fell woefully short4 and most folded well before mass manufacturing. Beyond their upcoming mid-sized SUV, they’re hedging their business a bit: with their Saudi connections, they’re expanding manufacturing facilities in the country, and also recently struck a deal with Uber and Nuro for full autonomous driving, augmented onto Gravity vehicles.
The comparison to a preteen Tesla is not meant to be a slight. If anything, it harkens back to a time when the older sibling was also trotting out its first cars, buggy as all hell and rough on the edges, but full of potential and bringing a new perspective into an established ecosystem. These next 2–3 years will determine whether Lucid is a car company in it for the long haul, or one of many ambitious notes in the annals of automotive history.
We eventually were able to get the entire unit replaced, but only after I submitted 3 separate videos documenting the problem.↩
Which in the EV world often equates to range.↩
The same dynamic is playing out with Chinese EV startups, which shrank from the hundreds to the tens, and the ones remaining work closely with local governments to keep up demand.↩
