When we met the brand and its prototype Lucid Air sedan in 2017 , the company planned to put the first cars in customers' hands within a couple of years. But you know what they say about plans. A lack of funding paused everything until late 2018, when Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund bought itself a stake . A billion dollars meant Lucid could build a factory—at the cost of alienating some former fans because of the source.
Then the pandemic happened, further pushing back timelines as supply shortages took hold. But the Air did go on sale, and it has more recently been joined by the Gravity SUV . There's even a much more affordable midsize SUV in the works called the Earth. Sales more than doubled in 2025, and after spending a week with a model year 2026 Lucid Air Touring, I can understand why.
There are now quite a few different versions of the Air to choose from. For just under a quarter of a million dollars , there's the outrageously powerful Air Sapphire, which offers acceleration so rapid it's unlikely your internal organs will ever truly get used to the experience. At the other end of the spectrum is the $70,900 Air Pure, a single-motor model that's currently the brand's entry point but which also stands as a darn good EV . The last time I tested a Lucid, it was the Air Grand Touring almost three years ago.
That car mostly impressed me but still felt a little unfinished, especially at $138,000. This time, I looked at the Air Touring, which starts at $79,900, and the experience was altogether more polished. The Touring features a less-powerful all-wheel-drive powertrain than the Grand Touring, although to put "less-powerful" into context, with 620 hp (462 kW) on tap, there are almost as many horses available as in the legendary McLaren F1. Easily the world's fastest car until Bugatti revived the Veyron, it remains a mental benchmark for many of us of a certain age.) The Touring's 885 lb-ft (1,160 Nm) is far more than BMW's 6-liter V12 can generate, but at 5,009 lbs (2,272 kg), the electric sedan weighs twice as much as the carbon-fiber supercar. The fact that the Air Touring can reach 60 mph (98 km/h) from a standing start in just 0.2 seconds more than the McLaren's 3.2 seconds tells you plenty about how much more accessible acceleration has become in the past few decades.
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