Of the electric vehicle startups that are attempting to match Tesla's formula for success, Lucid Motors remains the one to most quietly impress us. Compared to the elegant-but-conventional Tesla Model S and the Homer-like Faraday Future FF91, Lucid's Air is a refreshing take on what a car designer can do starting with a clean sheet of paper and no internal combustion engine powertrain to worry about.
From the outside, the Lucid Air is about the same size as a Mercedes-Benz E-Class?a fitting target given the Air's intended price starts at $60,000. But clever packaging means the interior is as voluminous as an S-Class, something shown to good effect by the (optional) reclining rear seats. The car's exterior styling is also refreshingly different. Perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise, given its designer; before working at Lucid, Derek Jenkins was also responsible for the latest generation of Mazda Miata and Audi's innovative A2.
Designing the Lucid Air was quite a different challenge from either of those cars; a new Miata has to recognizably be a Miata, and the A2 was bold but still constrained by Audi's design language and platform requirements. "We're not dealing with massive pieces of hardware; an electric vehicle powertrain is compact and easily dispersed," Jenkins told us. "We're devoting more of the Air to the occupant space. And that's liberating in that there's flexibility with the proportions of the car; we can bend some traditional rules."
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