- Lucid is gearing up to launch its first SUV, the Gravity.
- Designing a car that can handle a decade of life in the real-world is hard, as Tesla's frequent durability problems have proven.
- To get around that, traditional automakers, Lucid and others use "proving grounds" that torture-test their vehicles.
- Lucid's latest video highlights what sort of testing the Gravity has gone through.
How do you simulate an entire 150,000-mile vehicle lifetime in a couple of months? That's the fundamental challenge facing engineers at automotive proving grounds. In the latest video from Lucid, you can see a peek into how it works.
I love this video, because I love proving grounds. I've only been to one—Hyundai Motor Group's facility in the Mojave desert—and absolutely loved the experience. Hyundai laser-scanned and recreated some of the most tortuous bits of the U.S. interstate system at the facility, and torture-tested vehicles by driving them on undulating pavement, high-speed ovals, off-road trails and through salt baths. It bakes its vehicles in ovens—with salt still on their underbodies—and uses sun-tracking cases in the desert sun to do accelerated UV-wear testing. It was an incredibly impressive facility, and a trip I still recount frequently today.
Yet while that approach is common among so-called "legacy automakers," who almost all have Arctic, desert and specialty proving grounds, some startups take a less serious approach to durability testing. Tesla, for one, famously uses its consumers as beta testers. The brand still does some durability testing, but I've never seen evidence that Tesla has a similar-caliber facility to what the big companies use.
Lucid wants to set itself apart from Tesla. Not just in efficiency, but in its approach to durability and quality. Early Lucid Airs had quality problems you'd expect from a brand new company—and MotorTrend's long-term tester had plenty of issues—but it's been working hard to build a reliable and durable product. That's especially true for the upcoming Gravity, its first SUV, which may be asked to do some harder off-road work.
Lucid's durability testing video shows the Gravity negotiating some gnarly rocky roads, dealing with undulating "cosin" bumps, plodding through sand, sitting on a suspension shaker, towing trailers and doing repeated acceleration attempts on a steep hill.
It's a tougher testing regimen for what's supposed to be Lucid's toughest product yet. Based on the testing procedure, it looks ready to handle a beating. But Lucid obviously isn't going to show if the SUV has problems or breakdowns in its promotional videos, and the real world can throw curve balls rarely seen in repeatable, intentionally designed test. We'll have to wait until the Gravity launches later this year to see Lucid's work at the proving grounds results in a product that's ready for prime time.
