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The 2025 Lucid Air is now the most efficient EV on sale

A standard heat pump has made an already-efficient car even more so.

Jonathan M. Gitlin – | 279
A blue metallic Lucid Air seen head-on
The Lucid Air was already the most efficient EV on sale in the US, but for model year 2025 it goes even farther on a single charge. Credit: Lucid
The Lucid Air was already the most efficient EV on sale in the US, but for model year 2025 it goes even farther on a single charge. Credit: Lucid

Lucid has just revealed the details of its model-year 2025 updates, and among the tweaks to its handsome electric sedan is an impressive bump in range efficiency. The entry-level Lucid Air Pure, which starts at $69,900, can now travel 420 miles on a single charge of its 84 kWh battery. That equates to 5 miles/kWh (12.4 kWh/100 km), making the Air Pure the most efficient electric vehicle for sale today.

The range bump is mostly thanks to Lucid making a heat pump standard across the range, after first adding one to the ultra-powerful, ultra-expensive Air Sapphire.

Lucid has also upgraded the computer hardware that oversees the Air's various subsystems. The automaker says it has tripled processing power and doubled the system's memory, which should translate to faster and better infotainment. And Lucid has made its advanced driver assistance system standard across the lineup, too.

While the Air Pure might be the first production EV being sold to reach 5 miles/kWh, it isn't the longest-range Lucid Air for sale. That remains the $110,900 Grand Touring, which can go 512 miles (824 km) on a single charge. The 2025 Lucid Air Touring, which slots between them, has a range of 406 miles (654 km) and starts at $78,900.

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While still a relative minnow compared to Rivian, Lucid has been on something of an upward trajectory of late. Price cuts have undoubtedly helped it have a record Q2, delivering 2,394 cars for its best three months so far.

Who did this math?

In addition to claiming 5 miles/kWh for the Air Pure, Lucid also notes in its press release that it has achieved "a record 146 MPGe rating" for the car.

Lucid's model-year 2025 data isn't in the EPA's online fuel economy database yet, so Ars can't check the slightly more detailed information there (which should break out the MPGe figure into city, highway, and combined figures), but 146 MPGe is only equivalent to 4.3 miles/kWh; 5 miles/kWh is 169 MPGe.

We asked Lucid about the difference, and the company told Ars that with EVs, losses in the charging process from resistance in the cables and from heating the battery make a difference.

"The reason we don’t love MPGe is that batteries are the real expense for EVs—not electricity. If you can be more energy efficient when actually driving, you can reduce the capacity of the battery pack in the vehicles you build—reducing cost, reducing weight, and reducing the natural resources you need per vehicle. On the other hand, it’s nice to minimize energy lost during charging, but if you get only 2.5 mi/kWh on the road, you still are stuck with the big expensive battery pack," Lucid told Ars.

(This does not change the fact that MPGe is derived by multiplying miles/kWh by 33.7, the amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline, but when the EPA calculates that number it includes charging losses.)

Despite the incongruent math, the 2025 Air Pure still beats the 2024 model, which makes do with a combined 140 MPGe and 410 miles of range, according to the EPA.

Listing image: Lucid

Photo of Jonathan M. Gitlin
Jonathan M. Gitlin Automotive Editor
Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.
279 Comments
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The EPA range figure and MPGe figure and wHr/mi figure all come from the same testing. Claiming it gets 420mi from 84kWHr of juice and also claiming 146MPGe is a contradiction. There's no way it makes sense to claim both, officially.

Acceleration and deceleration isn't a huge deal for an EV, as long as you decelerate slowly enough to do it entirely with regen.
This is not correct.

The mi/kWh (or kWh per 100 miles) is based on the performance of the vehicle EXCLUDING CHARGING. The MPGe includes charging losses. It doesn't measure the energy at the battery but at the wall outlet to charge the battery. The short version is including charging losses it takes more than 84 kWh to fill the battery which then gets 420 miles.

This is true of ever BEV listed not something special with lucid the author just noticed it because 5 mi/kWh is impressive.

For example Hyundai Ioniq 6

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=46957
24 kWh per 100 miles = 4.167 mi/kWh

Multiply that by 33.7 kWh per gallon and it would be 154 mpge HOWEVER the official mpge rating is 140.

Why? Because the 140 includes charging losses. The 4.167 mi/kWh does not it is just the capacity of the battery vs range under EPA test.

Look at it another way to go 100 miles requires 24 kWh of "juice in the battery" but to get 24 kWh of juice in the battery ends up requiring 24 *154/140 = 26.4 kWh at the wall outlet. Similarly the Lucid air can go 420 miles on a full 84 kWh battery (on an EPA test) BUT to put 84 kWh in the battery requires 97 kWh at the wall outlet which is what the MPGe is based on.

Personally I think MPGe just confuses things and everyone knows these days that any BEV is vastly more efficiency than any ICEV but the EPA goal here with mpge was to compare COST and as a consumer you pay for all the electricity used not just the useful electricity which is stored in the battery but any waste head and charging overhead (computer running, safety contactors engaged, and in some vehicle the heat pump is running to cool the batteries during charging).

Yes this does mean if Lucid improved charging efficiency in a future year with zero change in the driving efficiency then the MPGe rating would go up while the mi/kWh (or kWh/100mi) rating would remain the same.
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