Lucid Air EV To Offer More Batter Capacity & Range Than Tesla

 

Lucid Air EV To Offer More Batter Capacity & Range Than Tesla

One of the newest electric luxury sedans set to hit the market, the Lucid Air, aims to shake things up by challenging and surpassing some of the standards set by other makers of luxury sedan EVs. Tesla has long been one of the leaders in design and innovation among EV automakers, but Lucid Motors, Inc. plans to unveil a new model which will rival the Tesla in many capacities, including more range and battery capacity than is currently available from Tesla.

Tesla’s Model S Long Range Plus offers improved range over previous models with a 402 mile range (EPA rated), which is an increase of roughly 20% over the 2019 Model S while using the same battery design. While there are also other improvements in the 2020 model, which you can read about here, the greater range continues to be a goal for makers of electric vehicles and one of the benchmarks that they hang their hat on. Lucid Motors is banking on its impressive range and increased battery capacity to help steer it into competition with the leading name in luxury electric sedans.

The 2021 Lucid Air can offer a range of up to 517 miles, exceeding that of the Model S Long Range by more than 100 miles—quite an impressive feat. (It should be noted that Car & Driver did a road test to gauge the range of the Lucid Air and were only able to achieve 458 miles.) In addition to improved range, the Lucid Air will also have a higher battery capacity than existing Tesla models with a 113 kWh battery. The highest capacity currently available from Tesla is 100 kWh, which is available on both the Model X and Model S.

While range can be increased with any electric vehicle by simply adding more battery cells, that comes with an additional cost, as well as adding weight to the vehicle, which in turn makes it less efficient in terms of performance. One of the challenges for electric automakers like Tesla and Lucid has been to offer more range while not drastically increasing the weight of the battery pack—an issue that Lucid has taken serious steps to remedy. The Lucid Air will not only have increased batter capacity and range, but it has achieved this feat while actually reducing the overall batter size, allowing for improved performance without sacrificing efficiency.

Lucid has not yet submitted the vehicle to the Environmental Protection Agency for an official range determination, but has plans to do so in 2021 with hopes of improving on the 458 mile range that Car and Driver was able to verify.

Another feature offered by the new model from Lucid (formerly Atieva) is a much larger cargo space than previous options in the EV marketplace. With nearly 10 cubic feet available in the front trunk, the Lucid Air will have over 26 total cubic feet of storage space (including front and back trunk). Lucid is aiming for September 9 as the release date for a production model version of the car, at which point we’ll have more information about the specs and performance we can expect when it’s unveiled in early 2021.