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BONUS: I Underestimated The Lucid Air Sapphire
BONUS: I Underestimated The Lucid Air Sapphire
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About this episode
The Lucid Air Sapphire is redefining the electric sedan market with its astonishing performance and luxury features. Capable of reaching over 205 mph and boasting 1,234 horsepower, it merges hypercar-level speed with everyday usability. The episode delves into its advanced engineering, including a three-motor setup, high-voltage architecture, and cutting-edge thermal management. The discussion highlights its impressive aerodynamics, luxurious interior, and innovative technology, making it a standout in the EV landscape. Listeners will gain insights into why this vehicle is a significant achievement for Lucid and the future of electric performance cars.
Topics:
lucid air sapphire
electric performance
hypercar technology
luxury features
high voltage architecture
aerodynamics
thermal management
three motor setup
daily usability
advanced driver assistance
The Lucid Air Sapphire represents a new high watermark in automotive engineering, successfully merging hypercar-level performance with luxury sedan comfort through revolutionary electric powertrain technology.
I wanted to have a look today at how Lucid Motors achieved the impossible: a 1,234-horsepower electric sedan that can accelerate to 60 mph in under two seconds, beating major hypercars which cost well into the millions of dollars, while maintaining the refinement expected from a premium luxury vehicle.
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I wanted to have a look today at how Lucid Motors achieved the impossible: a 1,234-horsepower electric sedan that can accelerate to 60 mph in under two seconds, beating major hypercars which cost well into the millions of dollars, while maintaining the refinement expected from a premium luxury vehicle.
Can you help me make more podcasts? Consider supporting me on Patreon as the service is 100% funded by you: https://EVne.ws/patreon
You can read all the latest news on the blog here: https://EVne.ws/blog
Subscribe for free and listen to the podcast on audio platforms:
➤ Apple: https://EVne.ws/apple
➤ YouTube Music: https://EVne.ws/youtubemusic
➤ Spotify: https://EVne.ws/spotify
➤ TuneIn: https://EVne.ws/tunein
➤ iHeart: https://EVne.ws/iheart
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Lucid Air
"I guess get into it. The Lucid Air Sapphire is a huge shift in automotive engineerin..."
Car
Porsche Taycan
"...that cars, the everyday kind of cars, the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT, that'll hit 190 miles an hour. That's 3..."
Car
Maserati Gran Turismo
"...cket seats and there's no rear seats. There's the Maserati Gran Turismo Fulgore, which gets close to this. But the Lucid ..."
Car
Mercedes-Benz Sclass
"their competitors in terms of NVH, noise, vibration and harshness as well. I've seen some reviews of people comparing this to an S-Class kind of getting in and out of things and saying,"
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Thank you for watching this video.
I'll see you in the next video.
This has been restricted part of the Auto Bar.
Now, I will say, first off, before you can get into the podcast, he wasn't hooning around, not even for many years.
He's a very good driver on track and he was doing it very respectfully of the speed and what he was doing on public roads as well.
Of course, legally and finding a decent stretch which was straight-lined and also with no other traffic really around as well.
He's also a fantastic driver and it all looked very much under control.
The Lucid SR5 in Kyle's video this week, you can go check out the Out of Spec Reviews channel to go and have a look.
Hit 200 plus miles an hour and I'll let you watch the YouTube video and see the top speed that it hit for itself.
Looking very drama-free, by the way.
But it just fascinated me watching it because I knew it was special but I didn't know the vehicle was that special.
Lucid are not particularly new but in the grand scheme of things, up against the established world order,
the hierarchy of hyper-car makers, if you like, but that kind of world-class engineering of the German automotive makers
or even just the hyper-car makers that are out there, the Koenigseggs and Bugatti's etc. etc.
Here come Lucid, admittedly with a lot of battery and engineering smarts.
But delivering a car that I didn't appreciate was this good.
So how is it this good?
Well, that's what I aim to discover on the podcast today.
Thank you for listening.
I hope you enjoy these little bonus podcasts that we do every so often.
It's been a couple of days researching this and looking into some of the stuff that was maybe a blind spot in my Lucid knowledge.
So I thought I'd put it together in a script.
It only takes half a day or so and put it out as a bonus podcast.
I hope you enjoy any feedback.
Welcome.
Patreon's a good place to do that.
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And you can be a free member at Evie News Daily on Patreon.
And then there's paid memberships as well, which get you the ad free access and earlier access as well to all the podcasts.
So check it out if you want to.
And if not, the ad supported free feed will always be here.
I guess get into it.
The Lucid Air Sapphire is a huge shift in automotive engineering.
It merges this is serious hypercar level performance with luxury sedan comfort that you genuinely would take it to go for a pint of milk on a Sunday morning.
You'd go to your errands in this.
Now, we know that cars, the everyday kind of cars, the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT, that'll hit 190 miles an hour.
That's 305 kph.
Vizac package, you know, on that makes it feel like a race car.
Like there's no, there's bucket seats and there's no rear seats.
There's the Maserati Gran Turismo Fulgore, which gets close to this.
But the Lucid Air Sapphire, 205 miles an hour or 330 kph on the specs.
So horsepower wise, 1,234 horsepower.
That is pulled back a little bit what the theoretical maximum would be.
At the heart of the performance lies a three motor configuration, a single permanent magnet synchronous motor on the front to on the rear.
So 1,234 horsepower and 1,430 pounds feet of torque makes it the most powerful electric sedan highway cruiser of any type in the world.
So each motor can theoretically deliver 670 horsepower, but because they want this vehicle to be about the range as well and about hitting those big EPA range targets of over 400 miles,
they do pull that back.
It's a single speed gearbox, but they optimize the gear ratios front and rear for optimal power delivery.
The Sapphire's inverter technology represents a really big advancement in automotive power electronics.
The silicon carbide power modules, each powertrain inverter has six silicon carbide packages providing exceptional switching performance,
they say, with minimal losses and high power density.
So these are automotive grade modules at 1200 volt rated.
So the nominal pack voltage or the architecture voltage of the Lucid Air is 924 volts.
A lot of EVs will sit around 400, some a lot less actually.
Some are then the higher voltage systems are around 800, which enable the very fast charging and things like that.
This sits quite high at 924 volts in comparison to those.
A lot of thermal performance comes with that as well.
Additional silicon carbide components are included integrated into their Wonderbox charging system.
So they say exceptional efficiency in charging modes, but really we want to know about how this platform delivers such crazy speed on the road.
It's one of the first vehicles to exceed 900 volts.
There are some Chinese vehicles up there at 1000 volts as well.
They're using these new megawatt chargers, particularly the BYD Han and Tang, but they certainly don't deliver this kind of power.
So 118 kilowatt hour battery pack in this.
It's a 22 module configuration.
They use Samsung provided 2170s or 21700s if you like cylindrical cells.
There's 6600 individual cells.
Each module contains 300 cells arranged in injection molded cases with integrated bus bars eliminating traditional wiring harnesses and reducing resistance.
The pack construction features glass fiber composite vases for heat and corrosion resistance.
Aluminium cooling plates amounted on each model.
Up at these kind of speeds, thermal management becomes critical engineering.
They say they incorporated micro channels within the stator laminations for oil cooling of the motor windings.
And this approach provides superior heat extraction compared to conventional water cooled status services enabling high power operation
and new enhanced heat exchanger technology as well with increased coolant flow rates.
Of course, as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, Lucid have been around quite a long time now.
And things like battery and motor smarts is really where they have been excelling for a long time now.
The Sapphire's torque vectoring system operates through independent control of the rear motors,
updating torque distribution up to a thousand times per second.
This completely decoupled torque delivery enables the system to apply positive or negative torque to individual wheels.
That's an unprecedented level of control over vehicle dynamics.
The custom Lucid traction control system is all integrated with their own torque vectoring algorithms.
That makes sense now because watching the video with Kyle, it was a little bit windy on the day that he did that run on the Autobahn,
but it wasn't white knuckle stuff.
I mean, he was, I think, up at some decent speeds.
He quietened down and, you know, sort of mid-speed, like 140 to 160.
He's commentating and being like, hey, the German countryside's really beautiful.
What a great day.
Like, I'd be terrified if that was me doing it.
But he had that capacity up at the Vmax run.
Yeah, I think he's sort of, you know, a little bit more focused, but still.
Professional drivers have reported being faster if they turn on Lucid software and algorithms rather than run it in a manual mode,
which kind of goes against some professional racing drivers.
They turn off all the assistance and let me run it and I can get round the track quicker.
Aerodynamics obviously very important.
So you want the big range on a vehicle like this.
The big GT cruiser, call it that if you will.
You know, you can happily cross a continent in this or take the kids to their football practice at the weekend in one of these and yet have this amazing performance.
So very good aerodynamic efficiency.
A drag coefficient as low as 0.197, which is crazy low.
One of the most aerodynamically efficient production vehicles on the road.
Side air intake, smooth the airflow around the wheel wells.
There's vortex generating air intake systems that reduce the drag and improve the cooling as well.
And they've managed to maintain the net downforce at high speeds for that stable high speed run up to 205 miles an hour and yet still leak out 427 miles EPA range in this thing.
So things like track tuned suspension components while maintaining luxury car refinement.
They use adaptive dampers with 500 hertz control frequency.
The aluminium intensive construction includes a virtual axis double wishbone front suspension, multi link rear high strength steel coil springs and fully optimized anti roll bar configurations.
It does come with carbon ceramics as standard.
So 16.5 inch front and 15.4 inch rear discs with six piston front and four piston rear calipers.
So they've put some proper stopping power on this.
The braking system integrates obviously all the regen that comes with an EV, but track optimized ABS and some serious stopping power as well.
And the multiple drive modes that Kyle was playing around with in the video are probably the key to how this can become an everyday driver.
I hate the phrase daily driver, but you know, a car that you can just live with and it's easy.
And yet is able to unleash all of that power.
They have smooth and swift modes that limits the output to 767 horsepower for daily driving.
Sapphire mode provides 1121 horsepower and track mode offers three sub configurations for different scenarios as a drag strip mode, hot lap mode as well and endurance mode.
Each one incorporates different calibrations of suspension steering, thermal management, even brake feel, torque vectoring and all those kind of things as well.
The Lucid Air's engineering is a huge step forward, let alone for a startup and we will call Lucid a startup.
Everyday usability and yet faster than just about anything on the road.
High voltage architecture, silicon carbide power electronics and advanced thermal management all combine to make an incredibly special vehicle.
We'll take a quick break and when I come back I'll talk about why I think this is one of the most special EVs on the road in terms of all of the other stuff that comes with it.
If that makes sense, stick around, I'll be back in a mo.
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Okay, welcome back to the podcast, a special bonus edition.
A look at the Lucidair Sapphire because it really fascinated me this week.
I got a bit obsessed with it and I thought I'd do it.
I'll put it together in a podcast and talk about it with you and get your thoughts on it.
So we've talked about the crazy production, the crazy performance
and how they did that with the different production techniques.
But what about as it stands as an EV?
All right, well, all the usual stuff that you would think would come with a nice vehicle
like the Lucidair, the 18-way power front sport seats,
the Alcantara, the Sapphire blue stitching, heating, cooling, massage functions,
the quad-zone climate control, soft closed doors, power rear sunshades,
things like really high levels of luxury and, you know, benchmarks that surpass
their competitors in terms of NVH, noise, vibration and harshness as well.
I've seen some reviews of people comparing this to an S-Class
kind of getting in and out of things and saying,
look, you can draw a complete comparison with the best luxury cars out there.
And yet it's so high performance.
21 speaker Dolby Atmos audio.
It runs a 34-inch glass cockpit display, voice assistant, wireless carplay.
It's got Alexa integrated and regular over-the-air updates have really fixed the bugs,
improved the vehicles.
I think they've done like 70, I read 77 OTA updates now,
all about the user experience, the charging logic, the driver assist.
Still work to do there with Dream Drive Pro.
That's their suite of advanced driver assistance technology coming standard
and now supporting hands-free driving as of July this year
on the Sapphire models as well.
32 sensors and their own in-house ADAS stack as well.
Really impressive cabin space, floor-mounted battery.
So you maybe sit a little bit higher than a typical kind of performance sedan
but very high levels of materials throughout feeling very, very premium.
The synthesis of extreme performance and yet daily luxury,
kind of S-class levels of luxury.
Software-driven features, cars always getting better all of the time.
Technically impressive but digitally future-proof.
And again from a group of girls and guys that have come together.
I mean not overnight, said it multiple times.
Lucid's been around a long time.
But to do that with the Lucid Air Sapphire being such an incredible vehicle,
I think it's been vastly underrated.
Maybe not by you, maybe you've always known how special this vehicle is
but it was until I watched how composed it was.
A 200 plus miles an hour this week.
And yet that's a vehicle that is attainable, is achievable.
Yes, it's expensive but it's not Koenigsegg territory
and yet it does offer a smackdown.
So many vehicles that are not nearly as fast as that.
Look, there are other cars out there.
There are Lotus Emmaus that will do only 159 miles an hour.
Mention the Porsche Taycan GT.
Look, there's the Neo EP9.
Like that's a track car.
Okay, now you can buy one and drive it on the road.
But that's 194 miles an hour.
And then to get anything quicker than the Lucid Air Sapphire,
you're buying stuff that you can't drive every day.
You're having to buy Lotus Evires or Remats Navara R's
or, you know, Aspark Owls or so.
These are not cars that, you know, you'd have in your driveway
that would look kind of inconspicuous.
And obviously these people you do notice the Lucid.
But the Lucid doesn't scream at you.
It may well be kind of my favorite new poster EV.
Not that I'll ever get one
because they won't make right-hand drive versions of them.
And I can't afford one anyway.
But it might just be my new little secret crush EV.
Man, I've had a great week looking into this.
Hopefully enjoyed a little bonus podcast
as we dig a little bit deeper
in how the Sapphire version of Lucid Air
becomes such a special car.
Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one.
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