Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Lucid Gravity: Hipster Hotrod Minivan

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Lucid Gravity: Hipster Hotrod Minivan · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  John Summers is the motoring historian.
• 0:02
  He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into
• 0:06
  a fairly inept sports bike rider.
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  Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of
• 0:12
  cheap and fast, and not much reliable.
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  On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new
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  and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
• 0:38
  Good day, good morning, good afternoon.
• 0:41
  It's John Summers.
• 0:43
  Welcome to the motoring historian.
• 0:46
  So this episode is devoted to the lucid gravity.
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  I went to the launch at the plant down in Newark in the.
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  East Bay of San Francisco Bay Area.
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  Yes, I did, Arthur.
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  Yeah, I went down there and I looked at it.
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  Yeah.
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  And I've not walked the dog before I tried to record this.
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  So of course I'm being interrupted by my K9 companion here always.
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  So, as ever, I was invited to this new car event by the
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  Western Automotive Journalists.
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  Yeah, I want to thank Michael Coates and the folk at WAG for
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  organizing the event, as ever.
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  Um, and thank the folk at Lucid for inviting me.
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  And, you know, there's almost a contradiction at work here, because,
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  uh, I really appreciate being invited to these kind of events and I really enjoy
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  driving the cars and, and, you know, I drove around the fact I arrived earlier
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  and I drove around the factory earlier and I can see that the people who work in the
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  factory, you know, there are, there are E39 5 series and there was an E55 like.
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  Mine in there, like my old one, like a w two 10, like 2000 model
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  to, you know, 25 year old, he 55 in the car park there as well.
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  And, and, you know, you're very conscious that I'm sorry, I'm
• 2:09
  having a tug of war with a dog.
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  That's why it feels as if I'm like, sounds as if I'm like strained
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  or something peculiar here.
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  Um, cause I am straining.
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  I'm like having a tug of war with the dog at the, uh, at the same time
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  here on his, on this rope affair thing that he's, uh, that he's got.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah, so I'm, I'm very grateful to go down there and look at what they have.
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  And I can tell that the engineers and the people there, they're like car people.
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  So I really want to like what there is that they, that they're produced and
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  what the, what it is that they produce.
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  And I also recognize that modern car design, you know,
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  the days where you could.
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  Throw caution to the wind and pen a Jaguar XKE or a, you know, 67 Mustang.
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  I recognize that those days are largely gone.
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  So I recognize that.
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  And, you know, I've driven Lucid Airs before.
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  And if you've listened to any of my pods before, you know that I like
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  the, you know, I like the product.
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  The product is that they're good to drive.
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  Um, What's my hesitation?
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  Well, because I always want to be cynical about it because, um, awesome as they
• 3:22
  are, they're just not gritty enough.
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  You know, EVs just aren't gritty enough for John Summers, and
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  they're not gritty enough.
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  They just don't feel like real cars.
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  They, you know, fast as they are, they just Don't feel like, like real cars, but,
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  but look, um, I want to park that with my, uh, excitement about, you know, going
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  to this awesome modern factory at the, in the heart of the Bay area and, and really
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  listening to the, um, listening to the blurb at the very sort of highest, highest
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  level from its, uh, from its source and, and, You know, fundamentally, what
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  lucid talk about is California luxury.
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  And what do they mean by that?
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  They mean that the EV was a chance to redefine what it is to be luxurious.
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  And they've chosen to define that in a very California way because
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  they're a California company.
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  company and you want to say, but aren't they funded by the Saudi government?
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  And the answer is yes, they are.
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  And that means that it doesn't matter that the, you know, the Chinese are going
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  to come and, you know, take swathes out of market share and, you know, making
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  EVs is going to be a losing proposition probably for the next 10 years.
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  If you don't live in China, uh, you know, that's not a problem for lucid.
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  They're, they're going to be around.
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  That's what.
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  Yeah, this is what the reps are telling us, you know, the proof of the pudding
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  will be in the eating, won't it?
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  But I certainly get the sense that they're not going anywhere and the commitment
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  to design excellence is really obvious.
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  So right when you walk in reception, there's one of their, um, Electric
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  motors, and this is like 500 horsepower, and it's like, you know, it looks like
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  it well, it would fit inside a wheel.
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  It's it's like it looks like it's a washing machine motor.
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  I mean, absolutely incredible technology.
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  And that is the feature of lucid is that if you Um, the exterior is
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  nice, nice, contemporary, practical design, um, feels like you've
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  walked into restoration hardware.
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  You know, that's the, the sort of thing that they're trying to do.
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  And, and I think they're successful in, you know, it feels like California
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  luxury, like relaxed and cool and practical and high tech and, and all
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  of that, which is their goal there.
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  They've succeeded.
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  They've very much succeeded in that, but.
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  Under the skin, the technology under the skin is just absolutely, you know, better
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  than everybody else's fundamentally.
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  And they're not shy to do that.
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  They're not shy to talk about that.
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  The motors there in reception, they've got, you know, the monocoque
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  that the dream that the, um, the dream that the air is based on, you
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  know, the sedan, the steel sedan body, they've got one of those.
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  Um, they've also got In the actual demonstration area that we went in
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  where we had like a, you know, pizza and listen to the design dude talk.
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  There was also a, uh, a cutaway.
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  Um, well, I say cutaway.
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  It was basically, it was the car without a body.
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  You call it a rolling chassis.
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  I've got to say, right, this is, I, and now I'm talking about the rolling chassis.
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  I've had this thought again, so I'm going to say it again
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  because it, it, it deserves that.
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  The.
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  glorying of motor, the glorying of the body in steel.
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  This felt like Fred and Augie Duesenberg.
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  I've got to be honest.
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  It feels like a Fred and Augie Duesenberg kind of thing.
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  So, you know, so clearly I'm all about lucid and, and, and no, no,
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  you know, I've drunk the Kool Aid.
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  I do like what they stand for, but this gravity, they're calling it an SUV.
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  And, you know, from the rear, it has this lovely kind of
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  shooting break thing going on.
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  And the dude talks a lot about the arrow, but from the front and you have to be
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  the judge here, but from the front, isn't it a little bit Chrysler minivan?
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  Like, I mean, I, I didn't have the heart to say that to anybody when I was
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  there, but, but now I'm on the pod like, Ooh, it is a bit, it is a bit Chrysler
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  minivan, but is that a bad thing?
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  You know, it's also, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's
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  that hearse shape, isn't it?
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  Like the Ford edge.
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  I personally thought the Ford edge was a great product and I spend
• 7:41
  idle time sometimes surfing EcoBoost versions of those Ford edges.
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  Cause that's a, you know, that's a very high power, high torque motor
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  in a really practical, completely unobtrusive package in the case of
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  the, uh, of the twin turbo, um, Ford.
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  What was it?
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  Was it the edge?
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  It wasn't the edge.
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  It was the long Hersey one.
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  What the devil was it called?
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  Can't remember.
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  I might interrupt myself to, uh, to, to, to put it in.
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  Um, it was the Ford flex.
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  That was the Hersey one, the Ford flex, and you can get it with the 3.
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  5 liter, liter EcoBoost.
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  So that tweaked or not is pretty meaningful.
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  Anyway, whatever.
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  It has that kind of Hersey body style, big wheels, which, you know, you can
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  say what you like about big, big wheels.
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  Are they to my taste?
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  You know, I'm not always, I guess I'm getting used to them, but, you know,
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  they've only been around for 15 or 20 years, haven't they, you old bastard.
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  But look, right, the wheels seem a little big to me, but you know,
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  that is what we do nowadays.
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  And overall, I like the proportions of it.
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  And the model that they had, which Was in, uh, was in this nice green.
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  They do six colors.
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  They were telling us and, and, you know, the model that they had was in this nice
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  green, which, uh, which, which I liked.
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  So the plant, um, I mean, the note that I made was that it's smaller
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  than Halewood or the whole small on Halewood was when, when I used to go to
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  a dodgy car auction, just behind, uh, just behind the Halewood plant there.
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  Um, when, uh, when I lived in that area, it's, you know, bloody 35 years ago.
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  Um, But, uh, but look, right?
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  Um, feels more like a tech campus than a car factory.
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  Maybe they don't make the cars there.
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  Maybe that's just the design thing, but it feels like it's a tech campus.
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  And if you, you know, if you know the Bay Area at all, it's in it's in Newark,
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  which is the East Bay, and it's right off the end of the Dumbarton Bridge.
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  So there's a number of bridges across the Bay, the sort of the You know, the Golden
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  Gate up at the top, going north, south, and then going east out of San Francisco,
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  the Bay Bridge, then there's the Richmond, and then there's the San Mateo Bridge.
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  And then the next one down there is the Dumbarton Bridge, and that's the
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  one that that Newark, uh, uh, right by.
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  So it's, uh, you know, and, uh, yeah, it's like, you know, industrial estate y, nice
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  y, industrial estate y, but, you know.
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  Yawn, basically characters yawn.
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  So as I say, I really, I, uh, the car was parked up with its tail to
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  us when we walked in, when you walked into like the reception area and,
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  and, uh, the note that I made was I thought the rear was cool and, and it
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  is, it's like a shooting breakie kind of shape because it has this giant.
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  Spoiler on on the top of it to really, you know, create that long tail and
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  improve the the arrow, which was something that the guy talked about, um, a lot.
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  In fact, he talked about it so much that I felt the need to repeat myself about it.
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  Um, now I did find myself prattling with, uh, with another one of the
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  journalists, Western automotive journalist members, um, About, uh, the fact that
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  I met a guy that, you know, the shape is fundamentally minivan and we were
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  talking about minivans and we were saying how versatile they are and how
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  you can't say, you can't say minivan.
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  You have to say SUV, even if you're going to make it kind of minivan.
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  Um, And I was telling him about a bloke who I knew was curator of that motorcycle
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  museum in Iowa that closed quite recently.
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  And he told me he used his own personal car often to move, um,
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  motorcycles from the collection around.
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  And, and that was a 2002 Honda Odyssey minivan.
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  And.
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  You know, his point when I was wondered how you could like actually
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  get the thing chopped up properly.
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  But I guess with, with lighter bikes, older, lighter bikes, he was, well,
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  anyway, he felt, um, you know, that was all you needed to move motorcycles.
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  Do you need a pickup truck?
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  Yeah.
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  Honda Odyssey would, uh, would, would do a job.
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  And, and what did that have to do with the lucid gravity?
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  Simply that.
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  There are all these pictures of, you know, the different configurations
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  of the interior, all of which looked rather like my buddies because they
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  had bikes and surfboards and baby carriages and all this kind of thing.
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  And they're all reminded me of of this bloke explaining to me how he
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  could get his family and a motorcycle in the minivan kind of thing.
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  Anyway, right for all that, the whole was small.
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  The aperture was small.
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  It's got one of these powered trunks and the long and short is, is that
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  the powering and by the time they put, you know, the lights in, even when the
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  trunks open, they've got tail lights.
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  So, you know, all of that stuff, by the time they've done all of that,
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  I'm telling you, dude, the whole is not big for getting stuff in.
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  There's no way you get a motorcycle.
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  It, that was, uh, that was the point about the digression
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  about the Odyssey and the Honda.
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  The Honda mini, the Honda minivan being, uh, guess what?
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  A Honda minivan is more practical than a hundred grand Lucid.
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  So when we looked at it wasn't a hundred grand, it was 90.
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  Um, Yeah, and you know, it felt like a 90 grand car.
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  Is it, you know, was it if I compare it with, um, a Range Rover
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  that I drove recently or a Lexus like GX that was in the seventies.
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  Um, you know, the range he was more than 100.
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  Was it as nice as that?
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  No.
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  Was it nicer than the 70 grand Lexus?
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  Yes, it most certainly was with the with the, uh, design aesthetic
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  that you're familiar with from the air, if you've looked at the air.
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  So if you're thinking about buying a gravity, the experience visually is
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  very similar to the I didn't drive one.
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  Apparently some more privileged journalists had done earlier in the day.
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  But like these electric things, you know, I never thought I would
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  say this is journalist, but they do all seem to drive the same.
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  The differentiation which once existed between, you know, the way one Mark
• 14:14
  and another Mark drove, or the way a sort of family car drove versus
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  a city car versus a luxury car.
• 14:21
  All of those things have blurred, you know, completely.
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  And, uh, you know, the, In, you know, in a recent test I conducted, obviously
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  not on the public highway, um, I, I drove a number of electric cars and,
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  you know, even the Fiat 500 could do more than 90 miles an hour, which seemed
• 14:44
  to me perfectly adequate for most of the people, most of the time, right?
• 14:48
  That, and it gets there in the way that electric cars do, like, right there.
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  So, so it seems to me that, that, Um, I've fallen down a rat hole and don't
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  really know what I'm talking about.
• 15:10
  Yeah.
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  So whilst I like the rear, I do think the front is rather Chrysler Pacifica
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  and I may even include pictures to do like a comparison or whatever Chrysler
• 15:19
  are calling their minivan at the moment.
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  I also drove, um, a Kia Carnival.
• 15:23
  Is it the Kia minivan recently?
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  And that had similar kind of like.
• 15:26
  Big wheel, high nose frontage.
• 15:29
  So, you know, now you may remember, and this probably got lost in, in a pod
• 15:35
  that I did some time ago, and I can't even remember the name of, of the maker
• 15:40
  that did this, but there was some, um, Evie maker who were talking about how.
• 15:46
  The car that they were doing was going to be everything.
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  It was going to be like super car performance as well as, you know, minivan
• 15:53
  space, as well as Mercedes S class luxury.
• 15:57
  It was going to be all of those things.
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  And it's a bit like guy, like,
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  look, the, I just said that the performance of all
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  cars are similar, right?
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  So why doesn't everybody buy a Fiat 500?
• 16:11
  Well, because people don't like the image.
• 16:14
  Those people that buy F 250s, Brodos or F 250s, new F 250s, do they really
• 16:21
  need the heavy duty towing and off road capacity of an F 250 versus an F 150?
• 16:28
  No, they just need to be able to piss higher up the wall in the mall
• 16:33
  or the bar or the, I don't know, wherever those people go to peacock.
• 16:38
  They just need to Peacock more effectively than, you know, the
• 16:42
  other guy, that's the point of, uh, of, of those kind of vehicles.
• 16:48
  So, so look, I, I get the, um, so, so what I'm saying is that we buy
• 16:55
  vehicles based upon the image rather than what they really are, you know,
• 16:59
  People buy a Lamborghini to say I'm successful in swaggering, not because
• 17:03
  they think what's the best way for me to do 150 miles an hour, or, you know,
• 17:08
  they, they, it's a different thing.
• 17:09
  The 150 miles an hour is just a by product of the showiness and the
• 17:13
  statement of, of owning a Lamborghini.
• 17:18
  So what we're saying is the, however fast an SUV is, if even if you
• 17:27
  call it, however fast a minivan is, even if you call it an SUV.
• 17:33
  If it looks like an SUV or a minivan, people are going to struggle with
• 17:37
  the notion of it being sporty.
• 17:41
  Now, the presentation yesterday, they went to some lengths to
• 17:46
  demonstrate how there are sporty SUVs.
• 17:48
  They talked about the Urus and the Audi e tron and, you know, and I'm not going
• 17:53
  to deny, you know, I spent some time last week with, uh, a Porsche, Yes.
• 17:58
  And, and, you know, that is, they are, it is an SUV and it is
• 18:02
  sporting at the same time, and that is a contradiction in terms.
• 18:05
  So I'm not saying that I don't think the lucid gravity is going to be,
• 18:09
  have any sporting, you know, genes in it's, you know, I'm just saying that.
• 18:16
  When I hear Compromise Nothing and how this is like a Range Rover and a
• 18:22
  Bronco and an S Class and, you know, uh, Mercedes SL all combined together, it's
• 18:31
  not that I don't, it's not that I think it's bullshit, it's just that I don't
• 18:35
  think Compromise Nothing is good enough.
• 18:36
  Consumers are going to buy it.
• 18:37
  Consumers buy an image, and if it looks like a minivan, they aren't going to buy
• 18:42
  it because they don't want a minivan.
• 18:44
  Um, does this look like a minivan?
• 18:46
  No.
• 18:46
  As I say, it's just, you know, it's just suspiciously, what am I trying to say?
• 18:54
  I like Lucid.
• 18:55
  I like what they're trying to do.
• 18:56
  What other shape were they meant to do?
• 18:57
  Do they want to do?
• 18:58
  Far better to do a Porsche Panamera Taycan with like some off road pretension.
• 19:05
  Far better to do that than, you know, yeah, yeah.
• 19:09
  Far better to do that than a Bentayga, right?
• 19:12
  When it's not Bentayga proportions.
• 19:14
  So maybe I should be grateful that they've not done, gone full sort of
• 19:19
  Chelsea tractor, but you know, you just.
• 19:23
  Just the whole compromise.
• 19:24
  Nothing is just I struggle.
• 19:27
  I mean, it's marketing fluff, isn't it?
• 19:29
  And I'm old and cynical, and I'm never going to spend 90 grand on a electric
• 19:34
  anything, let alone electric lucid.
• 19:37
  So, you know, and you probably you're not you.
• 19:39
  You're probably listening to this, you know, try to make buying decisions,
• 19:43
  not worrying what my silly opinion is.
• 19:46
  So let me let me move on.
• 19:48
  You see, up to now, I'm not going to move on, I'm going to dwell on this,
• 19:52
  because I'm just reading my notes here, up to now, this is what they said in
• 19:55
  the presentation, up to now, you had to compromise, the Suburban gave you
• 20:00
  space, but was bad to drive, the Urus was good to drive, but it couldn't tow,
• 20:05
  and you know, it was no good for picking up your in laws from the airport, the
• 20:10
  Gravity is the best of all of these.
• 20:12
  Now, he talked as well about how he's been, I've been sweating over the
• 20:16
  aero, but I think I've said that about three times before, so maybe I need
• 20:19
  to edit myself, uh, edit myself here.
• 20:22
  Um, so he, he described it as spacious and sporty.
• 20:27
  Normally these would be like, you know, oxymoronic, but he's saying in this
• 20:31
  not spacious and sporty, efficient and powerful, high tech and human centered,
• 20:38
  you know, so is it all in the drop down?
• 20:40
  No, you've got some buttons and there's some nice wood, but you know, it's still
• 20:45
  like high tech, capable and sophisticated.
• 20:49
  Capable is like, you know, the graphic was of a bronco for that, you know, it
• 20:55
  was like, you know, capable means can actually go off road, you know, um,
• 21:01
  The tech stuff, right?
• 21:03
  Um, 40 percent more interior space than the equivalent like Mercedes EQS SUV.
• 21:12
  They're not committing to a range yet, but like, the blurb said 450.
• 21:17
  They were The rep was talking about 440, but didn't want
• 21:24
  to like hang his hat on it.
• 21:25
  And, uh, what I actually wrote down was 400 miles plus, because that
• 21:29
  was the original, like parameters.
• 21:31
  So look, they've done, they've done their like removal of, of range anxiety.
• 21:37
  And, and, you know, well, where I was sitting just like next to me.
• 21:42
  I'm going to add a photo of this.
• 21:43
  There was a photo of like the Wunderbox or something like
• 21:48
  that, camera, what it was called.
• 21:49
  Anyway, basically, this device allows you that if there's a power
• 21:53
  cut, you can draw electricity from the car's battery to the house.
• 22:00
  Now, one of the things that we were talking about in the questions afterwards
• 22:05
  was just how exciting that is in terms of a flexible electricity grid in terms
• 22:15
  of needing to generate less electricity.
• 22:17
  If you imagine a city of the future where houses.
• 22:24
  And cars together are able to, you know, where a power station is able to save
• 22:32
  electricity in the cars that people have got sitting in their driveways
• 22:36
  attached to the electricity grid charging or indeed returning electricity.
• 22:43
  Um, you know, in times of peak need.
• 22:45
  So, you know, when everyone's home watching the Super Bowl, you know, at
• 22:48
  halftime when everyone puts the kettle on for a cup of coffee in the World Cup
• 22:52
  final, you know, that in that moment for that kind of peak jump demand, you
• 22:58
  could do something like draw a little bit of power from the car because, you
• 23:02
  know, everyone knows that you're not going to be going out and driving and
• 23:05
  the car can be, you know, that was the, the kind of, of, you know, Uh, utopian
• 23:09
  notion that they were developing.
• 23:11
  Obviously I added in the bit about the cup of tea in the middle of, uh, of
• 23:16
  halftime of the football and all of that.
• 23:17
  But you've, you've got that.
• 23:18
  That was the sense of the kind of scenario they were going at.
• 23:22
  So look, um, 400 mile range, 15 minutes to charge.
• 23:26
  200 miles of range, which is two minutes faster than a Tesla Model X.
• 23:31
  And, and I know spiritually people aren't going to deal with the range anxiety,
• 23:37
  but like in the real world, if you are doing a road trip, if you can pull up
• 23:43
  to a gas station and whilst the car's gassing up, everyone hops out, takes a
• 23:48
  piss, buy some food, by the time you've got back in the car, if you're not,
• 23:52
  you've spent 15 minutes, haven't you?
• 23:56
  You know, you've, you've already, and that's given another 200 miles.
• 23:59
  So, you know, I, I feel like we're moving to a realm where people's
• 24:05
  range anxiety fears are not valid.
• 24:08
  And I say that as, uh, as, you know, for now, obviously in, in place, there
• 24:14
  has to be a charging infrastructure.
• 24:15
  There is no good, you know, trying to drive, you know, drive from London
• 24:20
  to Manchester, London to Edinburgh, you know, one, uh, and I, in a.
• 24:27
  You know, on a, on a holiday when there's going to be loads of other people in
• 24:30
  line at the charges kind of thing, I'm just saying that the technology, it
• 24:34
  really feels like the technology is, is getting there and in terms of, you
• 24:39
  know, the territorial pissing between manufacturers, that 15 minutes to add 200
• 24:45
  miles of range is two minutes faster than Tesla Model X is, uh, is, is able to do.
• 25:01
  The California bear, the state bear, the grizzly bear, which has been extinct in
• 25:07
  California for hundreds of years now.
• 25:09
  But, um, you know, the California bear logo, which you're familiar with, and
• 25:13
  you do see quite a lot around California.
• 25:15
  If you live here, um, the bear logo, um, appears are in 13 places or
• 25:21
  something they said around the car.
• 25:23
  Um, and.
• 25:25
  Um, you know, the bear was a sort of lodestone for them in terms
• 25:32
  of positioning the branding.
• 25:34
  So is it their logo?
• 25:35
  No, that's the company's name, but it's a sort of, you know, it because it within
• 25:42
  the bear, we symbolize California and within California, we have sustainability,
• 25:48
  we have, um, evolution, we have art, we have, um, Well, some other stuff I wrote
• 25:56
  down there, whatever, you know, all this touchy feely stuff about California,
• 26:00
  which they use to inform their design, but there is a hard element to this, right?
• 26:05
  And the hard element is simply that when you drive a BMW or a Mercedes
• 26:09
  or an Audi, they feel a certain way.
• 26:12
  And what they want to do is imbue a certain Californian
• 26:16
  ness way of feeling into Lucid.
• 26:21
  And look, right, that's Is how you, you're going to build brand value in, in future.
• 26:28
  I'm trying to say that, yes, there's going to be a race to the bottom in terms of,
• 26:33
  of price and quality for amongst many EVs and many of those vehicles are not
• 26:39
  going to have any character and there's going to be room for a luxury product
• 26:44
  that has a little bit of character and Lucid seem to be doing, um, seem to
• 26:48
  be taking the notion of brand value.
• 26:50
  building those kind of brand values very seriously.
• 26:54
  And, and, you know, in that we might compare them with
• 26:57
  Lucid or more recently Genesis.
• 27:00
  Lexus and Genesis before, you know, we might think about, um,
• 27:06
  you know, somebody like Tesla, you know, Tesla, there's not a, um,
• 27:13
  even the premium Teslas have a sort of, um, Apple aesthetic in terms
• 27:20
  of an austerity about the design.
• 27:22
  The.
• 27:24
  interior of the gravity does not have an austerity about it and I should
• 27:34
  have talked about the interior earlier right because they started in the
• 27:38
  presentation by talking about what it was like on the inside and there's me
• 27:43
  being like but minivan from the outside but maybe that's a bit silly of me
• 27:48
  because inside, um, I mean the old car was defined by the moonroof, right?
• 27:55
  The air is defined by the moonroof.
• 27:58
  This guy has A similar moonroof effect, but on this occasion,
• 28:05
  this really made me laugh.
• 28:06
  My son and I were chuckling about this, that the, um, it has a big windshield and
• 28:12
  then it has a bar that comes between the driver and the passenger in the front.
• 28:18
  And then in the, then, uh, at the back, it has, uh, an open piece of
• 28:24
  glass in, uh, in, in, in the backseat.
• 28:27
  So, um, I'm not explaining that very well, but if I tell you that sitting in,
• 28:31
  it feels like sitting in like a Nissan 300 ZX or a Camaro or some kind of.
• 28:38
  Eighties car with T tops, you know, those removable pieces of glass, but where
• 28:43
  there was still a bar that connected the top of the windshield with the, the,
• 28:49
  you know, the back of the, of the roof that it has that it has that going on.
• 28:53
  So anyway, really open and the posts themselves, the pillars
• 28:57
  themselves, uh, were in the model that we sat in were Alcantara.
• 29:02
  I'm telling you.
• 29:03
  Awesome place to be.
• 29:05
  Um, and the whoosh of the electric combined with the
• 29:09
  airiness is, is really incredible.
• 29:13
  One of the things that I, so one of the, uh, my, I suppose one of the other
• 29:20
  WADGE members had some really I mean, just was obsessed by safety, right?
• 29:25
  Let's let's say that and it was a bit of a eye roll for me, candidly, but looking
• 29:31
  back her drilling into the safety had the guys talking about how the glass
• 29:36
  was laminated, how there was a layer of gel in it, how, you know, They worked
• 29:42
  very hard to make sure that the glass isn't going to collapse inside the
• 29:47
  cabin, even in the event of a rollover.
• 29:51
  So, you know, I guess I hadn't, you know, I never think about what would
• 29:54
  happen in the event of a crash.
• 29:55
  I'm just like, Oh, that's nice and airy.
• 29:57
  But, you know, So it is nice and airy, but that's how they've,
• 30:01
  uh, but it's all safety as well.
• 30:03
  0.
• 30:04
  24 drag factor, which is kind of incredible, isn't it?
• 30:09
  Um, I mean, it makes you realize how incredible the Audi 100 was to be doing 0.
• 30:15
  29 in like, you know, one second.
• 30:16
  1984 or 82, or whatever it was, but, uh, but, but yeah, and he, and, and, you know,
• 30:25
  I'm not going to dwell on the fact that the bloke who presented to us was heavily
• 30:29
  involved in that aero thing, but he, uh, in a presentation, he talked a little
• 30:34
  bit about how, you know, you know, you want to like a smooth tail, you know, he
• 30:38
  compared a speedboat and a canoe in terms of the kind of, uh, Of tail that you,
• 30:44
  uh, that you wanted to, to, to create.
• 30:47
  Um, he described a proud front end, which emphasized the width of the vehicle.
• 30:54
  He described the interior as being, as having mid century inspired luxury.
• 31:01
  The interior trims, uh, are named after like bits of California
• 31:07
  like Mojave or Ojai or Tahoe.
• 31:14
  Oh yeah, this is an interesting thing he was talking about.
• 31:16
  Um, so I guess, uh, there's like the tablet screen, then there's
• 31:21
  the screen that has the speakers.
• 31:23
  Speedo and I don't know, battery charge or whatever.
• 31:28
  And then there's the steering wheel, right?
• 31:29
  And, and they'd noticed that with the air that you, you obviously, you spent a lot
• 31:33
  of time toggling from the road and then, you know, looking at the road and then
• 31:37
  looking at one of the screens and looking at the road and looking at the screen.
• 31:39
  So what they'd done was they'd moved the positions of the screens
• 31:43
  more up into your eye line and the steering wheel down a little bit.
• 31:45
  So you needed.
• 31:47
  So you would be toggling in a different way, which is, you know, natural, right?
• 31:51
  This is more of a minivan driving position rather than a, you know, fat
• 31:55
  old Mercedes or BMW driving position, which is what you get in the air.
• 32:00
  The sedan.
• 32:02
  Oh, I thought this was interesting.
• 32:04
  So on the steering wheel, there's, uh, um, a mouse and, and the design guy described
• 32:12
  the mouse as similar to an Apple remote.
• 32:16
  And I'm like, Oh.
• 32:17
  Yeah.
• 32:18
  Okay.
• 32:18
  Cause it always makes me just, I don't like Apple design.
• 32:22
  So whenever I hear anybody referencing straight ahead, copying Apple design,
• 32:28
  especially in automotive design, it just really it's fingernails
• 32:32
  down a blackboard for me, they made quite a big song and dance about.
• 32:38
  The heads up display.
• 32:39
  Um, they showed film of it and and it's it's very subtle.
• 32:45
  Um, it's not one of these like in your face heads up.
• 32:49
  Um, particularly it's I mean, it's augmented reality.
• 32:53
  So it's we're not just talking about the speed.
• 32:55
  Oh, it's also augmented reality around showing you where the lanes are.
• 33:01
  So if it's foggy, you know, the car knows where the road is.
• 33:05
  So it depicts that.
• 33:07
  on the heads up display for you to do that.
• 33:10
  And, and, uh, um, they're making a big song and dance about that.
• 33:16
  You know, how really, how useful that is.
• 33:20
  You know, I don't, I don't even know, you know, I guess, you know, if you, uh,
• 33:25
  you know, it's foggy in the Bay Area and, and, you know, so there is definitely,
• 33:29
  uh, an, an application for that and it would provide, uh, uh, a level of.
• 33:34
  of confidence that, you know, I mean, yeah, it is what it is.
• 33:41
  Augmented reality, heads up display.
• 33:45
  And that user AI, AI, that automotive user interface conference I went to, um, I did
• 33:54
  the keynote for a couple of months ago.
• 33:56
  Um, there were some people, uh, there was talk of creating, uh, a relaxation
• 34:01
  mode that you could put the car in where the car would like help you relax.
• 34:06
  And it went through a couple of scenarios and you might remember that I was not.
• 34:12
  Completely cynical about it, but it all had the feel of like a half baked
• 34:17
  student project that was trying to solve a need that didn't really exist.
• 34:21
  And, you know, couldn't you just like, you know, recline the seat
• 34:24
  and, you know, put on some of your favorite music and wouldn't achieve
• 34:28
  the same effect kind of thing.
• 34:30
  But, um, apparently lucid, um, have actually come to market with something
• 34:35
  that looked like what was being, you know, talked about in that, um, at
• 34:40
  the conference, which is that they've, that they want to make the interior
• 34:45
  of the car more like a sanctuary.
• 34:47
  They, they have, and they partnered with this company, Meditopia, um, so that you
• 34:53
  can do like breathing exercises and all this kind of thing in, in, in the car.
• 34:58
  It's just weird to me because I mean, I hang out in the car and relax, you
• 35:02
  know, I've long felt like, you know, I, I, I've long from the time that I was a
• 35:08
  sales rep, I've, you know, sat all from the time that I was a teenager and, you
• 35:13
  know, first had a car, the car you, you know, it was nice to have a car that
• 35:17
  you could sit in where, you know, you had something to eat, you could hang out
• 35:21
  with friends with friends chatting, you know, it was, you know, I, I always felt
• 35:25
  like the car It was never just, um, you never just used it to get from A to B.
• 35:31
  It always was kind of, of a living room for you as well.
• 35:35
  And of course, Americans are very familiar with that, with that kind of idea.
• 35:39
  Um, so the notion of like the car being a sanctuary and you know, all of that,
• 35:44
  I guess I, I, I really understand, but then the notion of it being like, you
• 35:49
  know, all yoga and all of that, I just.
• 35:51
  That is just completely, um, alien to me, completely, uh, alien.
• 35:58
  The electrical system on it is 900 volts and, you know, I know if somebody
• 36:04
  came to you now and said, yes, so what we're going to do is we're going
• 36:07
  to run this gas line right by that exhaust and you're going to be like,
• 36:12
  well, isn't there a fire risk there?
• 36:14
  Like, what if the fuel line splits?
• 36:15
  But if you look under the hood of most cars from the 60s and 70s,
• 36:19
  the fuel line runs right past the hot exhaust, especially, you know,
• 36:22
  American V8s, it does, right?
• 36:25
  And, and, you know, there were fires, but not lots of fires.
• 36:28
  Right.
• 36:28
  So, um, it might seem a bit alarmist to be like 900 volts aren't people
• 36:37
  going to get like electrocuted and die.
• 36:41
  Aren't they going to be terrible fires?
• 36:43
  Like as these things get old.
• 36:45
  Um, I mean, and this is, we're coming on the back of, of, uh, of an accident
• 36:51
  in California, um, where some teenagers.
• 36:56
  Uh, uh, wrecked a Tesla Cybertruck.
• 36:59
  If you look at all the news reports, it's like, you know, the Cybertruck's
• 37:02
  like off the side, fucking 20 feet from the sidewalk, halfway up a tree,
• 37:07
  caught on fire, three of them are dead.
• 37:10
  And it's like, speed could have been a factor.
• 37:12
  Like, yeah, speed was a, speed wasn't a factor.
• 37:15
  Extreme weight and 650 foot pounds of torque combined with being a
• 37:20
  teenager, Those were the weather factor I put, but the bottom line
• 37:24
  is that the, you know, that's the other Duesenberg element, right?
• 37:29
  Is that instead of doing it in a practical, simple way, nothing succeeds
• 37:34
  like excess 900 volts terrain mode.
• 37:39
  So it has like a terrain off road mode.
• 37:41
  It has like a camp mode.
• 37:44
  And in the camp mode, it like plays mood music.
• 37:47
  I mean, I don't know, like, isn't part of the point of camping that you get
• 37:51
  away from the car and the tech and, you know, you don't need some AI like
• 37:58
  playing soft music in the background.
• 38:01
  I don't know, really peculiar to me.
• 38:04
  So that was my sum up on the Lucid Gravity.
• 38:07
  Thanks for listening.
• 38:09
  I dare say it wasn't as informative as you were hoping.
• 38:12
  Maybe I'll give an update if I ever actually drive one.
• 38:15
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• 38:51
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