The name of the game for Lucid CEO/CTO Peter Rawlinson has always been efficiency. The company claims that its updated Air Pure model will achieve 5 miles of driving for each kilowatt hour of energy onboard (up from 4.1 miles in earlier models), for a record 146 MPGe EPA rating. The brand’s least expensive model achieves 420 miles of range from a relatively small 84 kWh battery pack, and it does this by adapting the heat pump system first used in the impressive hyper sedan Air Sapphire, among other tweaks. Lucid is calling this “the most efficient and thus most sustainable vehicle made.”
“The advancements introduced across the Lucid Air lineup for 2025 further cement our leadership position,” said Peter Rawlinson, CEO and CTO of Lucid. “Lucid Air is the very embodiment of our relentless approach to optimization, enabling Air Pure to use less electrical energy than any other vehicle for any journey taken, A to B.”
Earlier this year Rawlinson told the UK’s Autocar magazine that “the holy grail” of electric car efficiency is to achieve 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) of driving on a single kilowatt-hour of energy. In an effort toward that end, Lucid has designed many of its components in-house to work with its proprietary 900-volt architecture. This allows for smaller key components, for example, the Air’s electric motor is easily one third the size of Tesla’s, while producing the same or more power.
The new Air Pure retains its same starting price of $69,900, in spite of the improvements (the Touring is $78,900 and the MSRP for the Grand Touring is $110,900.) In our own real-world testing, we’ve always managed to easily exceed Lucid’s own range and efficiency ratings, so perhaps this updated range is closer to Rawlinson’s holy grail than the numbers might make it seem. I look forward to seeing the results of a new Air Pure range test, and I am getting seriously excited about the prospect of Lucid’s next project, a smaller and more affordable Tesla Model 3/Model Y competitor.