The Lucid Gravity Bungled Its First Range Test. But It Just Redeemed Itself

• The Lucid Gravity’s first real-world range test fell far short of expectations.
• It performed way better on its second try, delivering over 400 miles of highway range.
• That’s still short of its EPA range, but the EPA testing cycle includes both city and highway driving. 

Lucid’s electric vehicles are engineering marvels. Take its hyper-efficient motors and combine them with large-capacity batteries, and you get futuristic electric streamliners with some serious EPA range.  Its first EV was the longest-range model on sale; we had high hopes for its second. 

That’s why we’ve been closely tracking Gravity Grand Touring range tests. However, some of the real-world testing done in the past hasn’t exactly resulted in the earth-shattering mileage that people expect out of Lucid. So when State of Charge’s Tom Moloughney decided to give the Gravity a redux at highway speeds, we were eager to see how it would perform. 

A quick recap on the Gravity: Lucid’s flagship trim of its latest EV, the Gravity Grand Touring, is rated to achieve a whopping 450 miles of range by the EPA. That is possible thanks to its 123-kilowatt-hour battery, in-house-developed electric motors and an ultra-slippery design. That packaging also means a price tag of just over $96,000, including shipping fees.

In Tom’s previous range test, the Gravity only managed to hit 345 miles of range when setting the cruise control at 70 mph. Its overall efficiency was just 3.0 miles per kWh, around 20% lower than it was in the EPA cycle. Lots of EVs underperform their EPA range in highway tests, since the EPA’s procedure includes a lot of city driving, which is more efficient. Still, something didn’t quite add up.

Lucid thought so too. It checked the Gravity’s rear drive unit and found that it had some issues that required the automaker to replace the motor entirely.

So Tom, playing it fair, gave the Gravity a second test. This time, he managed to squeeze 401.3 miles out of the battery, depleting 99.8% of the battery’s state of charge. Compared to the first test, 400 miles is pretty darn good—16% better, in fact. It managed to achieve 3.43 mi/kWh, which is significantly closer to the 3.6 mi/kWh figure it achieved on the EPA cycle. Given that cars almost always perform worse than EPA estimates when tested exclusively on the highway, that’s more in line with expectations. 

One interesting observation that Tom had was that the Gravity’s efficiency seemed to be affected by ambient temperature much more than other EVs he’s tested. His first test occurred in New Jersey, and the second in temperate Arizona. Even the daily fluctuation in temperature from the morning until the afternoon (between 20 and 30 degrees in Tempe, Arizona, where the second test occurred) resulted in an efficiency gain of almost 6%.

Interestingly, another independent test of the Gravity hit just 358 miles of range while performing a similar test, so Tom’s controlled test might be a bit above average.

Let’s be real, though: 400 miles at highway speeds is pretty great as far as EVs are concerned. It’s not quite the 500-plus miles of the Lucid Air Grand Touring, but that’s plenty for any realistic situation we can think of.