Before The Air, Lucid Was Building Formula E Hardware
Start-up companies like Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid were supposed to have key advantages over legacy automakers, but that hasn't stopped some of the new EV makers from following old-school strategies. Take Lucid, for example: The company was following the ol' "race on Sunday, sell on Monday" strategy that brings F1 technology to street-legal Ferraris.
As an EV maker, Lucid turned to a more appropriate venue: Formula E, the FIA's racing series for all-electric open-wheel cars — and, in the opinion of our Bradley Brownell, the best racing on the planet. The series kicked off its first season in 2014, and when it was time for a next-gen racer in 2019, Lucid — through its Atieva technology division — was chosen to provide the battery packs.
The packs were "conceptualized, designed, tested, and manufactured by Atieva at its Silicon Valley headquarters," according to Atieva, and they marked a major breakthrough for Formula E racing. The battery-pack in the first-gen racers only had enough capacity to power cars for about half a race, meaning drivers were forced to pit for battery swaps. Atieva's pack, however, had enough juice to last a whole race while also delivering more power. Even better, the new setup was the same size and weight as the old one, although with a different shape. Atieva designed its new battery pack specifically to fit within the race cars' aerodynamic bodies.
Lucid tech goes from road to track
More recently, in 2023, Lucid began supplying front-drive units to Formula E. These units fit in the cars' nose cones and include not just a high-revving electric motor able to pump out 469 horsepower, but also a differential, transmission, and inverter. Lucid showed off its packaging expertise here as well, since the whole thing weighs just over 70 pounds.
The drive units don't literally drive the cars, however. All four wheels are powered, but the Lucid technology up front is part of the braking system; per Lucid, it "provides regenerative energy recovery from the front wheels," with that energy going back to the battery pack. When you put it all together, the result with all that power, in a car weighing under 1,890 pounds (driver included), is a top speed of 200 mph and the ability to charge from 0 to 60 in 1.82 seconds.
What's especially interesting in this case is that instead of adapting race car drive units for roadgoing vehicles, the automaker actually took tech from its street rides — albeit ones like the 1,234-horspower Lucid Air Sapphire — and enhanced it for motorsports. "For Lucid, the transfer of technology between motorsports and road cars is a two-way symbiosis," Peter Rawlinson, then CEO/CTO of the Lucid Group, said in the company's press release. "This new motorsports drive unit builds directly upon the groundbreaking powertrain technology developed in-house by Lucid and proven on the road in every Lucid Air."
A quick look at Lucid's history
Atieva was founded in 2007 as a supplier of EV components like batteries and power trains for other companies, then changed its name to Lucid Motors in 2016 as part of an effort to start making complete vehicles — backed by a major cash influx from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund in 2018 and a merger with the Churchill Capital Group IV early in 2021. Later that year, the result was the Lucid Air sedan.
We drove the car shortly after its debut and, like many outlets, came away impressed. Featuring "better build quality, nicer materials and vastly superior battery range," wrote Kyle Hyatt, the Air Grand Touring made the Tesla Model S feel kinda pointless. Tesla's Superchargers, however, will come in handy, since the Lucid Air sedan and Gravity SUV are now compatible with the network.
The Gravity, in fact, debuted this year as the first non-Tesla with an NACS port as standard equipment, allowing it to charge at up to 400 kilowatts and add 200 miles of range in about 12 minutes. This should help the company build on its slowly growing momentum, too: Lucid reported its seventh straight quarterly sales record in October, with third-quarter sales up 23% over Q2 and year-to-date sales up 46%. On the other hand, that only tallied up to 10,496 deliveries all told so far this year — sales of the No. 1 EV in the country during that time, the Tesla Model Y, were estimated at 232,000.
