- The Lucid Air Grand Touring is America's longest-driving EV, according to EPA estimates.
- With 19-inch wheels, its rated at 516 miles of range.
- In this highway test, which had to be done overnight, the Air Grand Touring ran for 463 miles at 70 mph.
Can electric vehicles meet or exceed what the best gas-powered cars can do, in every situation and under any conditions? Even as an EV advocate, I'd be the first to answer that question with a pragmatic "not yet." But EV options are getting better and better all of the time, and some brands are proving to be light years ahead of others. Case in point: a recent 70 mph highway range test of the Lucid Air Grand Touring really proves that if you can find a better road-trip machine—gas or electric—just buy it. But we're not sure that you will.
Longtime InsideEVs Contributing Editor and charging expert Tom Moloughney recently put a 2024 Air Grand Touring through one of his famous 70 mph range tests. This is the same model of Air that Tom and I drove from New York City to Boston and back in one day, albeit not the exact same car—my tester had the 20-inch wheels, yielding "only" an EPA-estimated 480 miles of range.
Later on, Tom got the good one. That one has 19-inch wheels, giving it an EPA-estimated 516 miles of range and making it the longest-distance electric car you can buy. That even puts its total range above many gas-powered cars, although several hybrids, plug-in hybrids and big-tank trucks have it beaten. But in the electric world, the Air Grand Touring is unmatched.
So much so that Tom had to do this test overnight, because the car runs for so long that morning or evening rush hour traffic would've made it impossible. (Tom has more commitment than I do; I like my sleep.) But in doing so, he managed to get the Air Grand Touring to run for a staggering 463 miles at 70 mph.
That's truly impressive, but to me, it's not surprising. We have long known that the Air Grand Touring was capable of such incredible distances without stopping. In fact, in our NYC-Boston-NYC trip earlier this year, we covered about 460 miles in a single day. We stopped to fast charge, but candidly, that felt more precautionary than necessary. I bet the car could've done it all in one go, had we been careful enough.
Perhaps more importantly, the Lucid Air proves that efficiency—not battery size—is how you win the day. His Air Grand Touring netted an impressive 4.1 miles per kilowatt hour rating by the end of the test. As someone who considers anything over 3.0 miles per kilowatt hour to be "good," the fact that the Lucid could pull off such numbers on the highway (when EVs are at their least efficient) proves how legitimate it is.
There are few cars that come close to matching what the Air Grand Touring can do right now. One is the Mercedes-Benz EQS, which for all that brand's EV challenges is a range monster itself, and the Tesla Model S; same, even for its age. But right now, Lucid is the one to beat.
Check out Tom's full test above and let us know what you think.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
