By accident, I came across this: Notice the city MPGe is higher than the highway for the Lucid EVs. This does not make sense as ordinarily the city speed range has much lower aerodynamic drag. Look at the Tesla Model 3 metrics. Bob Wilson
Sounds like a poor voltage, motor, controller, battery monitoring/cooling system selection (A steady state power consumption graph 0-60 would answer) I’ve always viewed Lucid as one step above a scam, and didn’t pay attention to their design choices and specs gotta wonder what crazy design decisions were made , AC induction perhaps coupled with extremely poor stationary electric consumption (“cabin loading”) It always Infuriated me my volt used about 300 watts stationary but my antique only used 5 watts at idle . Idle energy consumption in my mind was low hanging fruit and the auto companies crapped the bed there. I guess depending on how you view it if they were able to use an excessively high voltage pack and managed to tune an antique motor control system for highway speeds at the expense of extremely inefficient city, it’s sort of a triumph, too bad this doesn’t lower the price of the car. If true Also gotta wonder how extremely inefficient things would become if you stomp on the gas? Ye Olde systems could easily put down huge power but at the cost of extreme drops in efficiency
Yeah, proprietary small form factor motors overdriven at 900volts The terrible losses at city aren’t surprising given you only need about 90 volts for city travel and PWM the rest. <10% power no matter how good you are is really lossy, lucid could actually benefit from a speed limited first gear to reduce the switching losses Ah well, they figure power is more important than city efficiency, wouldn’t fly with me but I’m not their demographic, both Rivian and Lucid in my mind have no business existing, EVs for everyday people will never come from either if they survive
Still bests its large car competitor, the Model S, whose 21in wheeled Plaid trim also has a very narrow city to highway difference. Without MPGe, they would have the same kWh rating for city and highway on the window sticker.
The packs in the Lucid have to weigh .... to get that kind of range on the standardized tests. No telling what kinda results that would have when comparing city / hwy. I thought the kWh/100 mi. ratings were interesting
What clued me to look was earlier Prius vs 'hybrid' studies. ICE and inferior 'mild' hybrids shared similar low city and high highway MPG. A big battery Lucid and induction motor with inferior regenerative braking makes sense as a possible explanation. Source: www.fueleconomy.gov As for Model S: 124 MPGe city, and; 115 MPGe highway. Bob Wilson
Perhaps a better Apples to Apples comparison would be the Mercedes EQS. High mileage / well over 300 range - tons of torque & HP .... and a new record for having a LOW LOW drag CD; Mercedes-Benz EQS Achieves 4 Mi/kWh With 0.20 Drag Coefficient Rivian & Lucid have very limited factories & service capability whereas Tesla & MB? at least they are around - here & there.
The Bolt EV and Leaf are real cars, or did you mean sedan? There are several models of such in China, along side hatchbacks and wagons. The Mercedes EQS and EQE are sedans available else where that should be available this year in the US. I think the Polestar 2 is selling here. The EPA doesn't appear to believe in decimals for fuel economy, or cabin space for that matter. So MPGe allows more precision than kWh/100 miles. The rounding would likely make having separate city and highway ratings in the kWh figure. As it is, the difference between city and highway for the Lucid is about 1.5%. Plus zero tires can put a car's odometer off by more. The Plaid with big wheels is 102/99 MPGe. The Lucid Air uses permanent magnet motors. Their numbers would be even more impressive with induction. IIRC, the Model S was 100mpge at best when it was equipped with them. The "low" city rating of the Air comes down its weight and test structure. It weighs 5200 plus pounds. The Model S doesn't break 4800 pounds. The city test cycle has 23 stops over 11 miles to the highway's zero. Weight is going to have a bigger impact on the city results. Regen can't capture all the energy used to get that mass moving. Perhaps Lucid's motors are designed for efficiency at higher speeds, maybe inadequate cooling at low speeds, or something else is the reason for the lower city rating. It wouldn't answer the question of why, despite having a weight advantage, the Model S can't match the efficiency of the non-performance Air with same size wheels. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=1&year1=2022&year2=2022&make=Lucid&baseModel=Air&srchtyp=ymm&pageno=1&rowLimit=50 https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=45014&id=45016&id=45015 The BMW i4 and iX, Audi E-tron, and Taycan also have a very narrow city to highway spread. Others might have a spread that is statistically narrow. Many have a spread of around 10 to 15 mpge. Most of my ICE cars were at 10 mpg. Being in the mid twenties to thirties for ratings made 10 a big difference for them. When the starting value is above 100, the improvement to efficiency is less. My old Camry had a 40% improvement in its best EPA rating over its worse. For the Model 3 RWD, the most efficient 2022 BEV, it is 9.5%.
Volt with a V is discontinued (52mi phev) in the USA. Bolt with a B is still available. EDIT Yeah it does look like the Bolt may be on its way out. .
I just saw an add here at priuschat for Chevy Spark, the Bolts smaller sibling. I also saw on charging at ChargePoint that I stopped at last week. Whatever the rounding formulas are that the standard tests use and or don't use, they are used for all (I'd hope anyways being they are standardized tests ) to each equally. So the kWh/100 mi. ( in the image posted in the OP by Bob from left to right ) are 24kWh/ 25kWh/ 26kWh/ 27kWh/100 mi. Did anyone else think that was interesting?
Still around through next year at least. They'll be replaced by something on a BEV platform using the Ultium suite.
