Efficiency, power, luxury: The 2025 Lucid Gravity SUV nails all three

The Lucid Air sedan's base Pure trim can manage 420 miles (676 km) of EPA-estimated range from just an 84 kWh battery pack. At 5 miles/kWh (12.4 kWh/100 km), the Pure is the single most efficient EV in the world, with pricing that undercuts the Tesla Model S. Yet the general public is largely unaware of Lucid as an automaker in the first place. The new Gravity, which just entered serial production last week, aims to bring more recognition to the company as a whole while achieving a similarly impressive level of efficiency in an SUV form factor.

The day after the new model began production at Lucid's factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, I spent a morning testing a pre-production Gravity in the hills of Malibu. I had previously climbed around a static concept car about a year beforehand in a small photo studio, but under the wide-open Southern California skies, the shape actually looked smaller in person than expected.

Low drag, low friction

The long and low roofline helps to reinforce that perception while maintaining Lucid's commitment to aerodynamics. Lucid's head of design, Derek Jenkins, told me that with a few more improvements to the underbody's design to help wrap airflow around suspension components like tie rod ends and ball joints, the Gravity will dip below its current 0.24 coefficient of drag. That's important because despite my visual perception, the Gravity is not a small vehicle by any means. In fact, it measures 198 inches (5,029 mm) long and 87 inches wide (2,210 mm), including the mirrors, and it's 65 inches (1,651 mm) tall.

With the suspension in its lower settings, the Gravity can look a little like a minivan.

Credit: Lucid

The test car I drove in the $94,900 Grand Touring trim nonetheless boasts a 450-mile (724 km) range estimate, with dual motors and a 112-kWh battery. (A $79,900 Gravity Touring will be available starting in late 2025.) That capacity matches the Air's higher-spec variants yet still just about halves the battery capacities of some competitor vehicles, especially the Hummer and Silverado EVs. But the Gravity's chief engineer, Erich Bach, explained that the battery itself makes for less of a consideration in efficiency terms than might be expected, as optimizing the rest of the vehicle allows Lucid to keep the battery itself as small as possible.

"While there is a minimal truth to a battery pack being efficient," Bach said, "the battery pack is literally your energy storage device. It's like a gas tank, nothing else." Bach explained that it was more important for Lucid to improve the efficiency of its drive units and its vehicles' aero efficiency, as well as other components that could affect things, like tire friction or wheel bearings and drive shafts. "So all the friction chains need to be optimized," Bach said. "The more efficient your vehicle is, the smaller you can make the pack for a certain range."

Inside, though, that relatively smaller pack also creates a ton of space for all three rows of passenger seating. The interior volume compares most closely to a Chevrolet Suburban, in fact, despite the exterior dimensions remaining smaller than an Audi Q7. The rear two rows can also fold entirely flat for stowing gear such as surfboards or allowing for a completely level sleeping platform while camping. (This is true in the three-row version of the Gravity; it's also available in a two-row configuration.)

The Gravity can be specced with two or three rows of seats.

Credit: Lucid

Even if the Gravity is smaller than most three-row SUVs, the more upright nature of the design presented challenges for suspension and chassis dynamics—namely because of Lucid's goal of unifying seemingly incompatible characteristics like three-row comfort paired with supercar sprinting speed or off-road capability and nimble on-road handling.

The battery pack's configuration changes slightly versus the Lucid Air Sedan, with an additional row of cells now mounted below the front row rather than the back seats. Otherwise, the skateboard layout naturally helps provide a low polar moment of inertia (as well as a completely flat cargo area). The off-road potential performance broadens thanks to an air suspension system that can pump up to reach a lifted ride height with over 9 inches (228 mm) of ground clearance.

The Gravity will offer two different air suspension systems, though. One uses a single chamber in each airbag; the other is an optional triple-chamber setup that comes as part of the Dynamic Handling Pack. On my drive through Malibu, I quickly decided that the $2,900 upcharge seems worth the money.

828 horsepower, magic carpet ride

Among the coastal canyons and chaparral, the performance on display was mind-boggling. When all 828 hp (617 kW) unleash in a barrage of instantaneous torque, this three-row SUV will simply sprint away from most any internal-combustion car. It doesn't have quite the same punch in the back as the Air's Grand Touring Performance or Sapphire variants, but it's not that far off.

There's a new "squircle" steering wheel with touchpads on it, but we needed more than a morning with the SUV to get properly familiar with the new input method.

Credit: Lucid

More importantly, despite the Gravity's larger profile, the handling and stability benefit from what Lucid learned while developing the Air. Part of that comes thanks to the Dynamic Handling Pack, which also adds rear-wheel steering via two separately actuated rear tie rods to both improve low-speed turning and higher-end stability. But the Gravity's electrically assisted power steering might just be the best in the world.

In my hands, the so-called "squircle" steering wheel seemed to dial up the electric assist without getting so light as to lose any precision. Instead, feedback from the road amplifies every bit of changing tire grip, from hard braking to the beginnings of body roll, plus the immediately perceptible squat every time I dipped further into what Lucid calls the "A pedal" (since "throttle" doesn't really apply here, after all).

The steering wheel's rim, which is on the thinner end of the spectrum, also helps reinforce the perception of lightness—critical for masking the SUV's overall weight. Yet a new set of Pirelli P Zero PZ5 tires developed specifically for this application don't seem to show any ill effects from the weight, either. As the rubber warmed up, grip noticeably improved.

In "Sprint" mode, the triple-chamber air suspension rides low and tight, adaptive Bilstein dampers adjusting on the fly as the rear-wheel steering artificially shortens the 119-inch (3,022 mm) wheelbase at lower speeds by turning the opposite direction to the front wheels. Capping the rear steer angle at a max of three degrees, Lucid declined to go as overboard as some other manufacturers—Mercedes and General Motors, for example—that turn the rear wheels up to 10 degrees.

We might have worked the tires too hard during our drive.

Credit: Lucid

About 25 minutes into the drive, the tires started to oil up just a bit. Or maybe my confidence in the chassis and power began to exceed the simple limits of physics, as all four corners began to squirm, sliding through corners with just a bit of protest. And yet Lucid's 1 kHz traction and stability control (developed in-house) perfectly manages front-to-rear and side-to-side power and weight transfer, undoubtedly aided here by the ability to play with the rear steering toe angle, too.

Though never by any means uncomfortable, in Sprint, the Gravity actually rides stiffer than the Air Sapphire's stiffest setting—but for the last few minutes of the drive, I switched back into "Smooth" mode, allowing the air suspension to raise up so that much of that firmness evaporated. With a floating ride and even lighter steering, the effect was quite reminiscent of the way Rolls-Royce tunes its cars to feel like a magic carpet at work.

Too much tech? You can turn it off.

From the driver's seat, the squared-off top of the steering wheel rim did not obstruct my view of the 34-inch OLED screen or out onto the dash. Lucid says this new dash layout emphasizes its commitment to how tech not only improves range, power, and driving dynamics but also allows for an impressive suite of human-machine interfaces.

Consumers demand Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for smartphones, and the new screens wrap around the dash and driver perfectly; they're thin and crisp, with snappy responses to swipes and pokes of the finger.

But an augmented reality HUD on the windshield, mindfulness meditation coaching built in, and available productivity apps now fit into the equation, too. With the rear seats lying down flat, off-road and camping in the back, do I really need videos and soundtracks of waves and desertscapes—while I'm out in nature watching real-life waves or desertscapes?

There's a lot of tech in the Gravity, but you can turn most of it off in digital detox mode.

Credit: Lucid

I appreciated the digital detox mode, which turns off all readouts other than the most basic driving information. Adjusting to the new touchpads on the steering wheel will also require a bit more time than a single morning with the Gravity. I used them to adjust my steering wheel, mirrors, and the infotainment volume, but the Air's textural metal dials were one of my highlights of the interior. At least Lucid's solution provides much more satisfying textures (and looks) than Mercedes-Benz's capacitive piano black plastic.

The digital complexity, paired with great range and performance and interior utility and off-road capability, does present a challenge that Lucid recognizes: how best to introduce potential consumers to everything the Gravity can do, all from a showroom floor? To that end, the Gravity uses a nifty little demo video, artfully produced with transitions between touchscreens and widgets and tutorials. But if we need that kind of explanation for a vehicle that successfully unifies formerly opposed concepts, maybe the list of thoughtful features has simply grown too long and complex.

Lucid needed this SUV

The simple fact remains that the Gravity SUV is what Lucid needed all along. Launching a new automotive brand with a four-door sedan, even one as spectacular as the Air, simply lacked a certain level of marketing punch because so few consumers actually buy sedans. Of course, Lucid also needed to ramp up production capabilities at Casa Grande to meet eventual demand for a more popular SUV, so perhaps starting slow fit into the plan from the jump.