Lucid claims the air will be able to charge up to 300 miles in 20 minutes

If we look at the numbers, what we are, then it’s safe to say that Lucid seems to have a really viable Tesla competitor on their hands with their next car, the Air. Earlier this month, Lucid announced the Air’s expected range, 517 miles, which would make it the longest-range electric vehicle available, edging out Tesla’s Model S Long Range Plus with its 402 miles per charge. Now Lucid claims the Air will also be able to charge faster than Tesla, at a rate of 20 miles per minute, or up to 300 miles in 20– a charge in minutes.

To get this type of charge rate you need to use a 900 volts charger with a peak charge rate of 300 Kw, chargers with which Lucid is associated Electrify America to build. These standard Combined Charging System (CCS) DC charging stations could be deployed in any of Electrify America’s 2,000 charging stations, but so far I haven’t seen any specific numbers on how many actually deployed. and ready, nor on future projections. .

I reached out to Lucid with questions about this and will update it when I have a response.

To compare charging rates, Tesla’s superchargers can supply DC power at a rate of up to 250 kW, which amounts to about 15 miles per minute of charge, five miles per minute less than Lucid claims.

Lucid also provided this little video of an Air being charged from what looks like a docking station:

I’m not sure why they included this video in the press release as it doesn’t have a plug with the fast charging DC pins, but maybe that’s because the PR is discussing the charging setup as well. at home from Lucid, which allows two-way charging.

This feature would now be useful for Californian customers, who could draw electricity from their cars during the power outages = blackout.

The Air could prove to be a real viable competitor for Tesla, although, with prices expected to start around $ 100,000, that won’t do much to fight the Model 3 at the mass market level. Of course, almost every new electric vehicle has been called the one that will finally provide Tesla with real competition, and thanks to Tesla’s more intangible perks in public perception, it turned out to be trickier than expected.

Still, the air has the numbers and the look, so who knows?