2022 Lucid Air quick drive review: High quality, high hopes

Before sliding behind the wheel, Lucid took me on a tour of its powertrain and general assembly facilities, located about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. One day, Lucid will corral nearly all parts of the car-making process into a single campus, but with only one phase of construction complete, it’s currently assembling powertrains in a rented building a few miles away from the facility and relying on suppliers for certain processes like parts stamping. But what exists now is enough to start building the high-end Air Dream Edition trim, and production vehicles quite literally started rolling off the line days prior to my arrival.

No, there are no tents to be seen. This is a fully baked production plan from start to finish. I wasn’t given many details about the processes for its efficiently packaged batteries and electric motors, in part because they’re loaded with trade secrets that Lucid thinks will give it an early edge over the competition. But after watching stators get wound and cylindrical battery cells getting loaded into modules where the bus bars are molded into the enclosure, it’s clear that Lucid wants to have as much control as possible over every inch of the Air’s most important pieces. That’s how a battery with a 113-kilowatt-hour capacity can produce a range value as prodigious as Lucid’s.

source: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/2022-lucid-air-first-drive-review/