There are things about cars that we’ve slowly come to accept that are a given. Little things and minor annoyances that just kind of suck, that we’ve come to accept, and almost forgotten about. The aptly named 2026 Lucid Air takes those sad concessions and throws them all out the window, as if a small team of engineers were feeling exceptionally lucid and wanted a breath of fresh air. As such, absolutely nothing sucks. Every detail is a delight, the tech underneath it all is genius, and the way it all comes together is downright inspired. 

Little things add up • Thoughtful touches

Take something as innocuous as the trunk. Car trunks are and have always been kind of awkward, as you have to lift your cargo over the rear of the car (hence the liftover point so often mentioned in old Motorweek car reviews) and through an opening that may or may not be conducive to allowing things through it. The Air does away with this entirely; the whole rear of the car opens up, with a low, flat opening that spans the whole width of the car.

Another little thing that leads to a meaningful quality of life improvement are the doors; they open wide. The rear doors open ninety degrees and the fronts open nearly as much. Getting a child seat, a set of arthritic hips, or an large-framed person into the back of this car is no problem, and getting into the front seat at the same time is also not a problem, whereas it would be awkward on very nearly every other sedan ever built.

Even something as innocuous as the washer fluid filler location; it’s nestled in a channel under the frunk where any spillage will run along to the ground without making a mess of anything else. Said frunk is also enormous, has two tiers, and has a very convenient (and quick!) powered opening, but an easy manual closing – which is nice, because manually closing a powered door sucks.  Similarly, the powered charge door slides on a clever mechanism and is super slick, too; something other car companies really struggle with.

The whole car is like this. So thoughtful. So many things that normally suck because of lazy design, old policy, cost control, or legacy hardware are fixed. It’s as if “it is what it is” was forbidden in any development discussions. Absolutely zero disenfranchised shrugging allowed. What a concept. Imagine working at a place like that, functioning so intentionally towards a unified goal.

It’s pretty beyond the details • Exterior design

This car’s brilliance isn’t just in mundane practical decisions like trunk openings, through. No, what captured me so quickly is its bewitching style, and how that same pervasive sense of intention permeates through every part of the car. I loathe that this tester is such a miserable spec, in dark grey with the stealth package to black out all of brightwork. These cars can be quite beautiful with a little contrast in them; hopefully you can see what I see. 

As one specific point of brilliance: in profile, look at all the lines from the A-pillar all the way back. The curve of the windshield, the lines that make up the B, C, and D pillars, even the trunk opening, all converge at a single point above the car. This is good design. The same good design that makes Volvos incredibly good looking forever without being shouty. The frontal lighting is relatively small, but turns night into day, without garish, angry eyes. The rear lighting has an elegant taper and a curious stacked layer effect, highlighting L U C I D lettering over a not-quite infinity mirror. 

And even prettier inside • Interior design

The commitment to tidy beauty is even more apparent inside, with a floating, curved, half-moon display in front of the driver. The crescent covers 34 inches, and works in tandem with a sloped centre display that spans 12.5 inches and easily falls into the pilot’s reach. They work together with context menus that can be flipped downward for expanded controls, or left in a small window on the dashboard screen by default – so that the centre tablet can be folded away at the flick of a finger. 

There’s more than enough digital real estate to achieve everything that needs to be done, but it does not feel dependent on digital gimmicks. We all kind of agree that screens suck, they’re are just sort of a necessary evil in a modern market fixated on the perception of high-tech (…and cost cutting…), and yet here I find myself blessed with an interface that feels thoroughly modern, but not and never the wrong kind of modern. The displays serve the design, even when off. 

The industry doesn’t have to be dominated by digital rectangles that suck the soul out of any pretense of style; we can do better. To that end, the materials are gorgeous. The metallic trim is actually metal. The leathers are soft, and stitching is spot on. Everything is charming and deliberately designed. Even the stalks have an aerofoil flair to them. It’s so cohesive and beautiful. There are no moments of “what were they thinking?” or worse, “why didn’t they think of this?” but instead, it’s all “Oh I see; that’s very clever.” It’s a delight in every regard.

That’s not even the best part • Driving impressions

The Air isn’t just a showcase for intuitive tech and pragmatic design. I would be quite happy if that’s all it was, but it is, above all, an absolutely fabulous car. Cars aren’t just meant for “looking the part” and hitting metrics, they’re meant to be driven and enjoyed, they’re meant to be a showcase of the unity between engineering prowess and passion, and by God Lucid has cleaned house with the Air.

Modern, electric power steering is another one of those things in modern cars that we’ve long since accepted is supposed to suck. I’ve long since been opposed to this, citing the Honda S2000 and Mazda RX-8 – early pioneers of the tech, and two of the best driving cars ever – as rebuttals to this idea, but alas the car-sphere at large has vilified modern power steering as being hopeless. I would like to submit this two-and-a-half-ton golf cart as the last word on that topic. 

That a large luxury car should be among the best handling cars I’ve ever driven is bewildering. That it was able to pull this off on 245-size snow tires is flat-out astonishing. 

I wrote an entire article about how I changed my tune on the BMW M2 because of one long, beautiful power slide, and this big boat pulled the same trick. Its turn-in is alert, ready but not over-compensating with over-caffeination, and its mid-corner balance is gorgeous, with the ever-so-faintest inclination towards power-oversteer, and its mechanical grip is remarkable, even on compromised winter wear. There is no other word for it: this chassis calibration is masterful. Despite being such a talented athlete, it hasn’t lost an ounce of manners, and has among the best ride quality in a modern car. Nothing upsets this car.

It doesn’t stop getting better • Performance

This isn’t even the best one, either. There are four trims of Lucid Air, and this Touring is the second from the bottom. Being somewhat lowly in the hierarchy, it only has 620 horsepower, and 738 foot-pounds of torque from its dual-motor setup. For reference, this is more than the Mercedes E 53 AMG, Lamborghini Huracan, and the brain-scrambling Corvette E-Ray. 

It is, somewhat obviously, quite quick. It can sprint to 100 km/h in 3.6 seconds, which is neat, but a whatever number in our modern era, where a thousand horsepower street car isn’t a pipe dream. What matters more is how it feels to live with, and it’s a thing of beauty. Its twin motors are so well-dialled that it’s a gem around town, in parking lots, and on the highway – it’s a delight at any speed, with no awkward behaviours or “you’ll get used to it” idiosyncrasies like many other EVs. It’s a pleasure to trundle around in, made more pleasurable by the knowledge that you can more or less teleport forward, if so inclined.

There’s no theatrics, nothing in the way of augmented sound and almost zero in the way of mechanical noise. Tip your foot and the car tips forward. No kickdown, no spooling, no building revs, you just fall straight ahead. It is beyond effortless. Even Jean-Luc Picard would blush at this; no dramatic pause, no point and saying “engage,” just instantaneous warp drive. You’ll need to step up to the Grand Touring for the advanced 819 hp matter-antimatter drive, and way up to the Sapphire for the reality-distorting, 1,234 hp quantum slipstream drive.

Nerdy stuff • Range and charging

This is all enabled by Lucid’s in-house motor design, a specially-wound permanent-magnet radial flux motor that gets very near the energy density and peak rotational speed of vastly more expensive axial flux motors – this is real stuff that makes a real difference, and not Star Trek technobabble. It is a feat of engineering to have so much energy density, and as a consequence of that, phenomenal efficiency.

This Touring model can also go nearly 700 kilometers on a single charge from its 92 kWh, 900-volt battery. Not only is this very lovely for the consumer, but it’s crucial for long-term viability of electric vehicles a whole; the only other car maker than can even begin to approach Lucid’s single-charge range is General Motors, and they only do so by brute force, with more than double the battery size to achieve the range they do. Less battery per car means more cars per amount of rare Earth mineral. This adds up in a real way that we don’t normally think about.

Said battery can charge very quickly, picking up 320 km worth of charge in just 16 minutes. As of 2026, it is equipped with both conventional J1772 and NACS charge ports, enabling access to Tesla’s Supercharging network. Its handsome body is also incredibly slippery, with a drag co-efficient of .197, putting it among the most aerodynamic vehicles ever put into production. It’s a ground-bound private jet.

I could go on. The amount of attention to detail and care that went into every step of this is unreal. The minutiae of the rotor, stator, and transmission design alone are fascinating, undermining long established convention and going back to the most basic principles of thermodynamics to best re-evaluate how things can and should be done. The whole car is like this.

Imperfections

The core tenets that matter in a car, that have mattered in a car for decades, that should still matter in a car, are so thoroughly nailed down and well executed that it makes minor foibles like the lost GPS and finicky satellite radio reception forgivable. These are just teething troubles in an otherwise fabulous car that deserves to be a star. Software is iffy but fixable and therefore, forgivable.

Conversely, the build quality is impeccable, the engineering is otherworldly, and you can’t patch those over the air. Dismissing a car like this over minor bugs is like not enjoying a fabulous meal on a beautiful patio in paradise because because a fly landed on your wine glass. 

Money

I was asked by a friend’s mom what I liked about this car.

“I imagine it’s hard not to like an expensive luxury car like that; what do they start at, a hundred grand?”
“Actually you’re bang on the money, they start at a hundred; this one is a hundred and forty-four.
“Wow. My god. And you’re convinced it’s worth every penny?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, it’s very good looking. It’s very nicely built, and very beautifully designed. It uses very nice materials, and very well thought out tech. It’s very intuitive. It’s very spacious, very comfortable, very quiet.  It goes very far on a charge. It drives and handles very well. And it’s very fast. ”
“Well it sounds like it’s got all the “verys” squared away.“

Yes. Yes it does.

At $144,350 as tested, this Lucid Air Touring offers a rare best of every world in a vehicle that’s thoughtfully designed like few other cars are. There aren’t many cars that can match it for serene comfort, gorgeous handling, and outright performance taken individually; and approximately zero that can better it on all fronts simultaneously. That it happens to also be electric and have the among the best cruising range in the industry is just a sweet bonus. The only car I’d even be thinking about in this approximate realm is the BMW i5 M60, and as much as I liked that car and BMWs in general, this Lucid trounces it.

Wrap it up

I do worry for the long-term viability of the company. In a market based on merit, rather than marketing, this would be a success story like few other cars. There have been talks of discontinuing this Air in favour of the Gravity SUV, because marketing from other companies told you that’s what you want. I really hope this doesn’t end up in the same hallowed halls as the Tucker 48, because I’m not sure I’ve driven a better car.

The 2026 Lucid Air is one of the few vehicles that nullifies the divide between electric and fossil-fuel cars. You do not need to be an “EV-shopper” to like and appreciate what this is, because what this is the among the best luxury sedans you can buy, at any price, with any power source. If you like cars, like driving, like technology, like good design, admire quality engineering, if you care about the things I care about, you’ll like this car a lot. It is so, so good at everything that it’s difficult to comprehend. That a vehicle can rise above the usual “meh” grievances that afflict all cars and also excel at the intangible experiences we fantasize about all at once ought to be one for the books.