Lucid Air May Be the Most Efficient Electric Car

• Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance is the latest and quickest model to come from the startup yet.

• Lucid says it'll get from 0-60 mph in 2.6 seconds, which will absorb all your concentration.

• Prices are $179,000, but for slightly less performance you can get the mere Lucid Air Grand Touring for $154,000.

The Lucid Air is surely one of the most efficient things ever made. And at the same time, one of the most thrilling.

How thrilling?

There I was, in launch mode, ready to blast off down an improvised drag strip carved out of one of the few remaining empty paved spaces in Silicon Valley, with no less a co-pilot than Ben Collins, the original and verified Stig from Top Gear, the original Top Gear back when it was fun to watch, and man was I expecting a thrill.

How much of a thrill?

You have to rearrange all the brain cells in your head to fully grasp the level of acceleration of which something like this Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance is capable. Your brain is sitting up there in your noggin thinking, “Oh yeah, I can handle this, I once had a Camaro…” But then the Lucid Air says to it, “Hold mah beer…”

And the next thing you know all of those brain cells are suddenly not so cocky anymore because they’re all smooshed up at the back of your skull, just as all your internal organs are smooshed flat against the back of your rib cage while your face is doing one of those flattened expressions the astronauts got on that rocket sled out at Edwards Air Force Base during the height of the Cold War when scientists were trying to figure out what would happen if they actually took bar talk seriously and launched a guy on a rocket sled.

Officially the figure for 0-60 mph is 2.6 seconds which, granted, isn’t as quick as the Tesla’s 1.9-whatever, but anywhere under three seconds kind of all blends into physics and screaming and you really can’t tell the difference unless you’re Don The Snake Prudhomme or Big Daddy Don Garlits or someone like that.

It could go even faster.

“Ten percent slip is the optimal at launch but we’d lose 60 to 80 miles of range if we just set it up for launch,” said chassis engineer David Lickfold.

The Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance has to excel in all of its categories, so you’ll have to accept 2.6 seconds to 60. Which is still quicker than mere humans can really handle. The only thing quicker than this that I’ve ever driven was the Rimac Nevera, which has not quite twice the horsepower, and a Tesla Model S, which has 1020 listed ponies. Yes, horsepower: the Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance produces 1050 hp. Just swirl that figure around in what’s left of your head after that launch blast. It wasn’t that long ago that great sports and muscle cars were feted for having horsepower measured in the hundreds. Now, well like everything else, now there is a new world order.

“It’s the Wild West of possibilities in the EV sphere,” said Lucid prototype driver Leon Vinokurov. “You’ve got Tesla and Lucid and (other startups)and they come and go and one’s on top then the other and it’s driven by this passion we all have, ‘Hey, we can do this, let’s try it!”

And so they did try it and now we’re seeing the results of those trials. Tesla may be on top with a claimed 0-60 of 1.99 seconds, though you have to pre-condition the battery for a half hour before you can achieve that (“Hey, Mac, just hang on a second while I pre-condition my battery, then I’ll blow yer stinkin’ doors off!”). The Lucid does a little pre-conditioning, too, but it does that as soon as you switch it to “Sprint” mode, the fastest of the three drive modes after Smooth and Swift. So you don’t have to get the trash talker in the other lane to wait while your car gets ready to launch, you just launch.