The Lucid Air doesn’t feel like anything else on the road. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, the Air is one of the best-driving, most efficient cars currently on the market, and that counts for a lot. But it’s also not without its quirks.
Lucid began Air deliveries in 2021, but the car still feels fresh, thanks to constant hardware and software tweaks. During a long weekend with this Air Touring, I installed a software update that enabled a new hands-free driver assist functionality that comes as part of the $6,750 DreamDrive Pro package. I’ve been reviewing cars for a decade, and that’s the first time I’ve ever been able to install such a big update during a test.
| Quick Specs | 2025 Lucid Air Touring |
| Battery | 92.0-Kilowatt-Hour Lithium Ion |
| Output | 620 Horsepower / 885 Pound-Feet |
| 0-60 MPH | 3.4 Seconds |
| Range | 406 Miles |
| Base Price / As Tested | $80,400 / $101,850 |
Still, I’m more interested in driving with my hands than without them, and the Air remains superb to drive. There’s a bit of old-school BMW in how the Air goes down the road. The handling is excellent, but that never comes at the expense of ride quality. It’s just the right amount of firm yet compliant in all three of its drive modes: Smooth, Swift, and Sprint. Everything feels in harmony.
I was lucky enough to meet a number of Lucid engineers earlier this year, and it’s obvious they’re true car enthusiasts. Though that fact is obvious just by driving the Air itself, it’s clear that the people who honed the Air’s dynamics love driving.
This Air Touring falls in the middle of the lineup, yet it still has an astonishing 620 horsepower. Sure, that’s around half (!) as much as the Air Sapphire, but there is no world where you need more. Honestly, the car would be fine with even less. It just zaps from place to place in an instant in a fit of overkill. Still, Lucid gets points for calibrating the accelerator pedal so it’s not jumpy. It’s not hard to drive sedately.
Pros: Superb Ride & Handling, More Power Than You’ll Ever Need, Incredible Efficiency
One thing I wish the Air had was a blended brake pedal. The only way to get energy-saving regenerative braking is through one-pedal driving. While the calibration of the system is very good, drivers who prefer braking with the brake pedal shouldn’t have to sacrifice efficiency, or use one-pedal.
Lucid’s whole thing is efficiency, and this Air makes a lot out of a little. I averaged around 4.0 miles-per-kilowatt-hour over 600 miles of highway, city, and country-road driving, and while that’s excellent, it would do much better without the sun heating the cabin through the glass roof, forcing me to run the air-conditioning pretty hard. Still, that translates to about 362 miles of range, and while that’s a little off the EPA estimate of 406 miles, it’s remarkable considering this is a fast, luxurious car. One with an interior that was getting heated by long summer days.
The Air is also space-efficient. An Air is about the same size as a BMW 5 Series or Mercedes E-Class, but the interior space is palatial, and there’s a ton of room in both front and rear trunks. It’s a cool interior, too, with the neat curved display panel for gauge cluster and infotainment, and then a separate lower panel for other vehicle/infotainment functions. Still, there are at least nice physical controls for temperature, fan speed, and radio volume.
The infotainment system is responsive, but it’s not the easiest to learn, and some functions are needlessly complicated. Switching the display to show range vs battery percentage requires digging into the settings menu, when the car should clearly just show both at all times. Lucid’s minimalism also means that steering-wheel and mirror controls are in the lower touchscreen as well, which is just irritating.
Cons: Build-Quality Issues, Buggy, Confusing Infotainment, No Blended Brake Pedal
Some of the interior materials don’t feel quite worthy of the Air Touring’s $80,000 base price, let alone the $100,000 of this tester. The brightwork is mostly plastic, for example. And the build quality is spotty in parts, with loose-fitting panels and various squeaks and rattles present. Outside, the panel gaps are also huge and inconsistent.
The hands-free driver assist system didn’t leave me convinced either. Generally, it worked well, but from time to time, it would ping-pong between lane lines, which left me second-guessing the way it handled traffic. Still, the highways of the Northeast aren’t the best for using any driver-assistance systems, as the roads are fairly narrow and windy, with lots of traffic.
This very much feels like a car from a startup. It’s quirkier than most, and build-quality issues and software bugs are evident. But I found myself quite enamored with it. That’s an easier position for me to be in, given I didn’t spend $100,000 on the thing, but there is so much compelling engineering here. It’s one of the best-driving luxury cars on the market, and its efficiency—in all senses of the word—is remarkable.
There’s a strange calculus here. The Lucid Air has a very specific appeal—it’s for people who value fine engineering, clever thinking, and efficiency. Other than, uh, not being able to afford one, in a lot of ways, I’m the target customer, a car enthusiast looking for a luxury daily driver. But I also know that I am not the norm.
Another car enthusiast friend openly wondered if the appeal of this car is too niche. You have to be into cars in a very specific way to see why the Air is worth so much money, and why its peculiarities are worth forgiving.
The Air isn’t like any other car out there. For better, and for worse.
Competitors
2025 Lucid Air Touring
