Was it stupid or was it brave?

Some might call it stupid, others might call it brave and there are a select few that just don't want to talk about it at all. But I've done it. Against better judgement and with full knowledge of what could and probably would go wrong. I took a Lucid Air on a 4.500 km road trip trough four countries. And I survived!

Yes, I've heard the horror stories of all the software issues that get so bad you'd rather drive off the Øresundbron (the bridge between Denmark and Sweden) instead of just crossing it. And I've experienced the broken chargers or complete lack thereof in Germany. I also know that the fictional WLTP-range of EV's is just that, fictional. the 800 km car companies communicate quickly turn into 200 km when you do highway speeds. But still, I wanted to see if a five year old car can keep up with the barrage of 800 km range monsters flooding the market right now.

What I found was, in short: yes. Quite easily. I've never had such a relaxing drive to my little vacation home in Sweden before. Charging went consistently and reliably quick, not really fast, but decently quick. Or let's say: quick enough to do a driver swap, have a wee and get some new fresh liquid to turn into a new wee in about three hours we would drive at (more than) highway speeds, to do the seat swap again.

I do have to confess that I didn't take the Lucid Air Pure on the trip. I opted for the the lavishly in kWh's doused Grand Touring. You know, fictional WLTP's and all are no substitute to raw kWh's. So to call it stupidity is a bit of a stretch. Taking the Sapphire (which was offered as an option) would be stupid. I think the whole trip would turn into an internal argument between my sane mind and my heavy right foot. We all know which would win, because feet don't have ears and therefore can't listen to reasoning.

Calling the trip brave? Turns out there is no need for that either. I think it took Lucid about 5 years to get stuff working decently enough. At least on my car. I didn't really encounter any of the software horrors I've heard others talk about so much. Maybe Lucid did some code sweeping before I picked up my test car, or maybe I'm just a gentle giant and handle my cars so lovingly, they love me back.

Either way, more than issues with slow opening of the doors (which was because the phone app for the Air can function as a key, but probably shouldn't) and some weird entertainment glitches didn't pop up. So I still don't get why Lucid gets such a bad name in that area, but it seems like I'm the exception.

So call it stupid or call it brave, at least I tried and found some other cool and strange stuff in the process. One really strange thing is that Lucid doesn't really have that bad of a rep at all. I think it's a thing that only lives under car enthousiasts. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we're extreme nerds with a need for putting salt in pussing wounds. I'm saying that outside of a select few car minded folks, nobody seems to know Lucid even exists. Which is weird in a world where even the smallest upcoming Chinese EV brand gets noticed quite quickly.

That also means that you could say that going on a road trip in a Lucid would be brave for introverts. I've found that parking a car like that at a charger at least gets some eyes rolling, and maybe even gets tongues moving. I've driven a lot of EV's to a lot of places, but never have I had this many chats with interested people about a car. Except for one: my experience in the Rolls-Rolls Ghost. People gather in numbers around that car.

That brings me to another thing I noticed during my trip. I can't figure out why Lucid isn't doing better in car sales in Europe. I know the things aren't being sold in Sweden (don't know why Lucid decided not to), but I think I could've sold four Airs quite easily during my three weeks there. And that is just to people that came up to me already knowing about the car and it's issues, and just being amazed at how good it looks in the flesh, or metal. Yes metal, flesh is weird. Forget that I mentioned that.

With the news breaking that Lucid is again cutting some staff to align with the demand, I felt a bit strange. There clearly seems to be demand. Added to that the company itself is likably weird and lovable, and full of people that really love what they're doing and a lot more motivated to bring the best EV's the world has seen to market. And they're good at it. Technically speaking. Software could be better. The strange thing is, almost everyone I speak to thinks the same of the little car company that could, but somehow has a hard time at coulding.

There is however one issue bigger than the software horrors I haven't seen but probably exist somewhere deep inside someone's garage: it's lack of visibility of the brand due to the weird choices they keep making on that area. I'm trying to help where I can with visibility, but having someone reading about someone doing an epic road trip in a Lucid, and then finding out the only Lucid dealer in The Netherlands is somewhere deep inside the very traffic unfriendly Hilversum where parking and driving is nearly impossible, will demand a lot of desire from a hopeful new prospect to even go there to look at the car.

I'm stupid and brave enough to propose a solution: Lucid, give me a Pure (I'll make do) and I'll drive it throughout The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and sometimes Belgium, but preferably not (the roads... the horror...). I'll take an order form with me everywhere. Everytime a person comes up to me and shows any sign of interest in the car whatsoever, I'll hand them the form. You can take the sales bonus, you need it more that I do. I bet we can get those rookie numbers up quite quickly.

Cheers!

Dennis