Featured PowerPoint Performance Bump

• kWh/100 mi - this is the cost to operate the car. Suddenly, the Luicid gained an 8% advantage
• range miles - changed only 1 mile
• 2025 vs 2024 model years - what did they do?
  • Same gross weight ... Huh? Any mechanical or aerodynamic changes should change weight.
  • Lucid reduced battery from 88 kWh to 84 kWh!

What they did is "sandbag" the battery capacity which increased the apparent efficiency, kWh/100 mi. But it is the same battery in a car whose weight did not change. The clue, they didn't change the estimated miles. A more efficient car should increase the range.

If Lucid reported a change in the vehicle such as; more efficient electronics; motor; weight reduction; or drag reduction; no problem. But Car and Driver and Motor Trend do not report any design changes. It looks like Lucid "sandbagged" the battery capacity for a paper performance improvement.

There have been past cases where manufacturers have "sandbagged" their performance numbers or screwed up their metrics (aka., Hyundai about 10 years ago.) In the past, the EPA would investigate and if not admitted, send the car to Argonne Labs for testing or use CARB metrics.

Bob Wilson

 

Happily, I’m not shopping. I’m interested in new technology that improves performance.

Bob Wilson