Lucid Air Charges At Only 20 kW At 80% SOC?

A photo of a Lucid Air that is charging at an Electrify America station would be nothing special, if not for this little detail.

If we look carefully at the dashboard, we can see the info about 20 kW charging power at 80% state-of-charge (SOC).

Well, that is a surprising finding, because 20 kW at 80% SOC is pretty low for an ultra high-tech Lucid Air with a 118 kWh battery.

The photo posted by Electrify America might be from a real charging session of an early Lucid Air.

We already suspected that the charging to 100% will slow down significantly, when we saw the first report on about a week ago.

The Lucid app shows that the remaining charging time is 1 hour and 25 minutes despite the fact that the car was charging at 245 kW (at around 24% SOC). Another image shows that charging from 14% to 77% SOC (63 percent points) took 31 minutes. The car received 80 kWh at an average of 155 kW.

It is the first indication that the charging power quickly decreases and that the final 20% or so might be pretty slow.

A few more data points can be drawn from one of the latest Tesla2Lucid’s tweets, which shows another charging session at an Electrify America station.

The animation started at a low SOC from over 250 kW (no sign of 300 kW yet), but soon the power started to decline towards 200 kW and 150 kW. We estimated the SOC using estimated range and the 520 mile EPA value as a point of reference:

• 83 miles / 16% SOC: roughly 250 kW
• 192 miles / 37% SOC: roughly 200 kW
• 252 miles / 48% SOC: roughly 150 kW

The image from the Lucid app shows 21 minutes and 68 kWh, which gives us an average of 194 kW. It would be a very good result between 16-48% SOC

Combining this data points with the previous report, we assume that the charging speed consistently decreases.

If the power stands at around 150 kW at 50% SOC (194 kW average up to that point) in one session and the average from 14% to 77% SOC is 155 kW in the second session, we guess that the 100 kW level might be at 60% SOC or so (maybe a little bit higher).

That would not be too good, especially if the power further decreases to just 20 kW at 80% SOC, as shown in the first image. At such low power, the final 24 kWh would have to be replenished by more than an hour of charging.

That pretty much reminds us of the situation with the Ford Mustang Mach-E, which is expecting a software update related to charging (see our analysis from March and April).

So the app that is showing 1 hour and and 25 minutes, while sitting at around 24% SOC, probably already knows the charging curve and what to expect.

Our dissection indicates that at least for now, the early Lucid Air can go pretty high (over 250 kW) for a brief period of time, achieve a very good average up to 50%, a good average up to 70-80%, but then just 20 kW or so (it needs to be confirmed).

Is it true? We don’t know, but our in-depth analysis is coming as soon as we are able to fully test the car.

One thing is sure, with some 500 miles of range and good charging output in the first part of the session, as well as possible over-the-air software updates to unlock the full potential, Lucid Air customers don’t have much to worry about. They will rarely need to fully fast charge after covering the first few hundred miles in a day.