The current Holy Grail for EVs is to exceed 500 miles of range. It’s the one thing that most EV makers are striving for but haven’t quite achieved.
In August, Lucid’s CEO posted a chart on LinkedIn suggesting the brand is several years ahead of its competitors in EV efficiency. While some believe he is overly optimistic, the fact remains that Lucid vehicles are beating their rivals on range alone.
Soon, Lucid will be spreading the wealth of its powertrain expertise with supercar maker Aston Martin, which is slated to launch its first Lucid-powered EV in 2025. It’s a brilliant partnership as one legacy and one newcomer pool their expertise (Wonder Twins, activate!) to create a high-horsepower dynamo. From its own headquarters, Lucid has an all-electric SUV, the Gravity, expected to be available for purchase later this year.
The secret to Lucid’s rapid rise and incredible range, says the company’s senior director of engineering Dr. James Hawkins, is a combination of tweaks. A prolific use of high-strength cast aluminum is one factor, but there’s a much heavier emphasis on both aerodynamics and miniaturization of powertrain components.
The automaker started out as a battery technology company and evolved into an EV builder in 2016. Images: Lucid
Reinvention of the electric motor
Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, Lucid Motors started its life as an EV battery and powertrain builder, rebranding to its current name in 2016. That’s when British engineer Peter Rawlinson joined the company as CEO and CTO. Rawlinson, a former executive for Tesla, worked on the Model S during its development process and brought a wealth of experience to Lucid as it pivoted to EV manufacturing.
The brand’s base model, the Lucid Air Pure, starts at around $70,000. It’s equipped with rear-wheel drive, a single electric motor good for 430 horsepower, and promises 420 miles of range. Move up the ladder to the Touring model for dual electric motors, all-wheel drive, and 620 horses, but it loses 14 miles of range for 406 total. The Grand Touring harnesses the same two-motor setup for 819 hp and 512 miles of range. At the top of the food chain, the $249,000 Lucid Air Sapphire gets its zoom from three electric motors, maxing out at 1,234 hp (in Track mode) and 1,430 lb-ft of torque with 427 miles of range. In some cases, the range numbers may be underselling the vehicle’s true capabilities.
For instance: YouTuber Kyle Conner makes a living testing EVs, ranging from a Nissan Leaf to a Porsche Taycan Turbo GT and everything in between. Just this week, Conner drove an all-electric sedan that surpassed the range of anything he has ever tested: a 2025 Lucid Grand Air Touring. After fully charging the EV, Conner set off on his typical 70-mile testing loop and kept going until the car stopped. Ultimately, the Lucid Air Grand Touring easily surpassed the 500-mile mark and then some.
Buffered by deep pockets (including the most recent $1.5 billion investment from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia) and keen interest, Lucid Motors produced 8,428 cars in 2023. Its vehicles are beautifully designed, with a sleek exterior and modern cabin. It looks great on the outside, but the real wizardry happens under the surface of the skin. Rawlinson believes it all starts by turning common wisdom on its head.
“There is this pervasive mindset that continues, ‘oh, this car hasn’t got much range, so it would need a bigger battery pack,’” he says. “With that, range is just proportional, a function of how many batteries you put in. And we challenge that. We said, ‘What if you can make a much more effective and efficient electric motor? What if you chose every aspect of that motor and redesigned it, not just electromagnetically but thermodynamically?’”
Lucid set out to expand the efficiency envelope of the electric motor in a cost-effective manner. That’s no small feat. In the process, Rawlinson says, the EV manufacturer has reinvented the electric motor.
“We’ve got ultra high voltage, we’ve got silicon carbide switching, we’ve got some very advanced mathematics in the control algorithms,” he says. “And you combine that with a motor which is extraordinarily electromagnetically efficient, thermodynamically efficient, and mechanically capable. We’ve even re-imagined the transmission, the gears, the whole. As a consequence, we’ve got the fastest charging car in the world.”
It’s not all about range efficiency
To Lucid, Hawkins says, efficiency is everything and drives everything the automaker does. Not just range, but space, time, and cost efficiency as well. Part of that is the pursuit of miniaturization, which Lucid does quite well.
“We reinvented the motor by thinking small. Really small,” Hawkins says.
Handing me a powertrain pulled from a Tesla Model S Plaid, Hawkins asks me to note how heavy it is. Compared to the Lucid setup, the equipment from the Model S Plaid is dense and considerably larger. Lucid’s differential alone is tiny; it fits in the palm of my hand. The differential, which allows different wheels on the same axle to spin at different speeds, sits within an unused hollow spot inside the rotor.
Lucid’s drive unit is uniquely small compared to its rivals. Image: Lucid
“With competitors such as Tesla, the size of their unit and the massive amount of material they’re using is dramatically larger [than Lucid’s],” Hawkins says. “The reason it can be so small is because our differential sits within the rotor, which is before the reduction gearset. So it spins very fast: high speed, low torque.”
Each detail is obsessively reviewed and adjusted, akin to an Olympic swimmer shaving hundredths of a second off their personal best by shaving or a golfer tweaking their swing by a millimeter. Pointing to the parts of the Lucid drive unit, Hawkins explains how it compares to others and why it works.
The entire drive unit is unintentionally beautiful, like a meticulously crafted steampunk sculpture.
Lucid’s powertrains keep getting smaller and more efficient. Ultimately, Hawkins says, Lucid’s goal is to benefit the world by being more effective and responsible in how it uses materials and energy. Incorporating fewer materials equates to less energy waste.
I ask him: Why wouldn’t competitors just copy Lucid’s design?
“Oh, they will,” Hawkins says, explaining that the Lucid Air has been circulating for three years, and the car has likely been taken apart multiple times all over the world by now. However, he’s confident that Lucid is still a step ahead, because it has already moved forward leaps and bounds toward the next generation. The Gravity SUV is just a start.
Catch them if you can.
Source : Popular Science