The Lucid Air could be the first electric car with over 500 miles of range

12 / 08 / 2020

By CNN -

Lucid, an electric vehicle company headed by former Tesla engineer Peter Rawlinson, has announced that its upcoming Lucid Air car is expected to get an EPA-rated range of at least 517 miles.

That’s far higher than other electric cars on the market today, including the Tesla Model S Long Range Plus, which has an EPA rated range of 402 miles. Tesla’s was the first electric car widely available to consumers to have a driving range of more than 400 miles on a single charge.

The final production version of the Lucid Air is expected to be unveiled on September 9. The cars will be built in Lucid’s Casa Grande, Arizona, factory. The first ones will be delivered to customers early next year.

Lucid’s range claim is based on testing by FEV, a company that specializes in testing and development of various automotive systems. FEV’s range test was closely modeled on the standardized test used by the Environmental Protection Agency to determine a gasoline car’s fuel economy and an electric car’s range. So it’s expected that the official EPA range should be similar or maybe even slightly higher, a Lucid spokesman said.

California-based Lucid was founded in 2007 and unveiled a concept version of its electric car in 2016. The company originally focused on making electric vehicle batteries before it decided to produce its own car. The company’s battery operations are now a separate division called Atieva, Lucid’s original name, that supplies the batteries used in Formula E race cars.

Lucid also claims the Air will be capable of going from zero to 60 miles an hour in just 2.5 seconds. Doing that a lot, though, would probably reduce the car’s total driving range.