Lucid Appears Reluctant To NACS, Needs High-Voltage Version

The company uses a 900 V battery system and needs 1,000 V DC fast chargers.

Lucid Air Sapphire battery and powertrain

Mark Kane

By: Mark Kane

Jun 21, 2023 at 6:12pm ET

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Lucid Motors is not expected to be among the first movers to adopt Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS).

The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Wilmot had an opportunity earlier this month to speak with Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson and ask him about the whole CCS1 to NACS transition.

As we can see in the video (see from about 7:00 here or a small part in a tweet below), Lucid's boss does not appear to be too excited about NACS. He pointed out that the CCS1 and NACS are just plastic plugs with some copper. The far more important thing, in his opinion, is not the plug, but the high-voltage (a level of 1,000 volts), which must be utilized to reduce the current (assuming the same power) and losses, and thus increase efficiency. That's fundamental, according to Peter Rawlinson.

The Lucid Air model is known for its ultra-high efficiency, long range (over 500 miles, according to the EPA), and ultra-fast charging capability, which is beyond Plaid. One of the key elements to charge quickly (at up to over 300 kilowatts) is the high-voltage battery system of up to around 900 V.

The Combined Charging System (CCS1) charging standard fully supports such a voltage level today, and there is a growing number of CCS1 fast chargers ready for up to 350 kW of power at up to 800-1,000 volts. In other words, CCS1 does the job for Lucid.

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In the case of the NACS, as far as we know, Tesla cars and Tesla Superchargers (V3) are currently using a voltage level of up to 500 V (DC output). This significantly limits the ability to fast charge cars with a higher voltage battery - like the Lucid Air, Hyundai Ioniq 5, or Porsche Taycan - as long as there is no special on-board solution for that.

We saw this issue in a real-world test (50 kW charging of a Lucid Air) when Tesla opened some of its chargers to non-Tesla EVs. It was very well presented by our colleague Kyle Conner (Out of Spec) below:

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Teslarati

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