Perhaps for the first time in history, someone has accurately described a three-row crossover as being “Scandi flickable.” For those who don’t speak Rally English, the Scandinavian flick is an old rally technique where, to get a car sliding in a corner, you huck it in the opposite direction first, creating a pendulum effect. One imagines that not many owners will try a Scandinavian flick in a Lucid Gravity, an electric, three-row luxury SUV. Their loss.
The Gravity is a huge deal for Lucid, the Bay Area EV startup looking to grow into a serious volume automaker. Like the Air sedan, the Gravity is a remarkable engineering achievement, if not quite a perfect car. But it’s also a reminder that vehicles are a reflection of the people who create them. And the Gravity is a product of serious enthusiasts.
| Quick Specs | 2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring |
| Motor | Dual Permanent-Magnet |
| Output | 824 Horsepower / 909 Pound-Feet |
| Battery | 112-kWh Net (123-kWh Gross) |
| Range | 450 Miles |
| Base Price / As Tested | $96,550 / $127,150 |
Lucid launched the Gravity in the Grand Touring trim, which carries a $96,550 base price with a five-seat configuration. The fully loaded, seven-seat testers Lucid had on hand cost a stout $127,150. There’s an $81,650 Touring model also on its way, but Lucid hasn’t confirmed specs or an on-sale date.
Pricing puts the Gravity Grand Touring right at the pointy end of the luxury SUV market, EV or otherwise. But as it sits, this is one of the most powerful SUVs on sale, with 824 horsepower and 909 pound-feet of torque from two electric motors. It’ll get to 60 miles per hour in just about 3.4 seconds.
Yet, even with all that power, the Gravity is still one of the most efficient electric SUVs, squeezing a remarkable 450 miles of range from a 112.0 kilowatt-hour (123.0-kWh gross) battery. (These test cars, with seven seats, and the largest wheels with summer tires, get 386 miles of range.) Lucid is quite proud of the fact that the Gravity goes nearly as far as a Cadillac Escalade IQ despite using a battery a little over half the size. Which is also a big reason why the Lucid weighs 3,000 pounds less than the Caddy.
Pros: Excellent Ride & Handling, Incredible Range/Efficiency, Clever Packaging
Before we got to the real, surprising fun of sliding the Gravity on dirt, though, we drove the SUV in a slightly more realistic scenario, up the freeway and through the mountains of the gorgeous Los Padres National Forest. On the 101, with Lucid’s full driver-assist Dream Drive Pro suite handling most of the hard work, it did the luxury SUV thing extremely well. It’s quiet and comfortable, with only a bit of noise and occasional harsh impacts coming from the optional 22-inch front and 23-inch rear wheels.
Turning off the freeway, the Gravity is even more remarkable. These testers had the $2,900 Dynamic Handling Package, which replaces the standard single-chamber air springs with three-chamber units, and adds rear-wheel steering. All Gravity models get Bilstein’s excellent dual-valve adaptive dampers, and the way this thing handles is remarkable.
There’s so much grip, and the driver gets a good sense of what the car is doing beneath through the seat. You can feel the grip build up when you get the car set into a corner at a speed that’ll certainly, uh, entertain your six passengers, and the steering is perfectly calibrated.
Between corners, the Gravity is outrageously quick, too; 824 hp will do that. Interestingly enough, the Gravity doesn’t have the baseball-bat-to-the-chest acceleration from 0 mph like a Tesla Model X, but unlike most EVs, the speed just builds and builds. This is a car where you need to keep a close eye on the speedometer because it’s so much faster than it feels.
Cons: Panel Gaps On Testers, Buggy Software, No Regenerative Braking Via Pedal
While the ride-handling balance is superb, I do have some dynamic qualms with the Gravity. Lucid only does regenerative braking via lifting the throttle, like Tesla, so if you don’t like one-pedal driving—which I don’t—and switch off that mode, you‘re going to lose out on significant efficiency. I wish they had a blended brake pedal, which combines regenerative and friction braking.
That said, the one-pedal drive mode is extremely well calibrated and smooth. It’s fine in town and on the freeway, but it’s an adjustment in more spirited driving. You can use the one-pedal mode to help get weight on the nose into corners, but it requires supreme right-foot precision. And the brake pedal itself feels very odd. An engineer said they were aiming for a similar brake-pedal feel as a 911 GT3, but it feels more like an old Citroen.
There’s a little dead spot at the top, but once you get into the pedal, it acts more like a pressure-sensitive switch with almost no travel. It’s very unnatural and not really like a GT3’s brakes at all. That sort of works in an old Citroen DS, but in something that weighs nearly 6,000 pounds and has this much power, you want something that isn’t so vague. It saps confidence.
To live with, the Gravity will take some getting used to. There’s one upper screen that works as a gauge cluster and infotainment, and a large lower screen with climate and other vehicle controls, plus doubling of some infotainment functions. It’s very different from most other automaker systems. A couple of hours of driving isn’t enough time to adjust, so I don’t want to render a complete verdict, but the whole thing looks great and has some hard buttons for things like temperature, fan speed, and the heated/cooled seats.
The “D-pads” on either side of the squircle steering wheel control various vehicle and infotainment functions. The left lets you swipe through some gauge cluster menus on the left side of the upper screen, and also handles all the driver-assist systems, while the right lets you control the upper infotainment. It all works well, but again, it requires a bit of mental recalibration.
Worrying was the glitchy software in the test cars on hand. None present had the head-up display working, and journalists driving another car reported that the lane-keep assist wouldn’t turn off despite being shown as deactivated in the driver-assist menu.
Other build-quality issues were evident. Some vehicles had comically huge panel gaps, and ours made all sorts of creaking noises that either came from the suspension or from trim pieces rubbing against each other. I couldn’t tell. Lucid reps said that these cars went straight to the media event without time for a pre-delivery inspection that would catch such issues before a car went to a customer.
If you’re coming out of a Tesla Model X, none of this will concern you, but from a BMW or Mercedes? You might be in for a surprise.
But, the trade-off is getting something that’s truly clever and innovative in a way no established automaker is even doing. It’s an engineer’s car. Eric Bach, Lucid’s chief engineer, proudly points out that putting the high beam in a separate lower unit freed up more front trunk space; the rear-wheel steering system uses independent actuators for each wheel because it opens up interior volume; it charges faster on a Tesla Supercharger than a Tesla; and then there’s what it’ll do on dirt.
Soon available as an over-the-air update, the Lucid Gravity’s “Terrain” mode turns this SUV into something else entirely. Lucid set up a little dirt rallycross course on a ranch it rented out for the event, and you won’t believe how good it is out here. You can turn stability control off fully, but traction control stays on to help you slide the car like a Finnish rally hero.
Use the one-pedal driving to get weight on the nose quickly, then be aggressive with the throttle. Normally, you’d spin up the tires like crazy with 824 hp and 909 lb-ft, but that’s where Lucid’s super-quick, ultra-precise traction control works its magic. You can even do transitions in this thing, drifting from corner to corner, taking advantage of a 49-front, 51-rear weight balance. I could’ve spent all day out there.
Lucid’s engineering team are all dyed-in-the-wool nerds. They own E36s, S2000s, Lotuses, and more of the stuff that you and I lust after. Their passion seeps into the Gravity, and gives it personality that not only reveals itself in extreme use cases like this, but when you drive the car normally too. This is a product of people who care and put in the extra effort to make nerds like you and me happy.
As it sits, the Gravity is not perfect, at least not yet. But it is Scandi-flickable. It’s special. How often do you get to say that about a three-row SUV?
Competitors
Gallery: 2025 Lucid Gravity First Drive Review
2025 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring
