Lucid reveals more about its Tesla-beating battery
When Lucid shared its record-breaking battery range for an electric vehicle earlier this month, the luxury EV maker didn't explain much about how it got to over 500 miles.
On Wednesday, the California-based company gave a few more details on how the Air crushed Tesla's 402-mile battery range to reach 517 miles on a single charge.
It all comes down to the 113-kWH extended range battery pack Lucid has built with its in-house battery maker Atieva. 113-kWH indicates how much energy the battery can store, a higher capacity than those used in most other passenger EVs.
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By comparison, Tesla's Model S has both 100- and 75-kWh battery options, while the newer Model 3 has batteries with 54- and 75-kWh of energy storage. Porsche's Taycan EV battery, meanwhile, has a capacity of 93.4 kWh.
Lucid also operates on a 900-volt battery system (compared to Tesla's 400 volts) and with a skateboard-shaped battery layout on the floor of the car.
In case doubters assume Lucid just filled the car with a giant battery, the company released some measurements for the dual-motor four-door sedan. Lucid claims its frunk (that's a front trunk) is the largest ever in an EV with 280 liter capacity. (The Tesla Model S, another luxury electric sedan, offers 150 liters in its frunk.) Its traditional trunk in the back holds 459 liters.
“It’s relatively easy to achieve more range by adding progressively more batteries, but gaining ‘dumb range’ that way increases weight and cost, and reduces interior space,” Peter Rawlinson, Lucid's CEO, said in a press release.
Lucid hasn't revealed the battery's exact weight or size, but insists it miniaturized the electric drivetrain and battery pack. "By pursuing this ‘smart range’ approach, Lucid shall not only be able to offer the Air with this unprecedented absolute range, but also offer future models that achieve competitive range from proportionately smaller battery packs, thereby saving cost, weight, and space," Rawlinson continued.
More about the battery system is supposed to be revealed at the Lucid Air's online debut on Sept. 9. Pricing for the glass-roofed vehicle will hopefully also be announced then, to determine if the Air will be affordable, or a super-charged pipe dream for most of us, when it comes out next year.
Topics Electric Vehicles
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
