Driving The Cheapest Lucid Air For 40,000 Miles Came With A Few Surprises

The most affordable Lucid doesn’t feel cheap, and it delivers all of the basics that the more expensive trims are known for.

Photo by: Car And Driver

By: Iulian Dnistran

Oct 29, at 9:46am ET

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Car and Driver put 40,000 on its 2024 Lucid Air Pure.
Lucid’s most affordable EV went through two winters and several drivers.
It never stranded its drivers, but some niggles made their presence felt.

Lucid Motors is not a cheap brand, but it does make a model that sits at the lower end of the luxury car market, and that’s the entry-level Air Pure sedan. For a smidge over $70,000, customers can get behind the wheel of a well-packaged, long-range, fun-to-drive EV—the question is: do they want to?

Thankfully, Car and Driver bought a 2024 Lucid Air Pure and has put 40,000 miles on the four-door sedan, gaining plenty of insight along the way and sharing it in the ownership report embedded below.

This particular car, which has an 88-kilowatt-hour battery and a rear-mounted electric motor that’s good for 430 horsepower, cost $81,350 when new. That’s roughly $10,000 on top of the base price, which went to options like the exterior paint, heated rear seats, a fancier driver assistance system, and a fantastic audio system.

If you’ve been reading InsideEVs for a while, you may know that some Lucid vehicles made headlines for their reliability issues. The company started from scratch to try to fix all the issues, and it seems to be working on new models, but as this is an earlier EV, it may seem like it’s more susceptible to problems.

To cut to the chase, Car and Driver didn’t have any major issues with its Air Pure. The biggest issue that can be attributed to the automaker was a defective module that rendered the keys unusable, but the company replaced the part under warranty. What’s more, the car could still be unlocked and started, so it didn’t leave its drivers stranded.

For most issues, a mobile technician would drive to the car and fix the problems on site, but more time-consuming jobs would require a trip on a flatbed to the service center, though that was caused by the service center being some 80 miles away from the car’s usual resting place.

Gallery: 2024 Lucid Air Pure

A few other niggles made their presence felt, like the thick A pillars that can obstruct visibility, especially in roundabouts, and the finicky physical key, which doesn’t have actual buttons in it. The front trunk lid never worked as intended, and it would always catch on one side, even though it was realigned by Lucid at one point. What’s more, the blacked-out chrome on the front of the car has started to flake, which is not a good look on any car, let alone a luxury sedan.

All these problems aside, it has been smooth sailing. Car and Driver noted that the Pure trim delivers all of the fundamentals of the more expensive trims at a much lower price. It’s plenty satisfying to drive, it’s really comfortable, and 430 hp is just enough.

Inside, there’s a lot of room for four adults, and the front and rear trunks offer more than enough cargo space for a family.

What do you think?

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When it comes to efficiency, the car averaged 92 MPGe, which comes out to 36.6 kilowatt-hours/100 miles. During the summer, it will happily do 300 miles on the highway at 75 miles per hour on a full charge, but in the winter, that number will fall to roughly 240-250 miles.

All in all, the Air Pure seems like a great choice, especially for people who are looking to get an electric sedan on the used market, where prices have been known to take a dive.