Lucid UX 2.0 first look: OTA update brings big changes to the luxury EV

For a first car, Lucid has done an exquisite job with the Air. But like all automakers, the company has found that software is tougher than they may have anticipated. While the driving dynamics are top-notch and the design has been praised, there have been reports of laggy elements plaguing the infotainment system. With Lucid UX 2.0, the automaker is hoping to squelch those issues with nearly a complete rewrite of the vehicle’s software. Lucid invited us down to its headquarters to check out the latest software update that will be deployed to all Lucid Airs over the next few weeks.

Video Transcript

ROBERTO BALDWIN: At Launch, Lucid announced that the Air's software would be updated over-the-air in order to squash bugs and add, or at least tweak, features. While driving various variants of the Lucid Air, we saw just that.

We saw tweaks, updates, adjustments, all to make the UX easier to navigate and quicker. But the company wanted to do a major overhaul. And it's done just that with the very engineery named Lucid UX 2.0. And we're going to take it for a spin and try it out.

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Lucid tells us that the new over-the-air update will bring dozens of new features. And for owners of Lucid Airs, well, those updates will be rolling out over the next few weeks. One of the things that owners will notice automatically-- almost immediately-- is the instant-on display.

As soon as I opened the door, the display of this vehicle turns on. It's ready to go, whereas before, you got in the car, you sat down, you waited a few moments, and then it came on. Now, as soon as I'm seated-- actually, even before I'm seated-- the display, the infotainment system, it's all ready to rock.

Once we're actually in the vehicle, though, you'll notice something right away. And that is that these hot keys, these hot buttons-- the Home button, Navigation, Media, Phone. They are all now on the left.

Previously, they were on the right, which is great if you have long arms like myself. But if you don't, you're reaching way over here. And it sort of didn't really make sense. It was actually better for the passenger to actually deal with those buttons than it was for the driver.

It seems like a small thing. But enough customers, and I'm sure enough journalists like myself, had said something that you really need to move this over to the left. And they have done so.

Media controls are-- well, it's something that you use constantly, when you're driving a vehicle-- probably more so than even your climate controls because you're always switching around, listening to new music. And what Lucid did is they worked very closely with Tidal and Spotify to make sure that the media controls work quickly. They work smoothly and that there was adequate buffering so that while you're driving-- maybe you have five bars of connection, and then you go into an area with one bar, even zero bars connection.

You have enough buffered so that you can continue to listen to music. And they really wanted to make sure, especially with Tidal, that the audio that you get is still high quality. You can still set it to hi-fi in this vehicle. And you can still listen to it while you're driving down the road.

And of course, it's not just the media that's been changed, that's been updated, that's been made quicker. The entire system-- in fact, Lucid tells me that 90% to 95% of the code for the infotainment system has been rewritten, has been redone so that it's quicker. Yeah. And having driven a couple Lucids, this thing is just so much quicker than it used to be.

And that is a good thing because when you're driving down the road, you don't want to click on something and then wait a moment because it reduces the amount of time you're looking at the road because you're waiting for something to happen. They brought in a bunch of people from Apple and other Silicon Valley companies in order to make this work as quickly as possible-- people that really know Over-the-Air updates. And to be honest, I think they've done a pretty great job.

One of the things I've always liked about the Lucid is that it has a minimalistic dash cluster. And well, while they've added something to it, it's still very easy to read. It's very easy to very quickly figure out the information you need to know.

And now they've moved route by route directions into the dash cluster on the right-hand side. And with it, it'll show you your next turn and then, of course, the turn after it. But it will also show you what time you'll get there, how many minutes, how far away it is, and it'll tell you the state of charge upon arrival, which is actually quite nice. And it does all this without cluttering up what you need to see while you're driving.

What's nice is that the rewriting of the software in the vehicle doesn't just make the infotainment system work quicker, which is great, but it also does, well, important things. For example, the blind spot camera that when you turn the blinker on, that pops up in the dash-- it loads way quicker than it used to. So as soon as I let go of the stock, that camera is on. And I'm seeing what's going on to my left and to my right while I'm trying to change lanes.

One of the things people really wanted was the ability to open the frunk from here as opposed to having to dive into menus here. And so they did that. They removed the window lock-- the child lock that they had over here that people frankly didn't use very often. And they put the ability to open and close the frunk here.

So while I'm sitting here, I can just, [LATCH RELEASES], and now the frunk is open. And I can close it. And now it's closed, like a hungry, hungry hippo of technology.

Another thing Lucid had to work on was integration to make sure that opening and closing the vehicle with your iPhone, your Android phone worked better. Turns out, that integration is actually quite wonky on Apples and Googles. And so Lucid worked on it. They made it work better. And if you like opening your Lucid Air with your phone, it should work much easier now.

Infotainment systems are great, but what's really interesting is the evolution of Lucid's DreamDrive, which is part of this update. Previously, DreamDrive really was just adaptive cruise control. It would track the vehicle in front of it. And while tracking that vehicle, you could drive on the freeway.

They've add lane-centering, which, again, isn't really that new. But what is interesting is that Lucid is using its LiDAR system for that, which, well, that's pretty great because that gives you an additional piece of redundancy for your driver's assistance system. So instead of just using cameras and radar-- or really just cameras like, say, Tesla does-- using three different sensors in order to make sure that you and your vehicle are safe.

And it's still a hands-on system. You still have to pay attention to the road. And Lucid has geofenced it so that the highway assist feature, which does the lane-centering, is only used on highways.

It is an err towards caution. And I am actually fine with that. I'd rather people be safe than trying to use this sort of system on a back windy road.

What's great is that the software that's in the vehicle finally matches the Lucid Air. The first version I drove was pre-production. They told me it was going to have a lot of latency, and it did.

And there were some weird bugs. And you expect that on a pre-production vehicle. Then the second version of the Lucid Air I drove, it was a production vehicle, but there was still a little bit of latency here and there-- much more than you would anticipate from a luxury vehicle.

This version, this software, finally meets what Lucid Air wants when it's bringing this vehicle to market. It's quick. It works well.

And essentially, what Lucid did is rewrote almost all of its software over the past 10 months. It had built all this software over the past three to five years. And then in the past 10 months, they said, you know what, we can do better. And it did.

For decades, whatever you drove off the showroom floor, well, that's what you were stuck with. But now, thanks to over-the-air updates, your car will evolve in the driveway. Tesla's been doing it for years, and now Lucid is doing it, along with other automakers.

So the car you leave the dealer with on day 1 might not be the car you have in five years. For more automotive coverage next to, well, half of a car, be sure to subscribe to Engadget.

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