Jay Leno’s Garage, we have a vehicle running for the top spot in the luxury EV space. Well, I’m talking about the Lucid AIR Performance Dream Edition and Jay finally got to check out the AIR, before taking it out for a spin with Lucid Motors’ CEO Peter Rawlinson who later joined him for the ride.

Overview

Jay’s opening line? ‘2022 MotorTrend Car Of The Year’. Now, that's a big deal as it is one of the most prestigious awards in the industry. While the AIR has been in development for over seven years now, and Jay had the opportunity to check out the concept, he wanted to wait to give his verdict until customer deliveries had begun. Well, since that’s well underway, Jay finally decided to get a more detailed overview of the car.

Design

Let’s begin with one of the most striking elements of the AIR, its sleek and futuristic styling. To talk us through the design, we had Derek Jenkins, Senior VP of Design and Brand at Lucid Motors to take us through the design.

A standout design feature on the AIR is the two-tone theme with the contrast aluminum rails and single-piece glass roof, which comes as standard right from the base Pure trim. Very distinctive indeed, and you won’t mistake the AIR for anything else on the road. The all-aluminum body helps keep the weight in check and it really does need them to compensate for that big battery pack.

Aerodynamic efficiency is vital on any car and more so on an EV, as it has quite a dramatic impact on the overall range. You won’t find any fake vents on the AIR and all those aero bits are actually functional, helping it achieve an impressive drag coefficient of 2.0.

The Platform

With no gas-guzzling engine up front, the engineers and designers have more space to work with. But Lucid did one better as they managed to eke out even more space during the cars development cycle. They did this by coming up with a more compact motor.

The end result? Unparalleled levels of space with a far more compact footprint. To put that into context, there’s more legroom on the AIR than a long-wheelbase Mercedes Benz S class, with an overall length that's shorter than a Tesla Model S or even a Porsche Taycan. You can read more about Lucid Air here.

The Drive

Finally, we then had the CEO of Lucid Motors, Peter Rawlinson join Jay as they took the AIR out for a spin. On their test drive, Rawlison re-iterated about how most of the components were designed and built in-house by Lucid engineers.

Having previously worked at Tesla as the Chief Engineer for the Model S and at Lotus with the Elan, one thing that Rawlison absolutely wanted to get right was the agility of the car, and out on the road, Jay could really feel that play out, as the AIR handled rather well given its size and 5000+ pound weight.

Now that's saying something. Jay also pinned it a couple of times and Peter said that since the AIR was a luxury sedan, the car was set up to ride and handle like one. Having said that, the AIR is no slouch as the 1111 horsepower dual-motor setup has a 0-60 time of 2.4 seconds and although it can easily top 200 mph, the top speed has been restricted to 168 mph owing to the tires. Where the AIR is apparently best though, is at darting through traffic when you find a gap. It pulls rather well from 60 through 140.

Conclusion

I’ve been incredibly excited about the Lucid AIR, ever since I first saw the initial concept. It looked way ahead of its time and I think that holds true even today. They set out to outdo Tesla, be it with the AIR’s EPA 520 mile range or with offering up better built and higher quality cars. But Tesla too has come a long way. In fact, so have several new EV startups, RIVIAN being another case in point.

This is exactly a world that Elon Musk had imagined where they’d be new players joining in the EV race. Jay agrees with this view as well as he stated that while several automakers went out of business over the past fifty years, there are now more new entrants than ever, and all this competition pushes the envelope of innovation.

Coming back to Lucid, which is now a publicly-traded company, they have successfully withered the rough patches that most startups face, thanks in part to that Saudi deal back in 2018, Lucid has since managed to raise $4.5 Billion in funding. They plan to deliver around 500 cars this year and the challenges that they’ll now encounter will be to do with the after-sales customer experience and charging, for which they’ve tied up with Electrify America.

You can watch Jay check out the Lucid Air Performance Dream Edition in the video below.