Lucid Gravity crossover on track for 2023 release
We won't really know about the Lucid Air until customers get their hands on the first production models, with first deliveries scheduled for later this month. Early reviews are promising, and the company says its second act is on track for release in 2023. That's the Gravity crossover, which will be built on the same platform as the Air, the Lucid Electric Advanced Platform (LEAP). VP of Design Derek Jenkins told Automotive News that the Gravity will be a thematic complement to the sedan as a city-living SUV, with a "strength and robustness" to its design and "respectable ground clearance," but it won't be "a rock-crawler."
We've seen the Gravity in European patent filings, in surreptitious shots from a video shoot for the Air, and in teaser images from Lucid. The crossover's relation to the sedan is clear, and it wears Lucid's design language just as well. Rumor has it the Gravity will be wider than the Air (!), but less than an inch longer.
The Air separated itself from the pack by being a sedan in a crossover world, and on top of that, an electric sedan in a year of electric pickups and SUVs. Lucid did that because it doesn't need enormous volume relative to the entire industry to be successful, and a sedan with amazing specs would be more impressive than a crossover with merely good specs. The Gravity, however, will be rolling onto the market with a number of other electric people haulers — the Ford Explorer and Hyundai Ioniq 7 on the mass-market end, for instance, the design-led Volvo XC90 Recharge, the Cadillac Escalade EV, Jeep Wagoneer electric, Mercedes EQS SUV, Lincoln, Lexus, and Range Rover EV crossovers on the luxury end. Jenkins suggested the Gravity could be more upscale than the Air, which sounds like a Range Rover fighter to us.
So far, though, only the Gravity among them will be offered with a mid-range dual-motor 1,080-horsepower powertrain. A tri-motor package lifts horsepower to about 1,300 ponies. CEO Peter Rawlinson having said the Gravity will deliver similar efficiency and performance as the Air, Jenkins saying the vehicle has to have exceptional range, which "means 400 miles plus" since it will "be a family workhorse in a lot of cases."
Lucid's already working on what comes after the Gravity as well, including another platform for vehicles at a lower price point, and a range of electric goods over the next decade that start with LEAP technology but span "a whole range of product possibilities," even those beyond automobiles.
Related Video:
You Might Also Like
