With 1,050 hp, the new Grand Touring Performance Edition becomes the most powerful version of Lucid’s electric Air sedan.
Lucid engines
Electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid is introducing a new edition of its popular and powerful luxury sedan Air.
Announced Tuesday, the Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance will ship with 1,050 horsepower and a starting price of $179,000. The company’s Air sedan has impressed critics in many ways since its launch last fall, in part because of the astounding performance of the 1,111-horsepower Dream Edition.
But this model was not easy to come by. Lucid limited production of the Dream Edition to just 520 examples, all of which were spoken for months before Lucid began shipping the first Airs from its Arizona factory last October.
Lucid said Tuesday that the Grand Touring Performance — with specs very close to the Dream Edition and a starting price of just $10,000 higher — won’t be as limited in production.
While the Air has made a big impact in the high-end segment of the luxury EV market, the Lucid is still in early production. The company said in late February that it had built about 400 vehicles and had about 25,000 reservations for the Air since production began last September.
The company now expects to deliver between 12,000 and 14,000 vehicles in 2022, up from a previous forecast of 20,000, as global supply chain disruptions have slowed the ramp-up of Air production.
Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson said the company moved on to developing the more powerful model after realizing there was still significant demand for a four-figure horsepower Air.
Lucid was able to quickly develop the new model because of its “vertical integration,” Rawlinson said. Lucid designs and builds its own electric motors and battery packs in-house, rather than relying on third-party components for components like most major automakers do.
Performance adjustments to Grand Touring Performance are a result of the supply chain challenges that have hit almost every automaker around the world. But the specs of the new Air are still impressive:
- Zero to 60 mph in just 2.6 seconds (vs. a claimed 2.5 seconds for the high-performance version of the Dream Edition).
- EPA-estimated range of 446 miles (vs. 471 miles for the high-performance Dream Edition.)
- Lucid’s advanced driver assistance system, DreamDrive Pro, comes standard with much of the hardware needed for fully autonomous driving, including a lidar sensor.
- Lucid’s super-fast 900-volt charging system, which allows a user to add up to 300 miles of range in just 21 minutes with a 350-kilowatt DC fast charger, is also standard.
The new Air beats the most powerful Tesla in most cases, but not in acceleration. Tesla’s Model S Plaid launched last year with 1,020 horsepower, an EPA-estimated range of 396 miles, a starting price of just over $130,000 — and a claimed zero-to-60 time of 1.99 seconds.
The Grand Touring Performance is a more powerful variant of the previously announced Lucid Air Grand Touring, claiming 819 horsepower. That model has started shipping, Lucid said Tuesday.
US deliveries of the new Grand Touring Performance model begin in June.