The Lucid Gravity Is Technically The Greatest 3-Row SUV Ever, But I’m Worried It Will Flop

“HOLY CRAP! How is this even possible?!” I yelled as Lucid’s head of vehicle dynamics, David Lickfold, threw his company’s first-ever SUV around California’s canyon roads at a speed that seemed simply impossible. “OH my, is that oversteer?!” I screamed as he carefully placed the 3-row EV’s nose into a turn and punched the accelerator on the way out, 828 horsepower and 909 lb-ft of torque rotating the car through the turn and in the process melting my brain. “How are we doing this in what is, essentially, a sliding door-less minivan?” I wondered. “This is madness!”

The Lucid Gravity may not look it, but it truly is madness; there’s never been a vehicle in the history of cars quite like it. That shouldn’t be a surprise, though, because Lucid, as a company, doesn’t build normal vehicles, it builds world-beaters. Just look at the Lucid Air, a vehicle that offers not only the most range of any EV sold in the U.S., but also happens to scorch the earth with sub-2-second 0-60 mph runs.

In terms of performance, Lucid has left the Tesla Model S in its rearview mirror, and now the California-based, largely-Saudi Arabia-funded company is going to leave the Rivian R1S — California’s best-selling large luxury EV SUV — in it, too. Well, at least from a technology standpoint.

A Fast And Spacious 7-Passenger SUV That Handles Like A Sports Car And Goes 450 mi On A Charge

Let’s just get to the specs: The Lucid Gravity will drive 450 miles on a single charge, per the EPA’s rating. Yes, 450 miles out of a seven-passenger vehicle. And when I say seven-passenger, I don’t mean “five passenger plus two borderline-unusable seats in the rear,” I mean literally a seven adult-passenger vehicle.

But a car’s range doesn’t tell the whole story; I recently drove a 141 kWh Rivian R1S that goes 410 miles on a charge, and that’s a taller vehicle with higher ground clearance and bigger tires. That may seem impressive, but shoving a big battery into a vehicle to get more range is anything but; Lucid itself refers to this concept as “dumb range.” The real skill — the “smart range” — comes when you make a vehicle capable of driving farther on less, and that’s exactly what Lucid did with the Gravity. The SUV can travel 40 miles farther than the Rivian R1S on a 20-ish kWh smaller battery, while still offering loads of interior volume.

Here, have a look at the Gravity’s side profile compared to competitors like the Rivian R1S (the green car; the red car is a Suburban, which has more cargo volume, but the rear passengers aren’t as comfortable, per Lucid):

You’ll notice that the Gravity sits lower and actually has a significantly smaller frontal area (you can’t see the width, but per Lucid, it does). The Gravity is also more rounded off, with an impressive drag coefficient of just 0.24 (Lucid mentioned that its chief aerodynamicist came from Red Bull Racing) — that’s more than just a few counts lower than the Rivian’s.

This might make you think: “Well, with a lower roof, there’s not going to be as much space inside,” but that’s the beauty of focusing on vehicle efficiency — it pays dividends ten times over. The aerodynamic Lucid Gravity may be low and sleek, but its resulting 3.6+ mi/kWh efficiency means the vehicle can have a smaller battery than the 2.85 mi/kWh Rivian, and a smaller battery takes up less space, which means more interior volume. It also means a lighter curb weight (over 800 pounds lighter, if I recall correctly), which pays handling and ride dividends. Then there’s charging speed (for a given charging rate you can add more miles of range in less time — Lucid promises 200 miles in 15 minutes), cost savings thanks to being able to make do with a smaller pack, and I can go on and on.

So we’ve now established that the Lucid Gravity is big, it’s efficient, and it makes insane amounts of power. But what’s it like in the twisties?

How Does It Drive?

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Let’s continue my introductory paragraph in which I’m being thrown around by Lucid’s head of vehicle dynamics, David Lickfold — an absolute surgeon behind the wheel of the Gravity. The way he tossed that thing through the canyons — hammering the accelerator to take the seven-row vehicle from zero to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds, turning in, dealing with a little understeer before oversteer rotated the car through the turns,  and smashing those excellent brakes with authority to enter each turn just right — it was pure poetry in motion, and it made me nearly vomit. Here’s me resisting my lunch slowly working its way up my esophagus:

I myself had a chance to drive the Gravity through these twisty roads, and I thought it handled great, with little body roll when in Sprint Mode, strong brakes, absolutely monumental acceleration out of turns, and a generally solid sense of balance. I was especially impressed by its multitude of demeanors depending upon which drive mode the vehicle was in.

I’ve driven lots of cars with “drive modes,” and plenty had adaptive damping. I don’t think any of them had a “triple valve” air spring with three different spring rates, which may be why I was so impressed by how well the Gravity’s air spring technology melded with its “infinite damping adjustment.” Lucid said it aimed to offer a Range Rover-like ride in the suspension’s smoothest setting and Porsche Cayenne/Aston Martin DBX-like handling in its stiffest setting.

In soft mode, I could barely feel anything as I piloted the vehicle over expansion joints and cracks in the road. But as soon as Lickfold helped me throw the car into a more dynamic setting (Sprint Mode), the vehicle tightened up, allowed a few more of the road’s imperfections into the cabin, and became significantly more precise in the corners. In fact, in its softest setting, the Gravity felt a bit underdamped over bumps, but once in a sportier mode, it became a different animal.

I liked the squirkle steering wheel that allowed me to see the screen ahead, I liked the interior quality, and I thought the vehicle — aided perhaps by the excellent visibility or the four-wheel steering with its only 38-foot turning circle — felt a lot smaller than its interior volume would indicate.

In fact, let’s get into that interior a bit more, because it’s remarkable.

The Interior Space Is Humongous

Look at the screenshot below of me sitting in the Lucid Gravity’s third row with plenty of legroom to spare, and of the second screenshot showing that even the roof offered enough height to clear my head. My cameraperson, Griffin, who is over six-foot, was also able to sit back there without issue. The Lucid Gravity’s third row is legit, even for adults.

In the image below, you can see just how carefully Lucid built the vehicle around its powertrain and battery pack to ensure ample space for all occupants; note how the rear seat sits just above the rear drive unit, with the footwell just ahead:

You’ll also see that there’s a deep well just aft of the rear drive unit/axle, and it’s there that the rear seats fold flat:

Here’s a look at what that seat looks like folded:

The second row’s folding function, though, is even more legit. With the press of a button, it goes from this:

To this:

To fully folded.

You’re right; we definitely need a GIF of that:

The result is a gigantic area to load things:

The downside is that the area is not perfectly flat, with the space aft of the second row featuring a deep well normally acting as the footwell for the rear seats when they’re not folded down.

Lucid says it will offer something to make the floor completely flat for those interested in, say, camping in their car.

Up front is an 8.1 cubic-foot trunk that can be optioned with a cushion, which I initially thought was wack since it takes up a bunch of space, but then immediately changed my mind about as soon as my arse hit the cushion. It really does feel like a supremely comfortable park bench, and I’d probably use it all the time.

 

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There are so many other storage areas I could show, like the deep center console (shown in the Instagram reel above), the glovebox (which I didn’t open because there’s no physical latch, just a button on the touchscreen), and two deep bins on the left and right side of the rear cargo floor:

Here’s a look at how Lucid went about maximizing interior volume, from Lucid itself:

The Cabin Tech Seems Extremely Cool

So now that we’ve established that Lucid has built an extremely space-efficient, energy-efficient, dynamically-elite, insanely fast three-row SUV, it’s worth talking about what the cabin feels like. 

Lucid calls its designs “California Modern Interiors,” featuring all sorts of sustainable materials like walnut orchard waste-wood, fishing net waste (used for carpeting), recycled water bottles (for textile), and more. It comes in various colors, and the lighter one that I sat in was awesome — great vibes.

Surrounding the driver is what Lucid calls the “Clearview Cockpit” consisting of a giant, single-piece 34-inch OLED display ahead of the driver and a tilted-back 12.6-incher off to the right. I’ve been a fan of such a setup since I used something similar in a Lincoln Nautilus, and I could imagine this setup becoming an industry standard before you know it. Having an upper-dash mounted screen lets you keep your eyes from venturing too far off the road ahead, and the screens allow for multitasking that can help one avoid spending too much time flipping through menus when you should be driving.

Ahead of the driver is an optional Augmented Reality Head-Up Display (an “AR HUD”), which essentially “paints” the road ahead to help you understand not only what the car is seeing, but also what you should be doing. For example, if you arrive at a stop sign that the navigation wants you to turn left at, you will end up driving up to a big instruction arrow “painted” into the world ahead of you, right next to the stop sign. That arrow will ensure that you don’t miss your turn. I didn’t have a chance to test the system, but it seems supremely cool, in theory.

There’s also a Sanctuary Mode, which is there to “envelop[e] passengers in a cocoon of tranquility inspired by California’s natural wonders.”

It seems like some pretty woo-woo hippy stuff, but hey, as someone who’s enjoyed attending a sound bath here in LA, I really can’t knock an in-car “multi-sensory immersion” that adjust lights, audio, massage seats, HVAC, and video screens to “coalesce into custom content experiences that offer a symphony of sensation, unlike anything else on the market.” I’m a Californian now, after all.

Lucid Engineered Its Way To A World-Beating SUV

Lucid’s “compromise nothing” slogan is a hard mindset to take into the design of an SUV, a category of car that Lucid’s Sr. VP Derek Jenkins said right at the start of his presentation is inherently compromised.

He’s not wrong. Historically, if you wanted an off-road SUV or a high-performance SUV or a large SUV, you paid for it dearly with efficiency. Lucid, perhaps more than anything, hates the idea of making a vehicle less efficient than it can be, so this was a challenge.

Numerous times in their presentations, multiple Lucid representatives talked about “divergent attributes” and “opposite ideals” — and how The Gravity aimed to break the SUV mold by doing it all. In many ways, the team actually pulled it off, in part because of the inherent nature of EVs vs ICEs; in part because of great technology like air suspension and rear steering and adaptive damping; but also in large part due to Lucid’s fundamental obsessiveness with reducing Vehicle Demand Energy.

The company built a powerful, nimble, spacious three-row SUV that is extremely efficient, and that simply has never happened before in automotive history — certainly not to this degree.

Lucid’s Chief Engineer Eric Bach told me that were three main enablers that allowed Lucid to do this. First, it’s the focus on minimizing powertrain size in order to maximize space; this is something that CEO Peter Rawlinson mentioned to me during my interview earlier this year, and the number of benefits of minimizing powertrain packaging is more than you might expect (Rawlinson mentioned reducing frontal area by allowing for a more optimized seating position made possible by reducing powertrain size). Packaging is a critical element in vehicle efficiency, and Lucid is extremely diligent about minimizing wasted space; the Gravity’s rear steering system, for example, doesn’t use a regular steering rack, but rather individual actuators to steer reach rear wheel; this gives the third-row passenger a bit of extra heel room, which prevents the need for any other changes (for example to the roof height) that could hurt the car’s efficiency.

The second enabler, Bach told me, is just maximizing efficiency of both the powertrain itself but especially the vehicle’s overall aerodynamics (frontal area and Cd).

Third, he mentioned the concept of “jelly-setting,” which is an analogy that I’ll admit I may not have fully understood. The way I interpreted it was that it was the concept of starting with the optimal passenger space and working from there instead of having various engineers’ packaging requirements (for their various components/systems) dictate what the passenger space ends up being. The way I interpreted that was essentially ensuring that you define optimal up front, and use that as a strict starting point that forces engineers to innovate.

Lucid also talked a lot about its simulation tools. These are a big deal if you want to optimize anything. It’s not just that simulation tools let you more carefully and quickly assess your designs, it’s that Lucid says it has validated its simulation tools to the point where their results match up almost perfectly to actual physical testing.

This is a big deal in vehicle development, where knowledge is power; if you don’t know your simulation is accurate, you may have to build in an extra safety factor into your design to feel confident that it won’t fail, and that often results in unnecessary weight and cost. High-fidelity models are the key to maximum vehicle efficiency.

The Lucid Gravity Does Indeed Make Compromises, And One Is A Big One

Lucid bills the Gravity as “the first SUV that delivers everything that matters, without compromise.”

If you look at the interior volume numbers, the handling performance, the acceleration, and the efficiency (mi/kWh), you might think that indeed, Lucid has built a no-compromise SUV. But in truth, there’s always compromise; in fact, I always tell people that engineering is the art of strategic compromising.

In the case of the Lucid Gravity, there are two compromises that are apparent to pretty much anyone: Price and off-road capability. On the pricing front, the Lucid Gravity Grand Touring that I drove — the 450 mile-range one — starts at $94,900. Later in 2025, a Lucid Gravity Touring will come in at $79,900. While these figures are competitive with the likes of the Tesla Model X and Rivian R1S, the reality is that the Lucid Gravity is an expensive car.

As for off-road capability, one look at the Lucid Gravity tells you that it’s got some severe limitations off-road. That’s because off-roading is all about geometry, and — despite its 9 inches of ground clearance — the Lucid Gravity’s approach and departure angle are just too low to do anything serious. It could climb over some small rocks, go through mud (where its sophisticated traction control could come in handy), and certainly get you to a typical campsite. But it won’t get through even one of Moab’s easiest trails, Fins ‘N Things.

And that’s OK. These two — cost and off-road capability — are two compromises that Lucid had to make in order to build a three-row vehicle that can crush the competition in terms of both range and performance. Building a world-beater isn’t cheap, and it requires a low-slung body and relatively small tires. I do think that a bit more off-road capability and a bit less handling capability would have been welcomed, as I’m not sure how many 7-passenger vehicle-shoppers like to carve canyons, but again, these two compromises are fine.

But there’s a third compromise that I’m not sure I can get behind: the styling.

Here’s Lucid’s mission statement:

At Lucid
We are driving a revolution.
One that compromises nothing
by obsessing over everything.

Performance that defies limits.
Going farther with less.
Space large enough for life.
Design that’s impossible to ignore.
All with a passion for preserving our planet.

Here’s to advancing technology
that drives the world forward.

You may notice that performance, efficiency, and space all come before design. That may not have been intentional, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had.

Lucid is a company run by engineers, and in fact, that’s one of the reasons why I like it so much. I’m a former engineer, I have a number of friends who work at Lucid, and my conversation with CEO Peter Rawlinson was nothing short of epic. Lucid is an organization run by the best kind of nerds obsessed with maximizing efficiency, and that’s usually a good thing.

But with the Lucid Gravity, I have a suspicion that engineers won most of the arguments with designers, and I have always been firmly in the camp that thinks designers should tell engineers what to do, thereby compelling them to come up with interesting technical solutions. I don’t think it should be the other way around, because design is simply too important, especially in this price class.

“We’ve had a lot of philosophical discussion about [the design],” David Lickfold told me during our spirited drive. “And something that Derek Jenkins, [Sr.] VP of design, said really well is ‘This is the future of the SUV, if you want an SUV that is extremely efficient and has high performance and has all this space and usability, this is what it looks like.”

This quote supports my suspicion that engineering drove the Gravity’s design, and I have to say: I think that strategy is a mistake. I think any team developing a vehicle should recognize that range, price, and style all share roughly equal weight in the EV marketplace. To build a masterpiece that doesn’t look like a masterpiece seems like an exercise in futility.

Even Tesla understood this with the Tesla Model X. The vehicle, too, looks like a big Jellybean, but it at least has Falcon-Wing doors to give it a bit of pizazz, and boy do you need pizazz when you’re selling cars for $100,000. Heck, even at a lower price point, Toyota chose to have its new Prius gain a few counts of drag for a bit of sex appeal (and that has been a boon). Style is worth compromising for.

Personally, I’m blinded by the car’s performance and engineering prowess, so I dig it despite the looks. But the layperson, I fear, will expect more than a Chrysler Pacifica lookalike for a nearly six-figure sum. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

But from where I stand, it seems that, by trying to avoid compromises, Lucid may have made the biggest one of all.

Images: Lucid, David Tracy, Griffin Riley