Watch Lucid Motors' Tesla-challenging Air EV torch the famed Laguna Seca racetrack in a new testing video
- Lucid Motors, a new competitor in the luxury EV market, posted a video of a preproduction Air sedan tearing around the WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in just over 91 seconds.
- Its time of 1:31.3 came just one second shy of the lap time the Tesla Model S Plaid — the newest performance version of the Model S — set recently.
- The Air that set the time was heavily modified, sporting wider tires and an extensive body kit.
Last week, Tesla published a video showing its newly announced 1,110-horsepower Model S Plaid tearing around the famed WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in just over 90 seconds, making it one of the fastest cars to ever lap that track.
Now, Lucid Motors — an up-and-coming competitor in the electric-vehicle space — set a personal best of its own, and dropped the video to prove it.
A video posted on Wednesday showed a preproduction version of the Lucid Air, the company's flagship luxury sedan, lapping Laguna Seca in 1:31.3 — exactly one second behind the Plaid's latest attempt. Lucid achieved the time with a 1,300-horsepower, tri-motor version of the car, according to Car and Driver.
New automaker lap records often draw speculation as to whether the vehicle is mechanically identical to the production car that will be released to the public. In this case, the answer is clear — the Air that set Lucid's new personal best had wider tires, a system of tubes directing air toward the brakes, and a body kit that included diffusers, a rear spoiler, and fender flares, Car and Driver wrote.
Check out the video below.