The Lucid Gravity Touring Is Here. Here’s How Fast It Charges From 0% to 100%

• The Lucid Gravity Touring is the American startup’s most affordable SUV.
• It costs $15,000 less than the Gravity Grand Touring, but it has less power, a smaller battery and slower charging.
• A new video from Out of Spec Testing reveals how long it takes to fully charge the more affordable electric SUV.

The newly introduced Lucid Gravity Touring is the American startup’s best shot at becoming a bona fide automaker. It starts from $79,990, which is $15,000 less than the Gravity Grand Touring, opening up a new market segment for the brand–until the smaller and more affordable mid-size SUV becomes a reality, that is.

For the lower price, it’s no surprise that Lucid cut some corners, and the most obvious of them all comes down to the battery. The Gravity Touring is powered by an 89-kilowatt-hour pack that’s rated at roughly 700 volts and can accept a maximum power of 300 kilowatts from a potent enough DC fast charger. Lucid claims owners will be able to add 200 miles of range in 15 minutes, which is more than decent. With a full battery, it’s EPA-rated at 337 miles.

Lucid Gravity Touring

Photo by: Lucid Motors

Meanwhile, the more expensive Gravity Grand Touring has more modules in the battery pack, upping the capacity to 123 kWh and the total driving range to 450 miles. What’s more, the voltage rating also goes up to over 900V, leading to a maximum charging power of 400 kW. Lucid says the Gravity Grand Touring can add 200 miles of range in under 11 minutes.

That’s all nice and good, but I want to see some state-of-charge percentages, and Lucid doesn’t provide those. Thankfully, Kyle Conner from Out of Spec Testing had the chance to fully charge a Gravity Touring, and we have the data that came out of that session.

We’re talking about a 0% to 100% charge on a DC fast charger that could dispense the full 300 kW that the car supports. The battery was preconditioned before plugging in, so everything was set up for a good performance–and the Gravity delivered.

I included a handy table below to clearly show how the electric SUV’s state of charge increased and how much time it took to add 10% to the battery, but I need to note the most important finding here first. As with most EVs, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep the Gravity Touring plugged into a DC fast charger past the 80% mark because–as you’ll see in the video and in the table–it takes a lot of time to add more juice.

In fact, in the Gravity Touring’s case, if you’re not the kind of person who likes to wait at charging stations, the best mode of operation might be to unplug once the battery goes up to 70%. The entry-level Gravity has a very good charging curve, but the power input decreases dramatically after 70% state of charge.

In short, it took one hour and 14 minutes to fully charge the Lucid Gravity Touring, and the car took in almost 98 kWh of energy instead of the stated 89 kWh. However, it only took 12 minutes to reach 50%, while the 70% mark was reached after 20 minutes. A total of 25 minutes was needed to reach 80%, and speeds dropped after that.

In theory, going from 80% to 10% on a long trip should result in a usable range of around 236 miles, and charging back to 80% should take 23 minutes. If charger anxiety is not part of the driver’s vocabulary, and they like to live dangerously, driving until the battery level goes down to 0%, they could save three minutes by unplugging at 70%.

However, as Kyle Conner notes in the video, during his time driving the Gravity Touring, he didn’t see efficiency numbers higher than 2.9 miles/kWh with the aero wheels on the highway, which would result in a real-world total range of just 258 miles, considering the stated capacity of the battery. That would mean a usable range of 180 miles from 0% to 70% state of charge or from 10% to 80%.

The official numbers look promising, but the real-world data shows that going for the smaller battery might not be the best idea, despite the lower price tag of the Gravity Touring compared to the Grand Touring.

We’ll have our own test of the Lucid Gravity Touring soon enough. Be sure to check back to see what we find.

Lucid Gravity Touring charging test from 0% to 100%

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