December 13, 2024 • 39 mins
Jon Summers is The Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel.
In this episode Jon provides an in-depth review of the new Lucid Gravity after attending a launch event at the Lucid plant in Newark, East Bay, San Francisco. Summers discusses his initial impressions of the vehicle's design, likening the rear to a stylish shooting brake and the front to a Chrysler minivan. Despite his reservations about electric vehicles lacking the 'grit' of traditional cars, he praises Lucid for their California-inspired luxury and advanced technology, including a 900-volt electrical system and an augmented reality heads-up display. He also touches on the practical aspects of the SUV, such as its interior space and off-road capabilities. Summers humorously notes the challenges of balancing family practicality with a modern, high-tech car, concluding with an appreciation for Lucid's commitment to design excellence.
- Samuel Sonder ft. Luke Coulson - I Can Feel You
- Lucid Gravity
- Western Automotive Journalists
- The 500 hp motor which fits in a suitcase
- The rolling chassis
- Parallels with Duesenberg
- Gravity Front
- Scandroid - Neo Tokyo
- Moving Motorcycles in Minivans. But not this one. Trunk aperture too small.
- EV driving experience lacks marque-specific character. Except perhaps Lucid
- Car buying is about image, not capability
- Can an SUV be “sporty”?
- “Compromise Nothing”, a doubtful tagline
- Minivan/Flex shape better than Bentayga/Rangey shape
- Range Anxiety removing 400+mile range
- The Wunderbox To power your house in an outage
- 200 miles range on a 15 min charge
- Gateway Drugs - Give me your Love
- The California Bear Logo and California design
- The Importance of the Interior. Which is very nice.
- Moonroof feels like T-tops
- Safety sh1t
- .24 drag coefficient
- Apple-copy design elements eww
- Augmented Reality Heads Up Display. Which seemed subtle and useful
- Relaxation mode. With Meditopia
- The car as living room
- 900 volts, and the Tesla Cybertruck crash
- Starcadian - Heart
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
John Summers is the motoring historian.
He was a company car thrashingtechnology sales rep that turned into
a fairly inept sports bike rider.
Hailing from California, he collectscars and bikes built with plenty of
cheap and fast, and not much reliable.
On his show, he gets together withvarious co hosts to talk about new
and old cars, driving, motorbikes,motor racing, and motoring travel.
(00:38):
Good day, good morning, good afternoon.
It's John Summers.
Welcome to the motoring historian.
So this episode is devotedto the lucid gravity.
I went to the launch at theplant down in Newark in the.
(00:58):
East Bay of San Francisco Bay Area.
Yes, I did, Arthur.
Yeah, I went down thereand I looked at it.
Yeah.
And I've not walked the dogbefore I tried to record this.
So of course I'm being interruptedby my K9 companion here always.
(01:23):
So, as ever, I was invitedto this new car event by the
Western Automotive Journalists.
Yeah, I want to thank MichaelCoates and the folk at WAG for
organizing the event, as ever.
Um, and thank the folkat Lucid for inviting me.
And, you know, there's almost acontradiction at work here, because,
uh, I really appreciate being invited tothese kind of events and I really enjoy
(01:44):
driving the cars and, and, you know, Idrove around the fact I arrived earlier
and I drove around the factory earlier andI can see that the people who work in the
factory, you know, there are, there areE39 5 series and there was an E55 like.
Mine in there, like my old one,like a w two 10, like 2000 model
to, you know, 25 year old, he 55in the car park there as well.
(02:06):
And, and, you know, you're veryconscious that I'm sorry, I'm
having a tug of war with a dog.
That's why it feels as if I'm like,sounds as if I'm like strained
or something peculiar here.
Um, cause I am straining.
I'm like having a tug of war withthe dog at the, uh, at the same time
here on his, on this rope affairthing that he's, uh, that he's got.
Yeah.
(02:27):
Yeah, so I'm, I'm very grateful to godown there and look at what they have.
And I can tell that the engineers and thepeople there, they're like car people.
So I really want to like what there isthat they, that they're produced and
what the, what it is that they produce.
And I also recognize thatmodern car design, you know,
the days where you could.
Throw caution to the wind and pen aJaguar XKE or a, you know, 67 Mustang.
(02:56):
I recognize that thosedays are largely gone.
So I recognize that.
And, you know, I'vedriven Lucid Airs before.
And if you've listened to any of mypods before, you know that I like
the, you know, I like the product.
The product is that they're good to drive.
Um, What's my hesitation?
(03:17):
Well, because I always want to be cynicalabout it because, um, awesome as they
are, they're just not gritty enough.
You know, EVs just aren't grittyenough for John Summers, and
they're not gritty enough.
They just don't feel like real cars.
They, you know, fast as they are, theyjust Don't feel like, like real cars, but,
but look, um, I want to park that withmy, uh, excitement about, you know, going
(03:42):
to this awesome modern factory at the, inthe heart of the Bay area and, and really
listening to the, um, listening to theblurb at the very sort of highest, highest
level from its, uh, from its sourceand, and, You know, fundamentally, what
lucid talk about is California luxury.
And what do they mean by that?
(04:03):
They mean that the EV was a chance toredefine what it is to be luxurious.
And they've chosen to define thatin a very California way because
they're a California company.
company and you want to say, but aren'tthey funded by the Saudi government?
And the answer is yes, they are.
And that means that it doesn't matterthat the, you know, the Chinese are going
to come and, you know, take swathes outof market share and, you know, making
(04:27):
EVs is going to be a losing propositionprobably for the next 10 years.
If you don't live in China, uh, youknow, that's not a problem for lucid.
They're, they're going to be around.
That's what.
Yeah, this is what the reps are tellingus, you know, the proof of the pudding
will be in the eating, won't it?
But I certainly get the sense that they'renot going anywhere and the commitment
to design excellence is really obvious.
(04:49):
So right when you walk in reception,there's one of their, um, Electric
motors, and this is like 500 horsepower,and it's like, you know, it looks like
it well, it would fit inside a wheel.
It's it's like it looks likeit's a washing machine motor.
I mean, absolutely incredible technology.
(05:10):
And that is the feature of lucidis that if you Um, the exterior is
nice, nice, contemporary, practicaldesign, um, feels like you've
walked into restoration hardware.
You know, that's the, the sort ofthing that they're trying to do.
And, and I think they're successfulin, you know, it feels like California
(05:31):
luxury, like relaxed and cool andpractical and high tech and, and all
of that, which is their goal there.
They've succeeded.
They've very much succeeded in that, but.
Under the skin, the technology under theskin is just absolutely, you know, better
than everybody else's fundamentally.
And they're not shy to do that.
(05:52):
They're not shy to talk about that.
The motors there in reception,they've got, you know, the monocoque
that the dream that the, um, thedream that the air is based on, you
know, the sedan, the steel sedanbody, they've got one of those.
Um, they've also got In the actualdemonstration area that we went in
where we had like a, you know, pizzaand listen to the design dude talk.
(06:17):
There was also a, uh, a cutaway.
Um, well, I say cutaway.
It was basically, it wasthe car without a body.
You call it a rolling chassis.
I've got to say, right, this is, I, andnow I'm talking about the rolling chassis.
I've had this thought again,so I'm going to say it again
because it, it, it deserves that.
The.
(06:37):
glorying of motor, theglorying of the body in steel.
This felt like Fred and Augie Duesenberg.
I've got to be honest.
It feels like a Fred and AugieDuesenberg kind of thing.
So, you know, so clearly I'm allabout lucid and, and, and no, no,
(06:59):
you know, I've drunk the Kool Aid.
I do like what they stand for, but thisgravity, they're calling it an SUV.
And, you know, from the rear,it has this lovely kind of
shooting break thing going on.
And the dude talks a lot about the arrow,but from the front and you have to be
the judge here, but from the front,isn't it a little bit Chrysler minivan?
(07:20):
Like, I mean, I, I didn't have theheart to say that to anybody when I was
there, but, but now I'm on the pod like,Ooh, it is a bit, it is a bit Chrysler
minivan, but is that a bad thing?
You know, it's also, it's,you know, it's, you know, it's
that hearse shape, isn't it?
Like the Ford edge.
I personally thought the Ford edgewas a great product and I spend
(07:41):
idle time sometimes surfing EcoBoostversions of those Ford edges.
Cause that's a, you know, that's avery high power, high torque motor
in a really practical, completelyunobtrusive package in the case of
the, uh, of the twin turbo, um, Ford.
What was it?
Was it the edge?
It wasn't the edge.
(08:01):
It was the long Hersey one.
What the devil was it called?
Can't remember.
I might interrupt myself to,uh, to, to, to put it in.
Um, it was the Ford flex.
That was the Hersey one, the Fordflex, and you can get it with the 3.
5 liter, liter EcoBoost.
(08:23):
So that tweaked or notis pretty meaningful.
Anyway, whatever.
It has that kind of Hersey body style,big wheels, which, you know, you can
say what you like about big, big wheels.
Are they to my taste?
You know, I'm not always, I guess I'mgetting used to them, but, you know,
they've only been around for 15 or 20years, haven't they, you old bastard.
But look, right, the wheels seema little big to me, but you know,
(08:46):
that is what we do nowadays.
And overall, I like the proportions of it.
And the model that they had, whichWas in, uh, was in this nice green.
They do six colors.
They were telling us and, and, you know,the model that they had was in this nice
green, which, uh, which, which I liked.
So the plant, um, I mean, the notethat I made was that it's smaller
than Halewood or the whole small onHalewood was when, when I used to go to
(09:11):
a dodgy car auction, just behind, uh,just behind the Halewood plant there.
Um, when, uh, when I lived in that area,it's, you know, bloody 35 years ago.
Um, But, uh, but look, right?
Um, feels more like a techcampus than a car factory.
(09:32):
Maybe they don't make the cars there.
Maybe that's just the design thing,but it feels like it's a tech campus.
And if you, you know, if you know theBay Area at all, it's in it's in Newark,
which is the East Bay, and it's rightoff the end of the Dumbarton Bridge.
So there's a number of bridges across theBay, the sort of the You know, the Golden
Gate up at the top, going north, south,and then going east out of San Francisco,
(09:57):
the Bay Bridge, then there's the Richmond,and then there's the San Mateo Bridge.
And then the next one down there isthe Dumbarton Bridge, and that's the
one that that Newark, uh, uh, right by.
So it's, uh, you know, and, uh, yeah, it'slike, you know, industrial estate y, nice
y, industrial estate y, but, you know.
(10:17):
Yawn, basically characters yawn.
So as I say, I really, I, uh, thecar was parked up with its tail to
us when we walked in, when you walkedinto like the reception area and,
(10:40):
and, uh, the note that I made was Ithought the rear was cool and, and it
is, it's like a shooting breakie kindof shape because it has this giant.
Spoiler on on the top of it to really,you know, create that long tail and
improve the the arrow, which was somethingthat the guy talked about, um, a lot.
In fact, he talked about it so much thatI felt the need to repeat myself about it.
(11:02):
Um, now I did find myself prattlingwith, uh, with another one of the
journalists, Western automotive journalistmembers, um, About, uh, the fact that
I met a guy that, you know, the shapeis fundamentally minivan and we were
talking about minivans and we weresaying how versatile they are and how
you can't say, you can't say minivan.
(11:23):
You have to say SUV, even if you'regoing to make it kind of minivan.
Um, And I was telling him about a blokewho I knew was curator of that motorcycle
museum in Iowa that closed quite recently.
And he told me he used his ownpersonal car often to move, um,
motorcycles from the collection around.
(11:45):
And, and that was a 2002Honda Odyssey minivan.
And.
You know, his point when I waswondered how you could like actually
get the thing chopped up properly.
But I guess with, with lighter bikes,older, lighter bikes, he was, well,
anyway, he felt, um, you know, thatwas all you needed to move motorcycles.
Do you need a pickup truck?
Yeah.
Honda Odyssey would, uh,would, would do a job.
(12:07):
And, and what did that haveto do with the lucid gravity?
Simply that.
There are all these pictures of, youknow, the different configurations
of the interior, all of which lookedrather like my buddies because they
had bikes and surfboards and babycarriages and all this kind of thing.
And they're all reminded me of ofthis bloke explaining to me how he
(12:30):
could get his family and a motorcyclein the minivan kind of thing.
Anyway, right for allthat, the whole was small.
The aperture was small.
It's got one of these powered trunksand the long and short is, is that
the powering and by the time they put,you know, the lights in, even when the
trunks open, they've got tail lights.
(12:52):
So, you know, all of that stuff, bythe time they've done all of that,
I'm telling you, dude, the wholeis not big for getting stuff in.
There's no way you get a motorcycle.
It, that was, uh, that wasthe point about the digression
about the Odyssey and the Honda.
The Honda mini, the Hondaminivan being, uh, guess what?
A Honda minivan is more practicalthan a hundred grand Lucid.
(13:13):
So when we looked at it wasn'ta hundred grand, it was 90.
Um, Yeah, and you know, itfelt like a 90 grand car.
Is it, you know, was it if Icompare it with, um, a Range Rover
that I drove recently or a Lexuslike GX that was in the seventies.
Um, you know, the rangehe was more than 100.
(13:34):
Was it as nice as that?
No.
Was it nicer than the 70 grand Lexus?
Yes, it most certainly was withthe with the, uh, design aesthetic
that you're familiar with from theair, if you've looked at the air.
So if you're thinking about buying agravity, the experience visually is
very similar to the I didn't drive one.
(13:55):
Apparently some more privilegedjournalists had done earlier in the day.
But like these electric things,you know, I never thought I would
say this is journalist, but theydo all seem to drive the same.
The differentiation which once existedbetween, you know, the way one Mark
and another Mark drove, or the waya sort of family car drove versus
(14:19):
a city car versus a luxury car.
All of those things haveblurred, you know, completely.
And, uh, you know, the, In, you know,in a recent test I conducted, obviously
not on the public highway, um, I, Idrove a number of electric cars and,
(14:39):
you know, even the Fiat 500 could domore than 90 miles an hour, which seemed
to me perfectly adequate for most ofthe people, most of the time, right?
That, and it gets there in the way thatelectric cars do, like, right there.
So, so it seems to me that, that, Um,I've fallen down a rat hole and don't
really know what I'm talking about.
(15:10):
Yeah.
So whilst I like the rear, I do thinkthe front is rather Chrysler Pacifica
and I may even include pictures to dolike a comparison or whatever Chrysler
are calling their minivan at the moment.
I also drove, um, a Kia Carnival.
Is it the Kia minivan recently?
And that had similar kind of like.
Big wheel, high nose frontage.
So, you know, now you may remember,and this probably got lost in, in a pod
(15:35):
that I did some time ago, and I can'teven remember the name of, of the maker
that did this, but there was some, um,Evie maker who were talking about how.
The car that they were doingwas going to be everything.
It was going to be like super carperformance as well as, you know, minivan
space, as well as Mercedes S class luxury.
(15:57):
It was going to be all of those things.
And it's a bit like guy, like,
look, the, I just saidthat the performance of all
cars are similar, right?
So why doesn't everybody buy a Fiat 500?
Well, because people don't like the image.
Those people that buy F 250s, Brodosor F 250s, new F 250s, do they really
(16:21):
need the heavy duty towing and off roadcapacity of an F 250 versus an F 150?
No, they just need to be able topiss higher up the wall in the mall
or the bar or the, I don't know,wherever those people go to peacock.
They just need to Peacock moreeffectively than, you know, the
(16:42):
other guy, that's the point of,uh, of, of those kind of vehicles.
So, so look, I, I get the, um, so,so what I'm saying is that we buy
vehicles based upon the image ratherthan what they really are, you know,
People buy a Lamborghini to say I'msuccessful in swaggering, not because
(17:03):
they think what's the best way for meto do 150 miles an hour, or, you know,
they, they, it's a different thing.
The 150 miles an hour is just a byproduct of the showiness and the
statement of, of owning a Lamborghini.
So what we're saying is the, howeverfast an SUV is, if even if you
(17:27):
call it, however fast a minivanis, even if you call it an SUV.
If it looks like an SUV or a minivan,people are going to struggle with
the notion of it being sporty.
Now, the presentation yesterday,they went to some lengths to
demonstrate how there are sporty SUVs.
(17:48):
They talked about the Urus and the Audie tron and, you know, and I'm not going
to deny, you know, I spent some timelast week with, uh, a Porsche, Yes.
And, and, you know, that is,they are, it is an SUV and it is
sporting at the same time, andthat is a contradiction in terms.
So I'm not saying that I don't thinkthe lucid gravity is going to be,
(18:09):
have any sporting, you know, genes init's, you know, I'm just saying that.
When I hear Compromise Nothing andhow this is like a Range Rover and a
Bronco and an S Class and, you know, uh,Mercedes SL all combined together, it's
(18:31):
not that I don't, it's not that I thinkit's bullshit, it's just that I don't
think Compromise Nothing is good enough.
Consumers are going to buy it.
Consumers buy an image, and if it lookslike a minivan, they aren't going to buy
it because they don't want a minivan.
Um, does this look like a minivan?
No.
As I say, it's just, you know, it's justsuspiciously, what am I trying to say?
(18:54):
I like Lucid.
I like what they're trying to do.
What other shape were they meant to do?
Do they want to do?
Far better to do a Porsche PanameraTaycan with like some off road pretension.
Far better to do thatthan, you know, yeah, yeah.
Far better to do thatthan a Bentayga, right?
When it's not Bentayga proportions.
So maybe I should be grateful thatthey've not done, gone full sort of
(19:19):
Chelsea tractor, but you know, you just.
Just the whole compromise.
Nothing is just I struggle.
I mean, it's marketing fluff, isn't it?
And I'm old and cynical, and I'm nevergoing to spend 90 grand on a electric
anything, let alone electric lucid.
So, you know, and youprobably you're not you.
(19:39):
You're probably listening to this, youknow, try to make buying decisions,
not worrying what my silly opinion is.
So let me let me move on.
You see, up to now, I'm not going tomove on, I'm going to dwell on this,
because I'm just reading my notes here,up to now, this is what they said in
the presentation, up to now, you hadto compromise, the Suburban gave you
(20:00):
space, but was bad to drive, the Uruswas good to drive, but it couldn't tow,
and you know, it was no good for pickingup your in laws from the airport, the
Gravity is the best of all of these.
Now, he talked as well about how he'sbeen, I've been sweating over the
aero, but I think I've said that aboutthree times before, so maybe I need
to edit myself, uh, edit myself here.
(20:22):
Um, so he, he describedit as spacious and sporty.
Normally these would be like, you know,oxymoronic, but he's saying in this
not spacious and sporty, efficient andpowerful, high tech and human centered,
you know, so is it all in the drop down?
No, you've got some buttons and there'ssome nice wood, but you know, it's still
(20:45):
like high tech, capable and sophisticated.
Capable is like, you know, the graphicwas of a bronco for that, you know, it
was like, you know, capable means canactually go off road, you know, um,
The tech stuff, right?
Um, 40 percent more interior space thanthe equivalent like Mercedes EQS SUV.
(21:12):
They're not committing to a rangeyet, but like, the blurb said 450.
They were The rep was talkingabout 440, but didn't want
to like hang his hat on it.
And, uh, what I actually wrote downwas 400 miles plus, because that
was the original, like parameters.
So look, they've done, they've donetheir like removal of, of range anxiety.
(21:37):
And, and, you know, well, where Iwas sitting just like next to me.
I'm going to add a photo of this.
There was a photo of like theWunderbox or something like
that, camera, what it was called.
Anyway, basically, this deviceallows you that if there's a power
cut, you can draw electricity fromthe car's battery to the house.
(22:00):
Now, one of the things that we weretalking about in the questions afterwards
was just how exciting that is in termsof a flexible electricity grid in terms
of needing to generate less electricity.
If you imagine a city ofthe future where houses.
(22:24):
And cars together are able to, you know,where a power station is able to save
electricity in the cars that peoplehave got sitting in their driveways
attached to the electricity gridcharging or indeed returning electricity.
Um, you know, in times of peak need.
(22:45):
So, you know, when everyone's homewatching the Super Bowl, you know, at
halftime when everyone puts the kettleon for a cup of coffee in the World Cup
final, you know, that in that momentfor that kind of peak jump demand, you
could do something like draw a littlebit of power from the car because, you
know, everyone knows that you're notgoing to be going out and driving and
the car can be, you know, that was the,the kind of, of, you know, Uh, utopian
(23:09):
notion that they were developing.
Obviously I added in the bit about thecup of tea in the middle of, uh, of
halftime of the football and all of that.
But you've, you've got that.
That was the sense of the kindof scenario they were going at.
So look, um, 400 milerange, 15 minutes to charge.
200 miles of range, which is twominutes faster than a Tesla Model X.
(23:31):
And, and I know spiritually people aren'tgoing to deal with the range anxiety,
but like in the real world, if you aredoing a road trip, if you can pull up
to a gas station and whilst the car'sgassing up, everyone hops out, takes a
piss, buy some food, by the time you'vegot back in the car, if you're not,
(23:52):
you've spent 15 minutes, haven't you?
You know, you've, you've already,and that's given another 200 miles.
So, you know, I, I feel like we'removing to a realm where people's
range anxiety fears are not valid.
And I say that as, uh, as, you know,for now, obviously in, in place, there
(24:14):
has to be a charging infrastructure.
There is no good, you know, tryingto drive, you know, drive from London
to Manchester, London to Edinburgh,you know, one, uh, and I, in a.
You know, on a, on a holiday when there'sgoing to be loads of other people in
line at the charges kind of thing, I'mjust saying that the technology, it
(24:34):
really feels like the technology is,is getting there and in terms of, you
know, the territorial pissing betweenmanufacturers, that 15 minutes to add 200
miles of range is two minutes faster thanTesla Model X is, uh, is, is able to do.
(25:01):
The California bear, the state bear, thegrizzly bear, which has been extinct in
California for hundreds of years now.
But, um, you know, the California bearlogo, which you're familiar with, and
you do see quite a lot around California.
If you live here, um, the bear logo,um, appears are in 13 places or
(25:21):
something they said around the car.
Um, and.
Um, you know, the bear was a sortof lodestone for them in terms
of positioning the branding.
So is it their logo?
No, that's the company's name, but it'sa sort of, you know, it because it within
(25:42):
the bear, we symbolize California andwithin California, we have sustainability,
we have, um, evolution, we have art, wehave, um, Well, some other stuff I wrote
down there, whatever, you know, all thistouchy feely stuff about California,
which they use to inform their design, butthere is a hard element to this, right?
(26:05):
And the hard element is simply thatwhen you drive a BMW or a Mercedes
or an Audi, they feel a certain way.
And what they want to do isimbue a certain Californian
ness way of feeling into Lucid.
And look, right, that's Is how you, you'regoing to build brand value in, in future.
(26:28):
I'm trying to say that, yes, there's goingto be a race to the bottom in terms of,
of price and quality for amongst manyEVs and many of those vehicles are not
going to have any character and there'sgoing to be room for a luxury product
that has a little bit of character andLucid seem to be doing, um, seem to
(26:48):
be taking the notion of brand value.
building those kind ofbrand values very seriously.
And, and, you know, in thatwe might compare them with
Lucid or more recently Genesis.
Lexus and Genesis before, youknow, we might think about, um,
you know, somebody like Tesla, youknow, Tesla, there's not a, um,
(27:13):
even the premium Teslas have a sortof, um, Apple aesthetic in terms
of an austerity about the design.
The.
interior of the gravity does not havean austerity about it and I should
(27:34):
have talked about the interior earlierright because they started in the
presentation by talking about what itwas like on the inside and there's me
being like but minivan from the outsidebut maybe that's a bit silly of me
because inside, um, I mean the old carwas defined by the moonroof, right?
(27:55):
The air is defined by the moonroof.
This guy has A similar moonroofeffect, but on this occasion,
this really made me laugh.
My son and I were chuckling about this,that the, um, it has a big windshield and
then it has a bar that comes between thedriver and the passenger in the front.
(28:18):
And then in the, then, uh, at theback, it has, uh, an open piece of
glass in, uh, in, in, in the backseat.
So, um, I'm not explaining that verywell, but if I tell you that sitting in,
it feels like sitting in like a Nissan300 ZX or a Camaro or some kind of.
Eighties car with T tops, you know, thoseremovable pieces of glass, but where
(28:43):
there was still a bar that connectedthe top of the windshield with the, the,
you know, the back of the, of the roofthat it has that it has that going on.
So anyway, really open and theposts themselves, the pillars
themselves, uh, were in the modelthat we sat in were Alcantara.
I'm telling you.
(29:03):
Awesome place to be.
Um, and the whoosh of theelectric combined with the
airiness is, is really incredible.
One of the things that I, so one ofthe, uh, my, I suppose one of the other
WADGE members had some really I mean,just was obsessed by safety, right?
(29:25):
Let's let's say that and it was a bit ofa eye roll for me, candidly, but looking
back her drilling into the safety hadthe guys talking about how the glass
was laminated, how there was a layer ofgel in it, how, you know, They worked
very hard to make sure that the glassisn't going to collapse inside the
(29:47):
cabin, even in the event of a rollover.
So, you know, I guess I hadn't, youknow, I never think about what would
happen in the event of a crash.
I'm just like, Oh, that's nice and airy.
But, you know, So it is nice andairy, but that's how they've,
uh, but it's all safety as well.
0.
24 drag factor, which iskind of incredible, isn't it?
(30:09):
Um, I mean, it makes you realize howincredible the Audi 100 was to be doing 0.
29 in like, you know, one second.
1984 or 82, or whatever it was, but, uh,but, but yeah, and he, and, and, you know,
I'm not going to dwell on the fact thatthe bloke who presented to us was heavily
(30:29):
involved in that aero thing, but he, uh,in a presentation, he talked a little
bit about how, you know, you know, youwant to like a smooth tail, you know, he
compared a speedboat and a canoe in termsof the kind of, uh, Of tail that you,
uh, that you wanted to, to, to create.
Um, he described a proud front end, whichemphasized the width of the vehicle.
(30:54):
He described the interior as being,as having mid century inspired luxury.
The interior trims, uh, are namedafter like bits of California
like Mojave or Ojai or Tahoe.
Oh yeah, this is an interestingthing he was talking about.
(31:16):
Um, so I guess, uh, there's likethe tablet screen, then there's
the screen that has the speakers.
Speedo and I don't know,battery charge or whatever.
And then there's thesteering wheel, right?
And, and they'd noticed that with the airthat you, you obviously, you spent a lot
of time toggling from the road and then,you know, looking at the road and then
(31:37):
looking at one of the screens and lookingat the road and looking at the screen.
So what they'd done was they'dmoved the positions of the screens
more up into your eye line and thesteering wheel down a little bit.
So you needed.
So you would be toggling in a differentway, which is, you know, natural, right?
This is more of a minivan drivingposition rather than a, you know, fat
old Mercedes or BMW driving position,which is what you get in the air.
(32:00):
The sedan.
Oh, I thought this was interesting.
So on the steering wheel, there's, uh, um,a mouse and, and the design guy described
the mouse as similar to an Apple remote.
And I'm like, Oh.
Yeah.
Okay.
Cause it always makes me just,I don't like Apple design.
(32:22):
So whenever I hear anybody referencingstraight ahead, copying Apple design,
especially in automotive design,it just really it's fingernails
down a blackboard for me, they madequite a big song and dance about.
The heads up display.
Um, they showed film of itand and it's it's very subtle.
(32:45):
Um, it's not one of theselike in your face heads up.
Um, particularly it's Imean, it's augmented reality.
So it's we're not justtalking about the speed.
Oh, it's also augmented reality aroundshowing you where the lanes are.
So if it's foggy, you know, thecar knows where the road is.
So it depicts that.
(33:07):
on the heads up displayfor you to do that.
And, and, uh, um, they're makinga big song and dance about that.
You know, how really, how useful that is.
You know, I don't, I don't even know,you know, I guess, you know, if you, uh,
you know, it's foggy in the Bay Area and,and, you know, so there is definitely,
(33:29):
uh, an, an application for that andit would provide, uh, uh, a level of.
of confidence that, you know,I mean, yeah, it is what it is.
Augmented reality, heads up display.
And that user AI, AI, that automotive userinterface conference I went to, um, I did
(33:54):
the keynote for a couple of months ago.
Um, there were some people, uh, therewas talk of creating, uh, a relaxation
mode that you could put the car inwhere the car would like help you relax.
And it went through a couple of scenariosand you might remember that I was not.
Completely cynical about it, but itall had the feel of like a half baked
(34:17):
student project that was trying tosolve a need that didn't really exist.
And, you know, couldn't you justlike, you know, recline the seat
and, you know, put on some of yourfavorite music and wouldn't achieve
the same effect kind of thing.
But, um, apparently lucid, um, haveactually come to market with something
that looked like what was being, youknow, talked about in that, um, at
(34:40):
the conference, which is that they've,that they want to make the interior
of the car more like a sanctuary.
They, they have, and they partnered withthis company, Meditopia, um, so that you
can do like breathing exercises and allthis kind of thing in, in, in the car.
It's just weird to me because I mean,I hang out in the car and relax, you
(35:02):
know, I've long felt like, you know, I,I, I've long from the time that I was a
sales rep, I've, you know, sat all fromthe time that I was a teenager and, you
know, first had a car, the car you, youknow, it was nice to have a car that
you could sit in where, you know, youhad something to eat, you could hang out
with friends with friends chatting, youknow, it was, you know, I, I always felt
(35:25):
like the car It was never just, um, younever just used it to get from A to B.
It always was kind of, of aliving room for you as well.
And of course, Americans are very familiarwith that, with that kind of idea.
Um, so the notion of like the car beinga sanctuary and you know, all of that,
I guess I, I, I really understand, butthen the notion of it being like, you
(35:49):
know, all yoga and all of that, I just.
That is just completely, um, aliento me, completely, uh, alien.
The electrical system on it is 900volts and, you know, I know if somebody
came to you now and said, yes, sowhat we're going to do is we're going
to run this gas line right by thatexhaust and you're going to be like,
(36:12):
well, isn't there a fire risk there?
Like, what if the fuel line splits?
But if you look under the hood ofmost cars from the 60s and 70s,
the fuel line runs right past thehot exhaust, especially, you know,
American V8s, it does, right?
And, and, you know, there werefires, but not lots of fires.
Right.
So, um, it might seem a bit alarmistto be like 900 volts aren't people
(36:37):
going to get like electrocuted and die.
Aren't they going to be terrible fires?
Like as these things get old.
Um, I mean, and this is, we're comingon the back of, of, uh, of an accident
in California, um, where some teenagers.
Uh, uh, wrecked a Tesla Cybertruck.
(36:59):
If you look at all the news reports,it's like, you know, the Cybertruck's
like off the side, fucking 20 feetfrom the sidewalk, halfway up a tree,
caught on fire, three of them are dead.
And it's like, speedcould have been a factor.
Like, yeah, speed was a,speed wasn't a factor.
Extreme weight and 650 foot poundsof torque combined with being a
(37:20):
teenager, Those were the weatherfactor I put, but the bottom line
is that the, you know, that's theother Duesenberg element, right?
Is that instead of doing it in apractical, simple way, nothing succeeds
like excess 900 volts terrain mode.
So it has like a terrain off road mode.
(37:41):
It has like a camp mode.
And in the camp mode, itlike plays mood music.
I mean, I don't know, like, isn't partof the point of camping that you get
away from the car and the tech and,you know, you don't need some AI like
playing soft music in the background.
I don't know, really peculiar to me.
(38:04):
So that was my sum upon the Lucid Gravity.
Thanks for listening.
I dare say it wasn't asinformative as you were hoping.
Maybe I'll give an update ifI ever actually drive one.
Thank you, Drive Thru.
(38:51):
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For more episodes like this, tune in eachweek for more exciting and educational
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John Summers is the motoring historian.
He was a company car thrashingtechnology sales rep that turned into
a fairly inept sports bike rider.
Hailing from California, he collectscars and bikes built with plenty of
cheap and fast, and not much reliable.
On his show, he gets together withvarious co hosts to talk about new
and old cars, driving, motorbikes,motor racing, and motoring travel.
(00:38):
Good day, good morning, good afternoon.
It's John Summers.
Welcome to the motoring historian.
So this episode is devotedto the lucid gravity.
I went to the launch at theplant down in Newark in the.
(00:58):
East Bay of San Francisco Bay Area.
Yes, I did, Arthur.
Yeah, I went down thereand I looked at it.
Yeah.
And I've not walked the dogbefore I tried to record this.
So of course I'm being interruptedby my K9 companion here always.
(01:23):
So, as ever, I was invitedto this new car event by the
Western Automotive Journalists.
Yeah, I want to thank MichaelCoates and the folk at WAG for
organizing the event, as ever.
Um, and thank the folkat Lucid for inviting me.
And, you know, there's almost acontradiction at work here, because,
uh, I really appreciate being invited tothese kind of events and I really enjoy
(01:44):
driving the cars and, and, you know, Idrove around the fact I arrived earlier
and I drove around the factory earlier andI can see that the people who work in the
factory, you know, there are, there areE39 5 series and there was an E55 like.
Mine in there, like my old one,like a w two 10, like 2000 model
to, you know, 25 year old, he 55in the car park there as well.
(02:06):
And, and, you know, you're veryconscious that I'm sorry, I'm
having a tug of war with a dog.
That's why it feels as if I'm like,sounds as if I'm like strained
or something peculiar here.
Um, cause I am straining.
I'm like having a tug of war withthe dog at the, uh, at the same time
here on his, on this rope affairthing that he's, uh, that he's got.
Yeah.
(02:27):
Yeah, so I'm, I'm very grateful to godown there and look at what they have.
And I can tell that the engineers and thepeople there, they're like car people.
So I really want to like what there isthat they, that they're produced and
what the, what it is that they produce.
And I also recognize thatmodern car design, you know,
the days where you could.
Throw caution to the wind and pen aJaguar XKE or a, you know, 67 Mustang.
(02:56):
I recognize that thosedays are largely gone.
So I recognize that.
And, you know, I'vedriven Lucid Airs before.
And if you've listened to any of mypods before, you know that I like
the, you know, I like the product.
The product is that they're good to drive.
Um, What's my hesitation?
(03:17):
Well, because I always want to be cynicalabout it because, um, awesome as they
are, they're just not gritty enough.
You know, EVs just aren't grittyenough for John Summers, and
they're not gritty enough.
They just don't feel like real cars.
They, you know, fast as they are, theyjust Don't feel like, like real cars, but,
but look, um, I want to park that withmy, uh, excitement about, you know, going
(03:42):
to this awesome modern factory at the, inthe heart of the Bay area and, and really
listening to the, um, listening to theblurb at the very sort of highest, highest
level from its, uh, from its sourceand, and, You know, fundamentally, what
lucid talk about is California luxury.
And what do they mean by that?
(04:03):
They mean that the EV was a chance toredefine what it is to be luxurious.
And they've chosen to define thatin a very California way because
they're a California company.
company and you want to say, but aren'tthey funded by the Saudi government?
And the answer is yes, they are.
And that means that it doesn't matterthat the, you know, the Chinese are going
to come and, you know, take swathes outof market share and, you know, making
(04:27):
EVs is going to be a losing propositionprobably for the next 10 years.
If you don't live in China, uh, youknow, that's not a problem for lucid.
They're, they're going to be around.
That's what.
Yeah, this is what the reps are tellingus, you know, the proof of the pudding
will be in the eating, won't it?
But I certainly get the sense that they'renot going anywhere and the commitment
to design excellence is really obvious.
(04:49):
So right when you walk in reception,there's one of their, um, Electric
motors, and this is like 500 horsepower,and it's like, you know, it looks like
it well, it would fit inside a wheel.
It's it's like it looks likeit's a washing machine motor.
I mean, absolutely incredible technology.
(05:10):
And that is the feature of lucidis that if you Um, the exterior is
nice, nice, contemporary, practicaldesign, um, feels like you've
walked into restoration hardware.
You know, that's the, the sort ofthing that they're trying to do.
And, and I think they're successfulin, you know, it feels like California
(05:31):
luxury, like relaxed and cool andpractical and high tech and, and all
of that, which is their goal there.
They've succeeded.
They've very much succeeded in that, but.
Under the skin, the technology under theskin is just absolutely, you know, better
than everybody else's fundamentally.
And they're not shy to do that.
(05:52):
They're not shy to talk about that.
The motors there in reception,they've got, you know, the monocoque
that the dream that the, um, thedream that the air is based on, you
know, the sedan, the steel sedanbody, they've got one of those.
Um, they've also got In the actualdemonstration area that we went in
where we had like a, you know, pizzaand listen to the design dude talk.
(06:17):
There was also a, uh, a cutaway.
Um, well, I say cutaway.
It was basically, it wasthe car without a body.
You call it a rolling chassis.
I've got to say, right, this is, I, andnow I'm talking about the rolling chassis.
I've had this thought again,so I'm going to say it again
because it, it, it deserves that.
The.
(06:37):
glorying of motor, theglorying of the body in steel.
This felt like Fred and Augie Duesenberg.
I've got to be honest.
It feels like a Fred and AugieDuesenberg kind of thing.
So, you know, so clearly I'm allabout lucid and, and, and no, no,
(06:59):
you know, I've drunk the Kool Aid.
I do like what they stand for, but thisgravity, they're calling it an SUV.
And, you know, from the rear,it has this lovely kind of
shooting break thing going on.
And the dude talks a lot about the arrow,but from the front and you have to be
the judge here, but from the front,isn't it a little bit Chrysler minivan?
(07:20):
Like, I mean, I, I didn't have theheart to say that to anybody when I was
there, but, but now I'm on the pod like,Ooh, it is a bit, it is a bit Chrysler
minivan, but is that a bad thing?
You know, it's also, it's,you know, it's, you know, it's
that hearse shape, isn't it?
Like the Ford edge.
I personally thought the Ford edgewas a great product and I spend
(07:41):
idle time sometimes surfing EcoBoostversions of those Ford edges.
Cause that's a, you know, that's avery high power, high torque motor
in a really practical, completelyunobtrusive package in the case of
the, uh, of the twin turbo, um, Ford.
What was it?
Was it the edge?
It wasn't the edge.
(08:01):
It was the long Hersey one.
What the devil was it called?
Can't remember.
I might interrupt myself to,uh, to, to, to put it in.
Um, it was the Ford flex.
That was the Hersey one, the Fordflex, and you can get it with the 3.
5 liter, liter EcoBoost.
(08:23):
So that tweaked or notis pretty meaningful.
Anyway, whatever.
It has that kind of Hersey body style,big wheels, which, you know, you can
say what you like about big, big wheels.
Are they to my taste?
You know, I'm not always, I guess I'mgetting used to them, but, you know,
they've only been around for 15 or 20years, haven't they, you old bastard.
But look, right, the wheels seema little big to me, but you know,
(08:46):
that is what we do nowadays.
And overall, I like the proportions of it.
And the model that they had, whichWas in, uh, was in this nice green.
They do six colors.
They were telling us and, and, you know,the model that they had was in this nice
green, which, uh, which, which I liked.
So the plant, um, I mean, the notethat I made was that it's smaller
than Halewood or the whole small onHalewood was when, when I used to go to
(09:11):
a dodgy car auction, just behind, uh,just behind the Halewood plant there.
Um, when, uh, when I lived in that area,it's, you know, bloody 35 years ago.
Um, But, uh, but look, right?
Um, feels more like a techcampus than a car factory.
(09:32):
Maybe they don't make the cars there.
Maybe that's just the design thing,but it feels like it's a tech campus.
And if you, you know, if you know theBay Area at all, it's in it's in Newark,
which is the East Bay, and it's rightoff the end of the Dumbarton Bridge.
So there's a number of bridges across theBay, the sort of the You know, the Golden
Gate up at the top, going north, south,and then going east out of San Francisco,
(09:57):
the Bay Bridge, then there's the Richmond,and then there's the San Mateo Bridge.
And then the next one down there isthe Dumbarton Bridge, and that's the
one that that Newark, uh, uh, right by.
So it's, uh, you know, and, uh, yeah, it'slike, you know, industrial estate y, nice
y, industrial estate y, but, you know.
(10:17):
Yawn, basically characters yawn.
So as I say, I really, I, uh, thecar was parked up with its tail to
us when we walked in, when you walkedinto like the reception area and,
(10:40):
and, uh, the note that I made was Ithought the rear was cool and, and it
is, it's like a shooting breakie kindof shape because it has this giant.
Spoiler on on the top of it to really,you know, create that long tail and
improve the the arrow, which was somethingthat the guy talked about, um, a lot.
In fact, he talked about it so much thatI felt the need to repeat myself about it.
(11:02):
Um, now I did find myself prattlingwith, uh, with another one of the
journalists, Western automotive journalistmembers, um, About, uh, the fact that
I met a guy that, you know, the shapeis fundamentally minivan and we were
talking about minivans and we weresaying how versatile they are and how
you can't say, you can't say minivan.
(11:23):
You have to say SUV, even if you'regoing to make it kind of minivan.
Um, And I was telling him about a blokewho I knew was curator of that motorcycle
museum in Iowa that closed quite recently.
And he told me he used his ownpersonal car often to move, um,
motorcycles from the collection around.
(11:45):
And, and that was a 2002Honda Odyssey minivan.
And.
You know, his point when I waswondered how you could like actually
get the thing chopped up properly.
But I guess with, with lighter bikes,older, lighter bikes, he was, well,
anyway, he felt, um, you know, thatwas all you needed to move motorcycles.
Do you need a pickup truck?
Yeah.
Honda Odyssey would, uh,would, would do a job.
(12:07):
And, and what did that haveto do with the lucid gravity?
Simply that.
There are all these pictures of, youknow, the different configurations
of the interior, all of which lookedrather like my buddies because they
had bikes and surfboards and babycarriages and all this kind of thing.
And they're all reminded me of ofthis bloke explaining to me how he
(12:30):
could get his family and a motorcyclein the minivan kind of thing.
Anyway, right for allthat, the whole was small.
The aperture was small.
It's got one of these powered trunksand the long and short is, is that
the powering and by the time they put,you know, the lights in, even when the
trunks open, they've got tail lights.
(12:52):
So, you know, all of that stuff, bythe time they've done all of that,
I'm telling you, dude, the wholeis not big for getting stuff in.
There's no way you get a motorcycle.
It, that was, uh, that wasthe point about the digression
about the Odyssey and the Honda.
The Honda mini, the Hondaminivan being, uh, guess what?
A Honda minivan is more practicalthan a hundred grand Lucid.
(13:13):
So when we looked at it wasn'ta hundred grand, it was 90.
Um, Yeah, and you know, itfelt like a 90 grand car.
Is it, you know, was it if Icompare it with, um, a Range Rover
that I drove recently or a Lexuslike GX that was in the seventies.
Um, you know, the rangehe was more than 100.
(13:34):
Was it as nice as that?
No.
Was it nicer than the 70 grand Lexus?
Yes, it most certainly was withthe with the, uh, design aesthetic
that you're familiar with from theair, if you've looked at the air.
So if you're thinking about buying agravity, the experience visually is
very similar to the I didn't drive one.
(13:55):
Apparently some more privilegedjournalists had done earlier in the day.
But like these electric things,you know, I never thought I would
say this is journalist, but theydo all seem to drive the same.
The differentiation which once existedbetween, you know, the way one Mark
and another Mark drove, or the waya sort of family car drove versus
(14:19):
a city car versus a luxury car.
All of those things haveblurred, you know, completely.
And, uh, you know, the, In, you know,in a recent test I conducted, obviously
not on the public highway, um, I, Idrove a number of electric cars and,
(14:39):
you know, even the Fiat 500 could domore than 90 miles an hour, which seemed
to me perfectly adequate for most ofthe people, most of the time, right?
That, and it gets there in the way thatelectric cars do, like, right there.
So, so it seems to me that, that, Um,I've fallen down a rat hole and don't
really know what I'm talking about.
(15:10):
Yeah.
So whilst I like the rear, I do thinkthe front is rather Chrysler Pacifica
and I may even include pictures to dolike a comparison or whatever Chrysler
are calling their minivan at the moment.
I also drove, um, a Kia Carnival.
Is it the Kia minivan recently?
And that had similar kind of like.
Big wheel, high nose frontage.
So, you know, now you may remember,and this probably got lost in, in a pod
(15:35):
that I did some time ago, and I can'teven remember the name of, of the maker
that did this, but there was some, um,Evie maker who were talking about how.
The car that they were doingwas going to be everything.
It was going to be like super carperformance as well as, you know, minivan
space, as well as Mercedes S class luxury.
(15:57):
It was going to be all of those things.
And it's a bit like guy, like,
look, the, I just saidthat the performance of all
cars are similar, right?
So why doesn't everybody buy a Fiat 500?
Well, because people don't like the image.
Those people that buy F 250s, Brodosor F 250s, new F 250s, do they really
(16:21):
need the heavy duty towing and off roadcapacity of an F 250 versus an F 150?
No, they just need to be able topiss higher up the wall in the mall
or the bar or the, I don't know,wherever those people go to peacock.
They just need to Peacock moreeffectively than, you know, the
(16:42):
other guy, that's the point of,uh, of, of those kind of vehicles.
So, so look, I, I get the, um, so,so what I'm saying is that we buy
vehicles based upon the image ratherthan what they really are, you know,
People buy a Lamborghini to say I'msuccessful in swaggering, not because
(17:03):
they think what's the best way for meto do 150 miles an hour, or, you know,
they, they, it's a different thing.
The 150 miles an hour is just a byproduct of the showiness and the
statement of, of owning a Lamborghini.
So what we're saying is the, howeverfast an SUV is, if even if you
(17:27):
call it, however fast a minivanis, even if you call it an SUV.
If it looks like an SUV or a minivan,people are going to struggle with
the notion of it being sporty.
Now, the presentation yesterday,they went to some lengths to
demonstrate how there are sporty SUVs.
(17:48):
They talked about the Urus and the Audie tron and, you know, and I'm not going
to deny, you know, I spent some timelast week with, uh, a Porsche, Yes.
And, and, you know, that is,they are, it is an SUV and it is
sporting at the same time, andthat is a contradiction in terms.
So I'm not saying that I don't thinkthe lucid gravity is going to be,
(18:09):
have any sporting, you know, genes init's, you know, I'm just saying that.
When I hear Compromise Nothing andhow this is like a Range Rover and a
Bronco and an S Class and, you know, uh,Mercedes SL all combined together, it's
(18:31):
not that I don't, it's not that I thinkit's bullshit, it's just that I don't
think Compromise Nothing is good enough.
Consumers are going to buy it.
Consumers buy an image, and if it lookslike a minivan, they aren't going to buy
it because they don't want a minivan.
Um, does this look like a minivan?
No.
As I say, it's just, you know, it's justsuspiciously, what am I trying to say?
(18:54):
I like Lucid.
I like what they're trying to do.
What other shape were they meant to do?
Do they want to do?
Far better to do a Porsche PanameraTaycan with like some off road pretension.
Far better to do thatthan, you know, yeah, yeah.
Far better to do thatthan a Bentayga, right?
When it's not Bentayga proportions.
So maybe I should be grateful thatthey've not done, gone full sort of
(19:19):
Chelsea tractor, but you know, you just.
Just the whole compromise.
Nothing is just I struggle.
I mean, it's marketing fluff, isn't it?
And I'm old and cynical, and I'm nevergoing to spend 90 grand on a electric
anything, let alone electric lucid.
So, you know, and youprobably you're not you.
(19:39):
You're probably listening to this, youknow, try to make buying decisions,
not worrying what my silly opinion is.
So let me let me move on.
You see, up to now, I'm not going tomove on, I'm going to dwell on this,
because I'm just reading my notes here,up to now, this is what they said in
the presentation, up to now, you hadto compromise, the Suburban gave you
(20:00):
space, but was bad to drive, the Uruswas good to drive, but it couldn't tow,
and you know, it was no good for pickingup your in laws from the airport, the
Gravity is the best of all of these.
Now, he talked as well about how he'sbeen, I've been sweating over the
aero, but I think I've said that aboutthree times before, so maybe I need
to edit myself, uh, edit myself here.
(20:22):
Um, so he, he describedit as spacious and sporty.
Normally these would be like, you know,oxymoronic, but he's saying in this
not spacious and sporty, efficient andpowerful, high tech and human centered,
you know, so is it all in the drop down?
No, you've got some buttons and there'ssome nice wood, but you know, it's still
(20:45):
like high tech, capable and sophisticated.
Capable is like, you know, the graphicwas of a bronco for that, you know, it
was like, you know, capable means canactually go off road, you know, um,
The tech stuff, right?
Um, 40 percent more interior space thanthe equivalent like Mercedes EQS SUV.
(21:12):
They're not committing to a rangeyet, but like, the blurb said 450.
They were The rep was talkingabout 440, but didn't want
to like hang his hat on it.
And, uh, what I actually wrote downwas 400 miles plus, because that
was the original, like parameters.
So look, they've done, they've donetheir like removal of, of range anxiety.
(21:37):
And, and, you know, well, where Iwas sitting just like next to me.
I'm going to add a photo of this.
There was a photo of like theWunderbox or something like
that, camera, what it was called.
Anyway, basically, this deviceallows you that if there's a power
cut, you can draw electricity fromthe car's battery to the house.
(22:00):
Now, one of the things that we weretalking about in the questions afterwards
was just how exciting that is in termsof a flexible electricity grid in terms
of needing to generate less electricity.
If you imagine a city ofthe future where houses.
(22:24):
And cars together are able to, you know,where a power station is able to save
electricity in the cars that peoplehave got sitting in their driveways
attached to the electricity gridcharging or indeed returning electricity.
Um, you know, in times of peak need.
(22:45):
So, you know, when everyone's homewatching the Super Bowl, you know, at
halftime when everyone puts the kettleon for a cup of coffee in the World Cup
final, you know, that in that momentfor that kind of peak jump demand, you
could do something like draw a littlebit of power from the car because, you
know, everyone knows that you're notgoing to be going out and driving and
the car can be, you know, that was the,the kind of, of, you know, Uh, utopian
(23:09):
notion that they were developing.
Obviously I added in the bit about thecup of tea in the middle of, uh, of
halftime of the football and all of that.
But you've, you've got that.
That was the sense of the kindof scenario they were going at.
So look, um, 400 milerange, 15 minutes to charge.
200 miles of range, which is twominutes faster than a Tesla Model X.
(23:31):
And, and I know spiritually people aren'tgoing to deal with the range anxiety,
but like in the real world, if you aredoing a road trip, if you can pull up
to a gas station and whilst the car'sgassing up, everyone hops out, takes a
piss, buy some food, by the time you'vegot back in the car, if you're not,
(23:52):
you've spent 15 minutes, haven't you?
You know, you've, you've already,and that's given another 200 miles.
So, you know, I, I feel like we'removing to a realm where people's
range anxiety fears are not valid.
And I say that as, uh, as, you know,for now, obviously in, in place, there
(24:14):
has to be a charging infrastructure.
There is no good, you know, tryingto drive, you know, drive from London
to Manchester, London to Edinburgh,you know, one, uh, and I, in a.
You know, on a, on a holiday when there'sgoing to be loads of other people in
line at the charges kind of thing, I'mjust saying that the technology, it
(24:34):
really feels like the technology is,is getting there and in terms of, you
know, the territorial pissing betweenmanufacturers, that 15 minutes to add 200
miles of range is two minutes faster thanTesla Model X is, uh, is, is able to do.
(25:01):
The California bear, the state bear, thegrizzly bear, which has been extinct in
California for hundreds of years now.
But, um, you know, the California bearlogo, which you're familiar with, and
you do see quite a lot around California.
If you live here, um, the bear logo,um, appears are in 13 places or
(25:21):
something they said around the car.
Um, and.
Um, you know, the bear was a sortof lodestone for them in terms
of positioning the branding.
So is it their logo?
No, that's the company's name, but it'sa sort of, you know, it because it within
(25:42):
the bear, we symbolize California andwithin California, we have sustainability,
we have, um, evolution, we have art, wehave, um, Well, some other stuff I wrote
down there, whatever, you know, all thistouchy feely stuff about California,
which they use to inform their design, butthere is a hard element to this, right?
(26:05):
And the hard element is simply thatwhen you drive a BMW or a Mercedes
or an Audi, they feel a certain way.
And what they want to do isimbue a certain Californian
ness way of feeling into Lucid.
And look, right, that's Is how you, you'regoing to build brand value in, in future.
(26:28):
I'm trying to say that, yes, there's goingto be a race to the bottom in terms of,
of price and quality for amongst manyEVs and many of those vehicles are not
going to have any character and there'sgoing to be room for a luxury product
that has a little bit of character andLucid seem to be doing, um, seem to
(26:48):
be taking the notion of brand value.
building those kind ofbrand values very seriously.
And, and, you know, in thatwe might compare them with
Lucid or more recently Genesis.
Lexus and Genesis before, youknow, we might think about, um,
you know, somebody like Tesla, youknow, Tesla, there's not a, um,
(27:13):
even the premium Teslas have a sortof, um, Apple aesthetic in terms
of an austerity about the design.
The.
interior of the gravity does not havean austerity about it and I should
(27:34):
have talked about the interior earlierright because they started in the
presentation by talking about what itwas like on the inside and there's me
being like but minivan from the outsidebut maybe that's a bit silly of me
because inside, um, I mean the old carwas defined by the moonroof, right?
(27:55):
The air is defined by the moonroof.
This guy has A similar moonroofeffect, but on this occasion,
this really made me laugh.
My son and I were chuckling about this,that the, um, it has a big windshield and
then it has a bar that comes between thedriver and the passenger in the front.
(28:18):
And then in the, then, uh, at theback, it has, uh, an open piece of
glass in, uh, in, in, in the backseat.
So, um, I'm not explaining that verywell, but if I tell you that sitting in,
it feels like sitting in like a Nissan300 ZX or a Camaro or some kind of.
Eighties car with T tops, you know, thoseremovable pieces of glass, but where
(28:43):
there was still a bar that connectedthe top of the windshield with the, the,
you know, the back of the, of the roofthat it has that it has that going on.
So anyway, really open and theposts themselves, the pillars
themselves, uh, were in the modelthat we sat in were Alcantara.
I'm telling you.
(29:03):
Awesome place to be.
Um, and the whoosh of theelectric combined with the
airiness is, is really incredible.
One of the things that I, so one ofthe, uh, my, I suppose one of the other
WADGE members had some really I mean,just was obsessed by safety, right?
(29:25):
Let's let's say that and it was a bit ofa eye roll for me, candidly, but looking
back her drilling into the safety hadthe guys talking about how the glass
was laminated, how there was a layer ofgel in it, how, you know, They worked
very hard to make sure that the glassisn't going to collapse inside the
(29:47):
cabin, even in the event of a rollover.
So, you know, I guess I hadn't, youknow, I never think about what would
happen in the event of a crash.
I'm just like, Oh, that's nice and airy.
But, you know, So it is nice andairy, but that's how they've,
uh, but it's all safety as well.
0.
24 drag factor, which iskind of incredible, isn't it?
(30:09):
Um, I mean, it makes you realize howincredible the Audi 100 was to be doing 0.
29 in like, you know, one second.
1984 or 82, or whatever it was, but, uh,but, but yeah, and he, and, and, you know,
I'm not going to dwell on the fact thatthe bloke who presented to us was heavily
(30:29):
involved in that aero thing, but he, uh,in a presentation, he talked a little
bit about how, you know, you know, youwant to like a smooth tail, you know, he
compared a speedboat and a canoe in termsof the kind of, uh, Of tail that you,
uh, that you wanted to, to, to create.
Um, he described a proud front end, whichemphasized the width of the vehicle.
(30:54):
He described the interior as being,as having mid century inspired luxury.
The interior trims, uh, are namedafter like bits of California
like Mojave or Ojai or Tahoe.
Oh yeah, this is an interestingthing he was talking about.
(31:16):
Um, so I guess, uh, there's likethe tablet screen, then there's
the screen that has the speakers.
Speedo and I don't know,battery charge or whatever.
And then there's thesteering wheel, right?
And, and they'd noticed that with the airthat you, you obviously, you spent a lot
of time toggling from the road and then,you know, looking at the road and then
(31:37):
looking at one of the screens and lookingat the road and looking at the screen.
So what they'd done was they'dmoved the positions of the screens
more up into your eye line and thesteering wheel down a little bit.
So you needed.
So you would be toggling in a differentway, which is, you know, natural, right?
This is more of a minivan drivingposition rather than a, you know, fat
old Mercedes or BMW driving position,which is what you get in the air.
(32:00):
The sedan.
Oh, I thought this was interesting.
So on the steering wheel, there's, uh, um,a mouse and, and the design guy described
the mouse as similar to an Apple remote.
And I'm like, Oh.
Yeah.
Okay.
Cause it always makes me just,I don't like Apple design.
(32:22):
So whenever I hear anybody referencingstraight ahead, copying Apple design,
especially in automotive design,it just really it's fingernails
down a blackboard for me, they madequite a big song and dance about.
The heads up display.
Um, they showed film of itand and it's it's very subtle.
(32:45):
Um, it's not one of theselike in your face heads up.
Um, particularly it's Imean, it's augmented reality.
So it's we're not justtalking about the speed.
Oh, it's also augmented reality aroundshowing you where the lanes are.
So if it's foggy, you know, thecar knows where the road is.
So it depicts that.
(33:07):
on the heads up displayfor you to do that.
And, and, uh, um, they're makinga big song and dance about that.
You know, how really, how useful that is.
You know, I don't, I don't even know,you know, I guess, you know, if you, uh,
you know, it's foggy in the Bay Area and,and, you know, so there is definitely,
(33:29):
uh, an, an application for that andit would provide, uh, uh, a level of.
of confidence that, you know,I mean, yeah, it is what it is.
Augmented reality, heads up display.
And that user AI, AI, that automotive userinterface conference I went to, um, I did
(33:54):
the keynote for a couple of months ago.
Um, there were some people, uh, therewas talk of creating, uh, a relaxation
mode that you could put the car inwhere the car would like help you relax.
And it went through a couple of scenariosand you might remember that I was not.
Completely cynical about it, but itall had the feel of like a half baked
(34:17):
student project that was trying tosolve a need that didn't really exist.
And, you know, couldn't you justlike, you know, recline the seat
and, you know, put on some of yourfavorite music and wouldn't achieve
the same effect kind of thing.
But, um, apparently lucid, um, haveactually come to market with something
that looked like what was being, youknow, talked about in that, um, at
(34:40):
the conference, which is that they've,that they want to make the interior
of the car more like a sanctuary.
They, they have, and they partnered withthis company, Meditopia, um, so that you
can do like breathing exercises and allthis kind of thing in, in, in the car.
It's just weird to me because I mean,I hang out in the car and relax, you
(35:02):
know, I've long felt like, you know, I,I, I've long from the time that I was a
sales rep, I've, you know, sat all fromthe time that I was a teenager and, you
know, first had a car, the car you, youknow, it was nice to have a car that
you could sit in where, you know, youhad something to eat, you could hang out
with friends with friends chatting, youknow, it was, you know, I, I always felt
(35:25):
like the car It was never just, um, younever just used it to get from A to B.
It always was kind of, of aliving room for you as well.
And of course, Americans are very familiarwith that, with that kind of idea.
Um, so the notion of like the car beinga sanctuary and you know, all of that,
I guess I, I, I really understand, butthen the notion of it being like, you
(35:49):
know, all yoga and all of that, I just.
That is just completely, um, aliento me, completely, uh, alien.
The electrical system on it is 900volts and, you know, I know if somebody
came to you now and said, yes, sowhat we're going to do is we're going
to run this gas line right by thatexhaust and you're going to be like,
(36:12):
well, isn't there a fire risk there?
Like, what if the fuel line splits?
But if you look under the hood ofmost cars from the 60s and 70s,
the fuel line runs right past thehot exhaust, especially, you know,
American V8s, it does, right?
And, and, you know, there werefires, but not lots of fires.
Right.
So, um, it might seem a bit alarmistto be like 900 volts aren't people
(36:37):
going to get like electrocuted and die.
Aren't they going to be terrible fires?
Like as these things get old.
Um, I mean, and this is, we're comingon the back of, of, uh, of an accident
in California, um, where some teenagers.
Uh, uh, wrecked a Tesla Cybertruck.
(36:59):
If you look at all the news reports,it's like, you know, the Cybertruck's
like off the side, fucking 20 feetfrom the sidewalk, halfway up a tree,
caught on fire, three of them are dead.
And it's like, speedcould have been a factor.
Like, yeah, speed was a,speed wasn't a factor.
Extreme weight and 650 foot poundsof torque combined with being a
(37:20):
teenager, Those were the weatherfactor I put, but the bottom line
is that the, you know, that's theother Duesenberg element, right?
Is that instead of doing it in apractical, simple way, nothing succeeds
like excess 900 volts terrain mode.
So it has like a terrain off road mode.
(37:41):
It has like a camp mode.
And in the camp mode, itlike plays mood music.
I mean, I don't know, like, isn't partof the point of camping that you get
away from the car and the tech and,you know, you don't need some AI like
playing soft music in the background.
I don't know, really peculiar to me.
(38:04):
So that was my sum upon the Lucid Gravity.
Thanks for listening.
I dare say it wasn't asinformative as you were hoping.
Maybe I'll give an update ifI ever actually drive one.
Thank you, Drive Thru.
(38:51):
This episode has been brought to youby Grand Touring Motorsports as part
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For more episodes like this, tune in eachweek for more exciting and educational
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If you'd like to support GrandTouring Motorsports and the Motoring
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