An Extreme Winter Test in Our Long-Term Lucid Air Left Us Hot and Cold

The morning of February 3 was so frigid I couldn't set the tire pressure on MotorTrend's long-term Lucid Air without retreating inside halfway through the job. Within minutes of stepping outside, the cold clamped down on my gloved fingertips like an iron vise. By the time I had finished inflating the second tire, I didn't have the dexterity to thread the cap back on the valve stem.

It was 6 degrees Fahrenheit at 9 a.m., and our Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance was waking up from the coldest night it had seen since arriving in Michigan in November. We had been waiting for this day—the perfect day for a cold-weather torture test.

By now, no one should be surprised to learn that an EV's driving range drops in sync with the mercury. Unlike a gas car, which uses waste heat from the engine to keep passengers toasty, an EV runs its cabin heater using energy that could otherwise be harnessed to turn the wheels. Extreme cold also slows the chemical reactions in the battery cells, reducing available power and energy. In some cases, an EV may also steal energy from the propulsion system to actively warm the battery pack.

Going into this test, we didn't question if the Air's real-world range would drop in near-zero temperatures. We already knew that answer. The question was, "By how much?" Our baseline for this test is 347 miles. That's the MotorTrend Road-Trip Range for our long-term 2022 Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance, determined by driving a constant 70 mph in 56-degree weather on an out-and-back loop that minimizes the impact of wind and elevation change.

That original benchmark test was conducted on our Grand Touring Performance trim's standard 21-inch wheels and Pirelli P Zero PZ4 summer tires. Our cold-weather stress test used Lucid's winter tire package, though it's not clear if that benefits or hurts the car's range. Compared to the summer setup, the 19-inch wheels are lighter and more aerodynamic, but the Pirelli Winter Sottozero 3 tires likely have higher rolling resistance. We have more testing planned in the future to isolate how the winter tire package affects range.

To add another level of difficulty, we started the cold-weather range test with a deep-freeze cold soak as a sort of worst-case scenario. The day before the drive, I charged the battery to 100 percent and then unplugged, leaving the Lucid to fend for itself in my driveway as the temperature dropped from 32 to the overnight low of 3 degrees. I wondered: Would it run the heater to protect the battery, burning off precious miles in the process?

The car still indicated a full battery the next morning, but the range estimate had dropped from 446 miles to 408, and a small blue sliver appeared on the battery icon along with the warning, "Energy limited due to cold temperature." I backed out of my driveway, merged onto the highway a couple miles later, and set the cruise control for 70 mph. En route to discovering how extreme cold affects the Lucid Air's range, I got three big surprises.

One of the many virtues of electric cars is that they warm up almost instantaneously. At least, that's what's supposed to happen. Yet 15 minutes into the drive, I was still shivering, and my fingers still ached despite wearing a sweater, a puffy jacket, a winter hat, and a pair of gloves. Our EV range-testing protocol calls for setting the climate control to 72 degrees in automatic mode, but a reading from our $600 weather analyzer revealed it was just 50 degrees inside the cabin. Fifteen minutes after that, another reading confirmed my suspicion. The cabin wasn't getting any warmer. The temperature had actually dropped to 48 degrees despite the sun being out in full force and blasting warm radiation through the Air's glass roof.

Our EV range testing is designed to reflect how an owner might use the vehicle, and I can't imagine anyone spending $180,650 on a Lucid to travel in what at the time felt like a very luxurious refrigerated truck. Facing another three or more hours in the car, I turned on the heated steering wheel and heated seat. A heated seat's conductive heat transfer is much more energy efficient than warming the entire cabin, and I thought it might be enough to compensate for the brisk temperature. The Lucid's seats are, after all, literal and figurative fire, capable of becoming delightfully, uncomfortably hot if you keep bumping them up to their highest setting when they automatically drop to the intermediate setting.

But it wasn't enough. After another half hour, with the climate control still set to 72 and the cabin still registering 50 degrees, I punched the set point to 80 degrees. The interior temperature climbed and then leveled off at 67 degrees, warm enough to be comfortable with the heated seat and steering wheel active.

We've asked Lucid to explain why this happened, but until the company provides clarity, we assume that it's the result of a conscious decision to stretch the Air's range by delivering less heat than the customer asks for. That strategy might work if the set point and the cabin temperature were a few degrees apart, but the difference was so preposterous in this test—up to 22 degrees—that it's simultaneously insulting and laughable.

The next insult is ever more offensive: If you trust the Air's estimated range, you won't be making it to your destination. That wasn't just true at the outset, before the car had a chance to adapt to the weather and my driving style that day. From the moment I pulled out of my driveway through the last mile, the Air's range indicator constantly overpromised what was possible.

The difference between the indicated range remaining and the actual range was never less than 38 percent. The chart below shows how consistently and wildly off the mark Lucid's range prediction was for the duration of the test.

If there's an upshot here, it's that being so wrong about the remaining range makes it blatantly obvious that you can't trust the car. I covered 140 miles using the first 50 percent of the charge, at which point the car indicated that the remaining 50 percent would deliver another 202 miles. You don't need to be a math major to see that doesn't add up. I did not have 202 miles of range remaining. Not even close.

It's mind-boggling that the car was so inaccurate because my driving style was entirely predictable. I drove at a constant speed for hours on end on roads that are as flat as a pool table. After the first 20 miles, the indicated efficiency barely budged for the entire trip, which means it's only a matter of basic algebra to come up with a reasonable range estimate in these conditions.

Diving into the data, it appears that the Air's indicated range is based solely on the battery state of charge and a fixed efficiency assumption. If that's true (we've asked Lucid to confirm), that means the range estimate never accounts for different tires, or climate control usage, or major changes to aerodynamic drag, such as a rooftop cargo box.

Lucid's lazy math could be massively inconvenient for a driver who gets caught in a charging wasteland without enough range. Even worse, it's potentially dangerous based on what happens when you push the battery to its limit in the cold.

The Lucid lit up a low battery warning with a 15 percent charge remaining, which would be reasonable, except that I soon learned that this number can't be trusted, either. On a long, gentle rise in the road, with the Air showing a 5 percent charge, the power began to surge and sag. It felt, ironically, like a combustion engine's final gasps as the fuel pickup sucks the last drops of gas off the bottom of the tank.

The power delivery smoothed out as the Lucid crested the hill, but a moment later the instrument cluster sounded a new alarm: "Charge Now, Power reduced due to low battery." No problem, I thought. This thing makes 1,050 horsepower. We can spare a few ponies. That notion had barely formed in my head when I realized that my right foot was on the floor and the Lucid was losing speed. 65. 62. 59. Within a mile of the "power reduced" warning popping up, I was driving under the 55-mph minimum speed limit.

It's reckless to drive so slowly on a freeway, but I didn't have any other choice because this all unraveled in the 2-mile space between exits—and with the car still showing 13 miles of range. I initially pulled into the right lane and then Froggered through traffic with the hazard lights flashing to make the ramp on the left side of the road. The instrument cluster showed 3 percent remaining as I pulled into my driveway. Normally, that would be a textbook execution of this test, where the goal is to finish with less than 5 percent charge and more than zero, but it felt like a big, fat fail this time.

You could argue that as long as the car can move under its own power, it hasn't reached a zero percent state of charge, but you'd be wrong. EV drivers should be able to ensure that their cars will keep up with traffic (not to mention maintain the legally mandated minimum speed) until the battery indicator reads zero.

Ultimately, the Lucid Air logged 282 miles before it couldn't maintain 70 mph on a day that never saw the temperature get over 12 degrees Fahrenheit. Statistically, that's not great. It represents a 31 percent drop from the 408-mile estimate the car displayed when we started the test. It's also a 65-mile (or 19 percent) hit compared to the real-world 70-mph range we measured on a 56-degree day with summer tires mounted.

Practically, though, 282 is a big range number—bigger than all but one or two trips I take every year. That's the magic in the Lucid Air's big (for a sedan) battery. Even at just 63 percent of its official 446-mile EPA range—even in the midst of a brutal once-a-year cold spell—it's still capable of tackling serious road trips.

But that range figure doesn't excuse Lucid's bad math in how it heats the cabin, estimates the remaining range, and represents the battery state of charge to drivers. It's a mystery that an engineering-led company like Lucid would ship a $180,000 car with such crude calculations that erode a customer's comfort, confidence, and sense of safety. If there's any silver lining here, it's that all these flaws could easily be fixed with an over-the-air update. Here's hoping we have more to report on that front in a future story.