Lucid Gravity

Our testers were especially impressed by the Gravity’s efficient use of space, which results in more room for everything and everyone you might carry. “The motors and powertrain are really small, leading to a larger interior space, even for an EV,” said one tester. “Large frunk, huge trunk, and overall massive interior space, especially with all the seats folded down.”

Both rear rows fold flat, opening up a gigantic space for cargo behind the front row. I drove the Gravity while moving into a new house, and it was an ideal vehicle for that. I fit a three-seat-wide, 81-inch-long couch, a flat-pack daybed frame, and a rolled-up mattress in the back of the Lucid. A taller driver who needs to move the seat further back may have struggled to close the rear hatch for this load, but at 5 feet, 4 inches, I had enough space. Even with all of the seats upright, there’s still lots of space. Behind the third row, there’s a deep well in the floor where those seats fit when folded down, which becomes extra cargo space when the third row is in use.

Another highlight is the 8.1-cubic-foot front trunk, or “frunk." It’s large enough for two people to sit side-by-side on it. Lucid even sells a $500 padded seat insert if you routinely want to use it as a bench, though it takes up quite a bit of space. Transporting people wasn’t an afterthought, either. The rear doors open extra wide—a full 90 degrees, says Lucid. The doors, plus a power-operated second row of seats, make it easy to get in and out of the third row. Once third-row passengers are inside, the second row seats will move back into their original position. That second row has ample headroom and legroom for tall adults. The seats also recline, and passengers get their own climate controls.

The third row, however, is predictably less spacious than the second. One of our testers (5 feet, 7 inches tall) noted that third-row headroom felt tight, though shorter testers had few issues. Overall, for a third row that isn’t in a full-sized SUV, like the Jeep Wagoneer, the space is impressively roomy, with a fairly comfortable (albeit slightly low) seating position. “Adults can sit back here and be okay for a bit,” said one tester. The third row also comes with its own set of USB-C ports and well-placed armrests.

While you can still pin your passengers to the backs of their seats if you mash the throttle, the Gravity’s power delivery comes on smoothly, even in its most high-performance drive mode. The SUVs 828 hp and 909 lb.-ft. of torque live up to the Gravity’s high-performance promises without feeling too brutal or unrefined, although some testers did find it jarring when setting off from a stop. While there is a more comfort-oriented drive mode that decreases the responsiveness of the throttle and softens up the suspension, not even the Gravity’s most chilled-out setting was a slouch when it came to acceleration, even when driving up steep hills.

“There pretty much isn’t a two-lane passing zone that this car can’t handle with ease,” said one tester. “There’s also just a pure luxuriousness of having this much instant-on power at your disposal.”

We’ll do more detailed efficiency tests when CR purchases our own Gravity, but our initial impressions were good, with testers recording between 3 and 3.2 miles per kilowatt-hour—right in line with the 3.125 mi/kWh EPA rating. Even with a lot of inefficient highway driving, one tester got 200 miles out of 61.2 kWh of power. (Most electric vehicles recoup energy when slowing down, which makes city driving generally more efficient than highway driving, where you’re usually at a constant speed.) Another cool feature is watching the display show which parts of the vehicle consumed energy and how many miles you lost or gained on a trip.

The Gravity produces a bit of high-pitched motor whine, but our reviewers said that it’s far less noticeable than the motor noise in the 2023 Air in the CR test fleet.

The Gravity isn’t just entertaining in a straight line. It’s amusing on backroads, too, with predictable handling that’s more fun than you might expect from a big family SUV. “The steering has decent on-center feel, a good weight to it, and it intuitively loads up through corners, delivering a touch of feedback on grip as well,” one tester said. Our specific Gravity came with four-wheel steering to help it turn better, and it was barely perceptible.

For a vehicle this powerful, there’s impressively little torque steer—where the vehicle pulls to one side as it tries to put too much torque to the ground—and you only feel it when you step hard on the accelerator. The all-wheel drive and traction control systems do a great job of managing this. You don’t even get wheelspin unless you punch the throttle from a stop. Unless you’re really pushing it hard, the Gravity handles well through even tight turns. While its large size means there is some inevitable body roll, the air suspension does a tremendous job of compensating for it and keeping the car level.

For the most part, the Gravity has a comfortable ride, doing a solid job of soaking up all but the harshest bumps. This makes its excellent handling even more impressive, as that strength usually comes with a spine-rattling penalty in ride quality.

This isn’t to say it’s completely perfect, but you have to push the vehicle near its limits to find any issues. “If you take a crest with too much speed, there is a disconcerting sensation that upsets the car, both when it lifts off and when it compresses back down,” said one CR tester. Another noted a similar phenomenon wherein it takes the Gravity a second for the body to settle back down after hitting several bumps in a row, making the vehicle feel floaty for a moment.

The Gravity has a simple manual charge port door that’s much easier and more intuitive to use than the motorized one on the Air. Plus, there’s a light over the port that makes it easy to see where to plug in. According to Lucid, the Gravity’s 926-volt electrical system can charge at speeds up to 400 kW on a DC fast charger and 19.2 kW on an AC home-charger. We didn’t run independent tests to confirm Lucid’s figures, but the claimed speeds seem plausible. I accidentally stuck around at a public fast charger for longer than I needed to because the Gravity charged faster than I expected.

The Gravity comes with Lucid’s suite of driver assistance systems, which it calls DreamDrive. Among the features included at launch, some work better than others. Adaptive cruise control (ACC) and DreamDrive’s “Drive Assist” system (which adds lane centering assistance with lane biasing and automatic lane change) were easy enough to engage when the steering wheel controls worked. (More on that later.)

The Gravity’s ACC was great for crawling through traffic, responding quickly to changes in the speed of the cars ahead. Communication about the status of the system was excellent for both ACC and Drive Assist. The dashboard even gives the driver clear graphics that show everything nearby that the Gravity is detecting. These systems generally drove the car smoothly, handling curves with ease, and even moving slightly to the side of a lane if it detected that the vehicle next to it was too close.

The camera views are also a huge help, with both a surround view camera for parking as well as a side blind spot view (available with the mid- and top-tier DreamDrive packages) that appears in front of the driver whenever the turn signal is activated. The parking camera also includes a distance display that tells you how close you are to various objects. Additionally, the automatic high beams turned on and off as they should, and the high beams themselves illuminated a long distance ahead of the vehicle.

Unlike the Lucid Air, in the Gravity, it’s possible to put two different functions on the top and bottom central screens. (Lucid says this feature will roll out to the Air soon.) It’s nice to be able to see more than one function at once without having to resort to using Apple CarPlay on the top screen. Being able to view both media and navigation in the top display also makes it easier to quickly see information at a glance, reducing the time you spend looking away from the road.

We were also glad to see physical controls for the temperature, fan speed, and stereo volume. The air vents are even manually adjustable, rather than relying on a touchscreen. It’s always a relief to see some physical controls remain in a vehicle that’s otherwise very reliant on onscreen menus, especially for the functions drivers will most frequently use.

• If the Gravity sat stationary for too long, it would no longer recognize that its key was inside. We were told to shake the key when this happened to get the car to detect it, but this did not work for some testers, either.
• The interior display screens sometimes stayed black for as long as 30 seconds after start-up, or they would stop responding mid-drive.
• One tester had the windows go down when they pushed the controls to make them go up.
• The adaptive cruise control system did not respond to many testers’ attempts to adjust its speed using the buttons on the steering wheel.
• When one tester typed her destination into the navigation on the top screen, then tried to open it in the bottom screen, the location didn’t transfer, as if the Gravity were operating two different navigation apps.
• We encountered two visibility-related issues: a warning related to a headlight malfunction and rear wipers that turned on when the car was put into reverse despite the fact that it was dry outside.
• Several testers had the Gravity drop its Bluetooth connection to their devices, forcing them to unpair or shut off Bluetooth, then reconnect.
• Drive Assist issued warnings to one tester to put his hands back on the wheel when they were already there.
  

None of our testers had a glitch-free experience with the car. Some of these problems, like blank screens and unresponsive buttons, are real safety concerns.

(After our testers had issues with our loaned Gravity’s steering wheel and key, Lucid replaced both during our time with the vehicle. The replacements solved the problems we had experienced with the steering wheel, but connection issues with the key persisted.)

There’s a reason why tech support usually asks, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” It’s often the easiest quick fix for a glitchy computer. When I encountered blank screens and dropped Bluetooth connectivity in the Gravity and wanted to turn it off and on again, I was reminded that it has no traditional on/off button. The car starts up as you approach and shuts off when it’s locked. I ultimately ended up getting out of the vehicle, locking it, unlocking it, and getting back in—which, it turns out, is the exact process Lucid lists for a “vehicle power cycle” (aka turning it off and on again) in the Gravity’s manual. A Lucid representative said that I could have also locked the vehicle from inside to turn everything off.

The Gravity’s infotainment screen also has a soft reboot process somewhat akin to an iPhone’s: Park, then hold down the Cancel and Voice Assistant buttons on the steering wheel, plus the brake pedal, for 25 seconds, then release.

Ideally, there would be an obvious reboot process that’s intuitive enough that you don’t need to have read the owner’s manual (page 196, to be exact) to figure it out. We’d prefer to have a dedicated, clearly labeled on/off button, especially in newer, software-heavy vehicles like the Gravity.

The Gravity’s screen-based menus and unlabeled buttons make a lot of simple tasks more frustrating and involved than they should be. Most of the controls on the steering wheel are not labeled. Those unlabeled controls include one four-direction button pad on each side, each with a touch-sensitive button in the center that you can use to swipe through various menus and options on the main displays. Worse yet, those button pads aren’t backlit, making them even harder to use at night.

To Lucid’s credit, drivers can disable the touch-sensitive center buttons in the vehicle settings. The surface of the four-direction button pads is also surrounded by a raised ring, so they’re not as easy to accidentally touch. This solves a common complaint with modern Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen steering wheel controls that they’re too easy to unintentionally engage. One tester actually found that it was easier to use these touch-sensitive pads to interact with the center touchscreen than it was to use the buttons on the screen itself. However, given how distracting it is to use that center screen, that’s faint praise.

The location of certain basic functions was especially infuriating. Having to adjust the exterior rearview mirrors from a menu that’s tucked inside another menu forces the driver to take too much attention away from the road itself. At that point, it’s best to pull over to adjust something that’s traditionally been on a physical knob or tilt-switch within easy reach of the driver. Trip information, too, was buried in an onscreen menu.

The interior has programmable buttons that you can set to use for features you want easier access to, which is good, but the options for those buttons are rather limited. (Compare that with Hyundai, Kia, or Porsche, which have extensive lists for their programmable buttons.)

The glove box release isn’t on the box itself, but on the central infotainment screen. You can use one of the physical programmable buttons below the screen to open the glove box, but you really shouldn’t have to, especially when that’s a common location for people to stash insurance documents and other items they need to access in case of an emergency.

Even the exterior light and wiper settings are onscreen, in a corner of the wide driver’s information display. Instead of being controlled on a simple stalk that you can tap or twist without looking, the driver has to take their eyes off the road to make sure they’re pressing the right section of the screen.

The location of some controls within these menus wasn’t intuitive in our test loaner at all. For example, the option to enable or prevent the exterior rearview mirrors’ turning downward when the Gravity goes in reverse was under the Driving Dynamics menu.

The display brightness setting was buried in a Quick Controls menu that was only accessible via swipe, and there was no duplicate location for this function within the regular settings menu. This, too, required pulling over to fix, as I felt unsafe driving when I couldn’t see the vehicle’s gauges and had to dive into the on-screen owner’s manual just to find the location. Even when the screen was bright enough, some of CR’s reviewers felt as if the available color schemes for the displays didn’t offer enough contrast to be easy to see at a glance.

One tester left frank advice on how to fix this: “Label your steering wheel controls. Keeping them blank is helping no one. Use physical controls for headlights, wipers, side mirrors, anything that is safety-related.”

Sometimes, voice controls can be a workaround for a poor user interface design. Can’t find a setting on the fly or don’t want to take your eyes off the road? Simply press the button for the voice assistant and ask it to change it for you.

The Gravity’s voice assistant, however, could not control many relatively simple features. Worse yet, when the voice assistant said it was unable to turn on the emergency flashers, it said that the flasher button was on the dashboard. The flasher button is actually on the Gravity’s overhead console, between the two sun visors.

The microphones’ locations on the headliner, by the rearview mirror and on the crossbeam behind the front seats, likely do not help with this. I gave up on a phone call after the person I was speaking to complained about too much background noise, and said I sounded like I was talking down a hallway. A Lucid representative said that the company is refining the tuning and voice processing algorithms to improve this function. As released—like many other tech features on the Gravity—it feels unfinished.

Lucid has improved its build quality since it was a new startup, and the improvements over our earlier Air test car are notable. However, the Gravity is a brand-new model, and in the early-production test vehicle we drove, that shows. Some trim pieces don’t quite fit as they should, like those on the exterior door handles and wheel arches. The glove box rattles, and some interior panels don’t quite line up. Some of the plastic trim and buttons felt flimsier than those in other luxury cars.

Perhaps the most notable example of its build quality issues was in the rear seats. The second-row seats can move on their own, which is great for occupants without a lot of upper body strength. But when they move, they’re noisy and slow, making it a chore to get into or out of the third row. When they move forward, that also exposes a lot of under-seat wiring.

When you push the button in the rear cargo area to fold the seats flat to make room for cargo, they flop down abruptly. Worse yet, the driver-side rear seatbacks in both the second and third rows of our Gravity caught on the passenger-side rear seats when the passenger-side seats were folded over first. Using the buttons in the back that fold the seats down also moved the front seats forward to make enough space for the second-row seatbacks to fold over—however, it did this even with a person sitting in the driver’s seat. These are all issues that don’t fit with an SUV at this price point.

The Gravity’s thick A-pillar was better at blocking the sun than its tiny sun visors, and that isn’t a compliment to either. “The sun visor is kind of a joke because sunlight still gets in around it where the glass tint isn’t as dark,” wrote one tester. The A-pillar also blocked our testers’ views of pedestrians, other cars, and other things you would not want to hit.

Rearward visibility was also subpar due to a thick D-pillar. The surround view cameras helped compensate for these blind spots somewhat, but a lack of rear illumination made the backup camera less useful at night.

We haven’t been a fan of flush electronic door handles in the past, and the Gravity’s are no exception. Not only do we have the usual concerns about getting in and out if the exterior handles ice over or the battery fails, but these also have an annoying delay between pulling the handle and opening the door. Also, the pull-up motion to open the door doesn’t feel as natural as pulling a handle outward with the door.

While we’ve seen Lucid update and upgrade its driver assists on the Air, some features you might expect on a new luxury EV like the Gravity are still advertised as coming later or still a little rough. We feel as if Lucid should have waited to release the vehicle with these announced features available and taken more time to work the bugs out of and refine the features that were included on our test vehicle.

Hands-free driving and fully automatic lane-change capabilities aren’t available at launch—with the latter, you have to initiate the change using your blinker. When the Lane Change Assist system does change lanes, it’s very abrupt to the point where passengers noticed how jarring it was. Lane centering sometimes ping-ponged back and forth a little between the two lane lines instead of staying in the middle, too.

Sensors for the various driver assists seem overly sensitive. Lane keeping assistance is a prime example. It would aggressively jerk the vehicle back into a lane. Sometimes it would misinterpret freeway merge zones, driving over dots spray-painted on the road surface, and even making left turns, trying to steer you back into a lane that wasn’t there or that you intended to depart from. This resulted in having to fight the car’s steering. Trying to back out of a lumpy driveway or up to a curb was a problem, too: The Gravity mistook lumpy pavement and low curbs that you need to park close to as hazardous objects. The emergency braking that some curbs set off was so abrupt that I thought I actually had hit the curb.

The driver attention monitor was a built-in catch-22. When navigating the infotainment menus, the monitor would sometimes show a warning, indicating that I wasn’t paying attention to the road. That warning didn’t really affect anything, since my eyes weren’t detected as being "away" for long enough. But the driver monitor would not have had to prompt me if the controls were easier to use.

We also couldn’t use the Automated Park-In (where the car pulls into a parking spot for you) and Park-Out features (where the car pulls itself out from parking spots). Automated Park-Out may have been thwarted by the error where the Gravity said it lost contact with its key, even though it was in the vehicle. Park-In is only designed to work in specific circumstances where there’s an object on all sides of a parking space, and the Gravity had to drive completely past a spot in order for the car to recognize it. Even when the system found a suitable spot, the Gravity never prompted me to auto-park into it. In this instance, I gave up when other drivers in the lot got frustrated enough to drive around me.

The Gravity has an unusual steering wheel with long, flat edges on the top and the bottom. Lucid says this is to give drivers a better view over the wheel to the driver’s information display, but this yoke-with-a-top shape was polarizing among CR’s test drivers. Some found it awkward to use in tighter turns, as the hand-over-hand motion to pull into a parking spot isn’t as natural when the steering wheel isn’t a circle. Lucid also marked the center point of the wheel with a band of leather at the bottom. This might be confusing, as center marks are usually placed at the top of a wheel, where the driver’s eyes are naturally directed.

Furthermore, some testers felt that the Gravity’s fast steering ratio—where small adjustments of the steering wheel turn the front wheels more than most cars—was a mismatch for a three-row family SUV, even a high-performance one. That ratio makes it less awkward to use the oblong steering wheel by reducing the number of times you have to turn the wheel for a tight turn. To its credit, a couple of testers got used to it. Still, most of our test group found it difficult to use. “The steering is also abnormally quick, especially for the vehicle’s intended purpose,” said one CR tester. “It’s fine when you’re driving hard on a twisty road, but it makes you have to be super smooth with tiny little inputs during regular driving, which is silly.”

One-pedal driving—when regenerative braking recuperates some energy and slows the car when the driver lets off the throttle—is a favorite feature among EV owners. With the Gravity, we found that you had to be very precise with the pedal to operate it smoothly. Let off the throttle too quickly, and it was harsh, like dropping a boat anchor at speed. We also found the throttle pedal to be uncomfortably stiff.

When regenerative braking is turned off, judging by the power meter, the Gravity doesn’t regenerate any power, even under braking. (In most EVs—except Lucid and Tesla vehicles—after turning the regenerative braking off, the vehicle can coast, but applying the brakes still activates the regen system, recuperating energy.) Having the brakes totally disconnected from the regen system may be why the Gravity’s actual brakes feel inadequate for the vehicle’s weight and size. Without assistance from the regen, the brake pedal requires lots of force to get the vehicle to slow down. Having to depress the brake pedal so heavily feels strange compared to the light precision that the accelerator requires.

The charge port sits rather far back on the Gravity’s back fender, which means that you need to back into most charging stalls. This can block the rear hatch from opening while charging. We would have rather had the charge port on the front fender instead.

Having an EV in 2025 also means occasionally needing a converter to use different plug styles. While the Gravity has a North American Charging System-style plug that allows it to charge at Tesla Supercharger stations with little issue—and which should become more common as more automakers move to this standard—using an adapter for bulkier Combined Charging System plugs was somewhat cumbersome, especially when combined with thick fast-charger cords.

The center console is deep and holds a lot of items, but there’s a shallow bin that sits on top, with a wireless phone-charging pad, a molded space to stash the key, two cup holders, and room for other small items. We found that it was easy to slide it too far forward, pushing tall bottles into the HVAC controls and items in the front of the bin under the dashboard, where they’re hard to reach.

On a day it was raining, one of our testers walked up to the Gravity and opened the driver’s door to get in. As he did, the windshield wiper did a full wipe, flinging water at him. Key confusion: The proximity key—which the vehicle detects as it approaches—behaved strangely, too. The Gravity can detect the key from pretty far away, flashing the headlights when the key was sitting (not moving towards the vehicle, but just sitting) about four or five yards away from where the Gravity was parked in the driveway. However, unlocking the car required the driver to have the key close to the vehicle, which frustrated some of CR’s testers.

The Gravity has no option for an “access” or “comfort” exit, a feature that, when the driver stops to get out of the car, moves the seat back and holds it there until the driver returns and gets back in the seat to drive away. Testers complained about having to duck to get in and out without hitting their heads on the heavily raked A-pillar. Access or comfort exit is a feature found on cars that cost a fraction of the Gravity’s price, so it’s bizarre not to have it here.

It wasn’t just issues with getting in and out that made us scratch (or whack) our heads. The tailgate doesn’t open very high, which made it easy for taller testers to hit their heads when accessing the rear cargo area.

What We'll Keep an Eye On

Are the upgrades really worth it?

Certain trim features and options in this Gravity—like the $2,900 22-speaker surround sound system—worked well. But they can add thousands of dollars to an already high price. The Gravity that Consumer Reports purchases for our test program will likely have different extras, so we can assess which options are worth it.

Our testers were split on how comfortable the Gravity’s seats were. Some thought all three rows were comfortable. The combination of firm support and a great seat heater actually eased my back pain somewhat, and it was convenient that the vehicle remembered not only my driver’s seat position but also the lumbar support position. The front seats have side bolstering that was supportive without being too narrow and easy to adjust. Even the massaging seats worked well, according to our testers. Some testers, however, said that all three rows of seats were too stiff to get comfortable in, with too much lumbar support in the front seats and not enough bolstering in the second- and third-row seats. This raises the question: How will these seats wear over time? Will they break in and soften with use, or will they stay firm forever? Will the upcoming option for captain’s chairs on the second row help the third row feel more spacious and offer second-row passengers a more comfortable experience?

There are two main reasons why we don’t think the Gravity is quite ready. First and foremost, the early-production example that Lucid lent us had a number of glitches during our time with the vehicle. Second, there are a number of desirable features that aren’t available at launch, including hands-free driving (which Lucid plans to release via over-the-air update in the next year), Android Auto, and the option for second-row captain’s chairs.

It’s also worth watching what features may be announced or refined in the future. Lucid’s inclusion of “Experiences”—whole-dashboard visualizations and guided meditations—is a little cheesy, but fun, and proof that the company considered things to do while waiting in the car. Will they follow other manufacturers’ lead in adding in-car games and other activities to stave off boredom while charging or waiting in school pick-up lines? We’ve seen Lucid use over-the-air updates to refine and improve the features in our Air test vehicle. We hope the same happens with the Gravity.

Lucid says the Gravity will have a range of up to 450 miles and will be able to add 200 miles with just 15 minutes of high-speed public DC fast charging. We don’t yet know whether different versions of the Gravity will have different ranges, as is the case with the Air sedan. Lucid recently announced that it will use Tesla’s NACS connector, so we expect the Gravity to be equipped with the port

The Gravity comes standard with Lucid’s DreamDrive 2 suite of active safety and driver assistance features. It includes adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, blind spot warning, front and rear cross traffic warning, lane departure warning, lane keeping assistance, park distance warning, direct driver monitoring system, driver re-engagement system, and hands-on Level 2 Drive Assist (Lucid’s branded name for active driving assistance).

Three levels of DreamDrive 2 are available on the Gravity. Stepping up to the mid-tier DreamDrive 2 Premium adds a blind spot display (which shows you a camera feed in the driver’s information display of the blind spot in the direction you’re turning), adaptive drive beam headlights (which block out sections of the headlights to avoid dazzling oncoming traffic), a 3D surround view monitor, enhanced Drive Assist (which adds lane buffering, lane-change assist and suggested lane changes), automatic parking in and out, and a see-through camera view.

The top-tier DreamDrive2 Pro adds more advanced automatic parking tech, including remote parking capabilities and traffic light detection. It will add hands-free driving assist when the feature becomes available.