Driven: Lucid's entry-level sedan dominates Porsche, Benz and BMW

If there were any justice in the world of electric luxury cars, the single-motor, rear-drive 2025 Lucid Air Pure wouldn't need to exist. Before the Pure came along, Lucid's lineup of all-wheel-drive Air sedans was already value-packed and virtually peerless, delivering mind-boggling performance for thousands less than comparable rivals.

But it's hard to get a foothold when you're new to the market. Many people would rather pay more for a lesser product from an established brand — unless, perhaps, the upstart's offering is simply too cheap to ignore.

Enter the Air Pure, which lacks the multiple motors of its pricier brethren but also starts at a hair under $70,000, undercutting the next-cheapest Air Touring by eight grand.

When I got behind the wheel of my 2025 Air Pure test car, I assumed I'd be able to feel that relative cheapness in the way it drove. I was so very wrong. It quickly became apparent that even if the Pure were the only Air trim available, it would still be the envy of the world's top legacy automakers, including — to Germany's shame, I imagine — Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

Let's start with the numbers

I'm mainly here to tell you about my own experience with the Air Pure, but allow me to lay a foundation of cold hard facts at the outset. Here's how the Air Pure stacks up against its direct rear-wheel-drive German rivals, or as close to direct as the Germans can muster.

In brief, it's a bloodbath on the German side. Only one Teutonic model — the i5 eDrive40 — is cheaper than the Air Pure, and it trails the Lucid by 125 miles in range and 1.2 seconds to 60 mph. Stepping way up in price to the i7 eDrive50 doesn't move the needle much in either of those columns, and now you're paying a $35k premium.

As for Mercedes, whose struggle to find buyers for its "EQ" cars has been well-documented, you can pay $5k more than what Lucid's charging and get an EQE that gives up 112 miles of range and 1.7 seconds of acceleration to the Air Pure. Not satisfied? Consider the EQS 450+, which costs about $35k more than the Lucid, like the i7, while only reducing those deficits to 30 miles and 1.4 seconds, respectively.

And then there's Porsche. Of all the German makes, surely this is the one that must have cracked the code and rolled out a vaguely competitive car.

Nope.

The closest the Taycan gets to rivaling the Air Pure is a version that costs roughly $37k more and offers 102 fewer miles of range. Hey, at least it matches the Pure's 4.5-second acceleration time.

The contrasts here could hardly be starker in this ultra-competitive world of ours, which usually yields similar results at the top of each vehicle segment. Despite having incalculable advantages in experience and capital, this mighty German trio has been taken straight to the woodshed by an EV startup. It's very strange, and also objectively true.

Great, but how does the Lucid Air Pure drive?

If you're familiar with German luxury cars and haven't driven a Lucid, you're probably thinking that the Air can't compare when it comes to solidity and refinement on the road. I totally get it — I'm a Mercedes guy myself (three of my last four personal cars have been Benzes), and I was similarly skeptical when I settled into the Air Pure's driver seat.

It was my first Lucid experience, and I definitely didn't expect it to measure up, because how could it? The Germans have been doing this luxury thing better than anyone since time immemorial. What chance did some random Saudi-backed ringer have of matching that excellence?

But damned if the Air Pure didn't handle the curves and straightaways of Malibu's hills like, well, a German. Right off the bat, I could tell that Lucid's acceleration claim was legit — the 430-horsepower Pure moves out when you goose it, even though it's by far the weakest Air you can buy. Bending it into a corner and keeping the speed up, it was clear that the chassis had the right moves, too, despite lacking air springs, a privilege presently reserved for the new Gravity SUV.

Ride quality? Yeah, it's got that. Again, the lack of air springs may be perceived as a shortcoming relative to rivals that are so equipped, but what matters to me is real-world performance. In that regard, the Air Pure shines, effortlessly smoothing out rippled pavement as a luxury car should. It's not just good given how much cheaper it is; it's damn good, period.

How comfortable is the interior?

Man, I'll tell you what. Sitting in the rear quarters of this Lucid, you'd think you were in a full-size luxury car with an extended wheelbase. That's how much legroom there is, seriously. If anything, there's too much space back there. In the photo below, your 6'1" narrator is effectively sitting behind himself, having configured the driver-seat settings prior to moving rearward. The legroom is so generous that I might as well be sitting in a limousine.

But because there was no need to cram an engine into the nose, Lucid was able to limit the Air's overall length to a remarkably modest 195.9 inches. It's decidedly midsize on the outside, then, while offering full-size-plus space inside. Neat trick. The EV revolution hath its advantages.

Wait, what's this I'm hearing about build quality?

Yeah, I can confirm that it's not just Tesla. My Air Pure test car had two glaring cases of panel misalignment, which is something you'd never see on a German luxury car these days.

The first was impossible to miss as I did my initial walkaround. On the driver side, the rear door didn't come close to lining up with the rear wheel arch. If you're leasing, hey, no big deal, right? But if you're buying, this sort of thing could drive you crazy. A $70k car should be able to square up its arches.

Then I inspected the interior, and something didn't look right where the passenger door panel met the dashboard. My feedback to Lucid here would be that the design was probably too ambitious for the production facility. If you need the door to flow seamlessly into the dash, you better make sure that your assembly line can achieve that kind of precision. Remove those look-at-me metal accent strips from the design requirements, though, and any panel-alignment issues would be far less apparent.

Overall, the Air Pure that I drove seemed to be screwed together pretty well, but these build quality slip-ups give me pause. If nothing else, they're reminders that Lucid is new at this, which could make a reasonable person wonder what else in this highly complex machine may not have been assembled to the highest standard.

How's the trunk space?

In two words or less: really good. Lucid says you get 22.1 cubic feet of space in the trunk, which is exceptional — most traditional sedans max out in the mid teens.

Eyeballing it, I wasn't sure if golf bags would fit well in there, although the opening is certainly as wide as it gets. But I have it on good authority that a twosome, at least, should have no problem schlepping their tools to the course.

For what it's worth, the Air's closest rival, the Tesla Model S, has an SUV-grade hatchback trunk that can swallow a whole lot more gear.

MotorDonkey says

Returning to the title of this review, there's no doubt that even the entry-level Lucid Air Pure runs circles around everything Germany can throw at it, adding further support to the Air's top ranking among luxury midsize electric cars. This is astonishing stuff for a relatively young startup that's only been shipping cars for about half a decade now.

Would I pick the Air Pure myself? No, but only because the rest of the Air lineup is so incredible, starting with the Touring. To me, the Pure looks like more of a get-'em-in-the-door price leader in light of the Touring's considerably shinier credentials (1.1 seconds quicker to 60 mph, AWD traction and just 14 fewer miles of range) for an eight-grand surcharge.

But that's really just saying that Lucid is, if anything, a victim of its own engineering success. The Air portfolio is the proverbial embarrassment of riches, whereas the Germans are struggling to come up with a single compelling answer to any Air variant.

It's still hard for me to believe that Germany's most iconic marques — Porsche! BMW! Benz! — haven't figured out how keep up with the new kid, but you gotta tip your cap to Lucid for bursting onto the scene and rubbing egg on all those familiar faces. ⛐ md