Lucid Motors today has announced that the Air sedan will deliver unmatched performance and will launch with a quarter-mile time of 9.9 seconds. That would make the Air the fastest production electric sedan in the world, besting the Tesla Model S Performance with Cheetah Stance by a healthy half of a second.
To put just how fast that is into perspective, as far as we know, there's only been one production car ever made that has a faster standing quarter-mile time, and that is the Porsche 918 Spyder that can run a quarter-mile time of 9.81 seconds.
The Air has up to 1,080 horsepower available in its a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive architecture. Lucid tells us the vehicle is able to achieve the 9.9-second quarter-mile times on a consistent, repeatable basis.
Lucid really seems to be hitting all of their marks. The class-leading quarter-mile time would still be pretty impressive if that was the only thing the Air excelled at, but it isn't, and not by a long shot.
Gallery: Lucid Air High Performance Powertrain
When the Air comes to market next year, it will boast the longest driving range of any electric vehicle, with an estimated EPA-rated range of 517 miles. It will also have the lowest drag coefficient of any production vehicle with a Cd of 0.21. Additionally, as we reported last week the Air will also have class-leading interior space and the largest frunk of any electric vehicle. If that wasn't enough, it will also be the fastest charging EV available. adding 300 miles of range in only 20 minutes.
To sum that up, the Air will: have the longest range of any EV, charge faster than any other EV, have more interior space and a larger frunk than any EV in its class, have the lowest drag coefficient of any car available, and now we find out it will also be the fastest production EV in the world. Hmm, there seems to be a trend here.
“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 Peter Rawlinson, CEO and CTO, Lucid Motors. “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.”
Lucid has developed extremely compact, and ultra-efficient permanent magnet electric motors, creating an electric drive unit that weighs just 163lb (74kg) which Lucid tells us is small enough to fit inside a standard airline carry-on roller bag. Each drive unit delivers over 650hp, and has a power density that is well beyond anything else offered today at 41hp per liter.
Since the drive units are so compact, they allow for up to three of them to be used to power a Lucid Air, meaning we could possibly see a tri-motor setup in the future. Lucid explains that the drive units are 45 percent lighter and up to 59 percent more powerful its closest competitor, which would obviously be Tesla.
We got a sneak peek of today's announcement a couple of days ago when Lucid tweeted "How fast is your dream? #LucidAir Dream Edition vs. 1/4 Mile Test Sonoma, CA." Followed by the reminder that the Lucid Air's global reveal is set for September 9th.
More Lucid News
The Air is really shaping up to be a special electric vehicle, and we're looking forward to the global reveal of the production version on September 9th. Stay tuned for that and more Lucid news here as we're stepping up our Lucid coverage now that they are less than a year before production and customer deliveries begin.
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