- Lucid Gravity follows effectivity strategy of Air sedan
- 450 miles of EPA vary, 3.4-sec. 0-60 mph, out there third row
- Grand Touring arriving quickly, Touring coming later in 2025
One thing felt amiss as I hustled this prototype 2025 Lucid Gravity round cloverleaf ramps close to Lucid’s California Bay Space headquarters final week.
I’d flown round sooner than I’d supposed to. And but on the imperfect pavement the Gravity felt prefer it had a lot extra to provide, with good poise and steadiness, a great deal of stability, communication via the steering wheel, and possibly some enjoyable forward—if, nicely, this have been a closed course.
It’s simply that the Gravity is an SUV. And I’ve by no means, in 25+ years of evaluating autos, been in an SUV that drives fairly like this. Lucid has someway managed to dial its dynamics in like a sport sedan—or, maybe aptly, a sport wagon. My internal g-sensors have been reeling and I saved glancing into the rearview mirror—at two extra spacious, minivan-like rows behind, which is what bought me all rotated.
In a great way, you hear? Primarily based on a pace date with one, it is actually, actually good.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
A breath of contemporary Air—for SUVs
Taking just a few steps again: In the event you’ve someway dismissed Lucid’s very robust opening act, the Lucid Air sedan, the Gravity makes the automaker’s unrelenting give attention to effectivity unattainable to miss or ignore.
The Air already offered its case for the numbers it could actually obtain with its compact and highly effective but efficiency-focused absolutely electrical propulsion suite. Now the Gravity carries all this innovation right into a type much more Individuals can be prone to take into account as their very own: a three-row SUV. On this case, it’s one which goes an EPA-rated 450 miles (in response to Lucid) with a battery pack that’s comparatively modest for the mission—about 118 kwh—and one that may add 200 miles of vary in quarter-hour through a 350-kw fast-charge connector (CCS port on early vehicles, Tesla-style NACS port to return).
The 2025 Lucid Gravity offers in to the fact of the market and its plain forces but it surely does so on Lucid’s personal phrases. So it ought to come as no shock that the Gravity isn’t aiming to play on the planet of boxy, nubby-tired bricks named after off-road trails.
“We’re not going to Utah and climbing rocks,” mentioned chief design officer Derek Jenkins. “However to get to the cabin, to do the filth path, to do medium off-roading, the Gravity goes to be glorious for that kind of exercise, with the suspension functionality.”
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
Forward of my drive, Lucid’s chief engineer and senior VP for product Eric Bach jogged my memory that it’s not growing autos for 0-60 mph instances. Efficiency might be on a monitor, he underscored, or going up a windy mountain highway. Or it might be crash-safety efficiency. Or NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) efficiency.
The crew at Lucid by all accounts aren’t dyed-in-the-wool SUV guys. However they’re going to alter a number of minds with this car.
Gravity begins with an environment friendly form
Lucid is relentless about effectivity as a result of it places the brakes on a sequence of cascading components. In the event you use parts or a design that collectively quantity to a less-efficient car, it’s then heavier as a result of it wants extra batteries to go the gap. It then can’t match passengers and cargo as nicely.
To that, the model made clear to Inexperienced Automotive Experiences that it’s happy with how the Gravity isn’t larger than it wanted to be; it stretches 198.2 inches lengthy and it rides on a 119.5-inch wheelbase. Its top of round 65 inches general (in its lowest setting, we have now to imagine) makes it decrease general than a Subaru Forester—so yup, no drawback becoming into parking garages.
Gravity’s lean profile maps out in all instructions besides width, the place its 78 inches not counting the mirrors is commonplace for the category. The Gravity has a frontal cross-sectional space, in CdA, that’s a lot decrease than any of its rivals apart from the Tesla Mannequin X. It’s mentioned the coefficient of drag will land round 0.24, however with remaining take a look at numbers not but out, it might land barely higher than that.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
It’s not an Air with a special prime hat. Bach emphasised to Inexperienced Automotive Experiences that Gravity was conceived as a very new SUV platform, with a modular set of Air’s current parts organized to the brand new structure. Bach mentioned that’s in order that Lucid arrived at “an actual off-road-capable in addition to luggage- and occupant-optimized bundle that appears like an SUV.”
Design-wise, Gravity matches proper in subsequent to the Air. It has a very completely different profile, in fact, plus just a little extra depth to its taillights, whereas its headlights are just a little extra vertical—partly to go away room for a wider frunk opening (with non-obligatory internet on the entrance).
It’s a beautiful profile with a sleek roofline and good stance. However it doesn’t examine on to any SUV available on the market. As my colleague Joel Feder identified in a drive of an earlier Gravity alpha construct prototype, this can be a mannequin that was shaping up as a bit chameleon-like—straddling the traces between wagon, minivan, and SUV at instances.
I don’t disagree. However the Gravity drives like no minivan I’ve ever been in.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
Drives like a Lucid not an SUV: Test
One of many tuning targets was basically that Gravity “ought to drive not like an SUV however like a Lucid,” mentioned chassis and dynamics tech specialist John Culliton, who rode alongside for my drive.
To guarantee that, the steering rack and the elemental geometry are carried over from the Air, however the rear suspension, together with the air suspension, is new, as is the rear-steer performance. The entrance subframe is rigidly mounted and steering gear is rigidly mounted, to hold as a lot suggestions as potential. However versus Air, the exhausting factors have been moved round to higher distribute the load. Each hyperlink is new, however massaged the structure to scale back hundreds into the steering and make the most of the identical gear.
The Gravity’s physique construction is a mix of supplies however essentially “aluminum wealthy,” in response to Bach, with simply 2-4% metal at just a few particular factors. Lucid has used a megacasting course of for physique items at just a few areas.
To take advantage of the aero type and the lean, robust propulsion system, all Lucid Gravity fashions will get a height-adjustable air suspension and repeatedly adjustable dampers. A sequence of drive modes dial in several ranges of firmness from the dampers, and there are 5 completely different journey heights, all largely chosen independently by the driving force.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
There’s no Auto mode for the multi-mode air suspension, which leaves it as much as the consumer to really feel the variations in journey versus responsiveness. Though, as Culliton factors out, choosing the Dash efficiency mode will drop the Gravity into its lowest journey top. It additionally makes the habits of the rear-wheel steering just a little extra aggressive, the damping firmer, and the torque break up extra rear-biased.
All these sensible selections enable sufficient torque for sub-3.5-second 0-60 mph instances, and a turning circle of 38 ft—in addition to a pure seat top that’s straightforward to get into and out of.
On a lonely stretch of highway, Culliton goals to point out off the dual-motor propulsion system, at 828 hp and 909 lb-ft mixed, and he has me do a managed launch, standing on the brake, flooring the accelerator, and releasing, and the Gravity leaps forward with not one of the feeling of lightness within the entrance finish that characterizes quick dashes in different high-power SUVs. The Gravity felt prefer it lunged ahead.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
Lucid Gravity is a quiet athlete
With its playful steering really feel and muted-yet-communicative demeanor general, it had a few of the similar qualities because the Porsche Macan Electrical we drove for our Finest Automotive To Purchase roundup—a couple of foot shorter but additionally with rear-wheel steering.
The Gravity I drove was additionally fitted with the most important and sportiest wheel and tire mixture within the lineup—staggered width 22- and 23-inch Pirelli PZero tires that actually appeared to have the ability to take advantage of the Gravity’s out there grip on the entrance wheels. This one feels prefer it’s going to be a hoot on a closed course, when it comes to staying sports-car impartial on grippy surfaces.
Moreover, journey high quality with this mix was nice. The Gravity doesn’t float alongside like another luxurious SUVs; you do really feel the highway, however by no means excessively.
Lucid has additionally soft-mounted the motor to the physique to yield extra drive-system isolation from the physique versus within the Air. Though the surfaces round Lucid’s California places of work have been hardly a problem for the Gravity, heading up previous regular freeway speeds for a bit did not expose something—a testomony to all of the tuning of the physique and chassis, and to that acoustic glass overhead, maybe.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
Area effectivity for seven and stuff
The cabin feels vivid and ethereal, allowed partly by the huge expanse of glass overhead. The glass is acoustic, and structural, and flows repeatedly in two runs—one from the bottom of the windshield via to only over and behind these within the entrance seat. Then a second run goes from there all the best way over the third row. It’s the one three-row SUV I can recall with the blue sky overhead, so uninterrupted.
What strikes me most as I first as I stroll as much as the car is how low the passenger cabin flooring is, whereas the underside of the car isn’t particularly low. In keeping with a supply, the air suspension spans from about 135 to 235 mm (5.3 to 9.3 inches) of journey top—which means in its lowest setting, it’s basically the identical journey top as Air.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
Similar to the Air Grand Touring, the Gravity Grand Touring has 22 battery modules, with 4 of them “upstairs” on a second layer. Within the Air, that’s beneath the rear seat, however within the Gravity it’s been pushed to the realm beneath the entrance seats, in order to permit a steady cargo flooring, with the seats folded, of greater than eight ft.
Together with the frunk’s further house, the Gravity has 120.6 cubic ft of cargo quantity with the second and third rows folded—40% greater than the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV, Lucid boasts, and about 15% greater than the Rivian R1S, which additionally has a frunk.
As Bach put it, “you want such a ginormous truck to get to a few of the attributes that we are able to pack into this small Gravity house idea,” pointing to the Chevy Suburban and its enormous body-on-frame counterparts.
Lucid hasn’t mentioned a lot concerning the Gravity’s off-road potential but, apart from that there can be some. Its Terrain mode will benefit from the steadiness system within the high-performance Lucid Air Sapphire. That system, able to studying inputs from all 4 wheels 1,000 instances per second, can deal with the braking portion of the traction management in Gravity at that fee, albeit not for every rear wheel individually. That helps guarantee peak regenerative braking, which nonetheless arrives in commonplace and excessive settings if you carry off the accelerator, saving the brake pedal particularly for the brake pads.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
Gravity again seat: Tables not screens
I’m 6-foot-6 and may actually sit straight behind two of myself, fairly comfortably, within the Gravity.
The way in which the third-row flooring stays flat, and the best way the seats swing round right into a nicely in the back of the car. Bach says that the workforce made a number of selections all through the engineering course of to not compromise any of that house. As an example, it break up its energetic rear steer actuators in half, whereas it might have gone with a mixed unit that may have compromised third-row legroom.
The third row is non-obligatory for $2,900, but it surely solely provides about 130 kilos to the Gravity’s curb weight (but undisclosed). The workforce behind the Gravity see this as a highway journey car, with the second row good for consuming, enjoying video games, and watching issues on units. So that they opted for a pair of sturdy utility tables, rather than a local leisure system for the rear.
What the Gravity ended up with is an answer that is perhaps proper out of a first-class air cabin.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
“We talked to clients, we talked to enterprise individuals, we talked to households, and everybody mentioned simply give me a desk for meals, for laptops, for the children’ iPad, charging, and ensure it’s straightforward to stow. “I’m super-proud of this, as a result of it was a giant push to make this occur and never sacrifice second-row house and do one thing strong and stable,” mentioned Jenkins.
A 90-degree-opening rear door additionally permits simpler loading of youngsters into youngster seats, took some additional degree of engineering to ensure the latches have been robust, and the doorways have a particular low security cinch helps bolster facet safety when the impression is simply above the decrease sill.
Counterintuitively, Lucid was in a position to put its H-point for the third row greater up than within the Suburban, permitting extra relaxed leg angles. You received’t be wanting solely at your knees.
Jenkins additionally famous that Lucid has additionally thought far more concerning the robustness and cleanability of all of the supplies It’s providing 4 completely different themes for the Gravity: Tahoe and Ojai are leather-based, whereas Yosemite and Mojave are non-leather.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
Gravity interface: Panorama, swipes, and vibes
Inside, the Gravity doesn’t solely commerce in what Lucid has established as an interface, but it surely reworks it. The instrument panel is even slimmer, with up to date vents for higher heating and cooling and a bigger middle console. Essentially, new {hardware} presents a full OLED show facet to facet with no interruptions and higher distinction
Possibly most notable of all, the steering wheel has been changed by a “squircle,” and primarily based on the short drive my fingers felt pure at 9 and three in tight corners and in high-speed cruising.
There are new mood-and-ambience modes referred to as Vibes. It’s taken an in depth have a look at what it’s together with within the augmented-reality head-up show to ensure it’s not including to litter, and the touchscreen has moved to a panorama format, with new thumb controls that supply a swipe perform good for dismissing alerts plus a tactile thumb change for menu choice. Within the new structure, menus at all times open to the best
As of my drive, a few of the interface factors nonetheless stood out as works in progress, because it aimed to quell some switchgear and menu-latency points.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
Luxurious in value, however extra reasonably priced later
Up to now Lucid has solely mentioned that the Gravity Grand Touring will begin at $96,550 (together with $1,650 vacation spot) and embrace the bigger battery pack and dual-motor all-wheel drive, with preliminary deliveries set to start out late this 12 months. The $81,550 Touring mannequin, coming in late 2025, may have a smaller pack, and officers say it’s truthful at this level to imagine that choices will parallel these of the Air Touring—which will get a smaller 84-kwh pack. Do the maths and within the Gravity that may nonetheless imply nicely over 300 miles of vary from the small battery.
Loaded up with choices, the Gravity is nicely into luxurious territory. The Dynamic Dealing with Bundle provides the rear-wheel steer system, triple-rate air suspension, and painted brake calipers. And a $2,500 Consolation and Comfort bundle brings energy rear sunshades, soft-close doorways, a heated steering wheel, heated wipers, heated second-row seats. Two completely different ranges of Lucid’s DreamDrive assisted-driving and active-safety options are additionally non-obligatory, for as much as $6,750. And the $750 towing bundle brings a tow score of as much as 6,000.
Add the works, together with $2,900 Surreal Sound Professional audio and the most important (22/23-inch wheels), and the grand complete quantities to $117,400 for a totally loaded Grand Touring, not together with different beauty upgrades.
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
My drive, whereas it left an excellent first impression, was a really fast absorb a well-fettled prototype with firm handlers. I didn’t get to go off pavement, and I seen just a few completely different quirks within the switchgear and touchscreen interface that, in all hopes, Lucid may have fastened by the point the primary autos are delivered. Arizona manufacturing of the Lucid Gravity began final week.
There are such a lot of causes to like this car, and it’s absolutely one of many 12 months’s greats. However what it quantities to is that this: In the event you want an SUV, however you’d reasonably be in a sport sedan, that is your vanguard.
