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Lucid Air Dream Number 214 Presents Steering Issue Not Connected to Recall

Kevin Paffrath has an investment website that made him quite popular. He shares tips to get rich on YouTube and Twitter, some of which must have helped him buy a Lucid Air Dream Edition costing “over $169,000.” On February 22, he tweeted and shared a YouTube video about the car stating that the EVs’ “steering completely failed.”
Lucid Air Dream Edition number 214 presents power steering issues 11 photos
Photo: Lucid
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From how Paffrath puts it, some Tesla fans responding to his tweet assumed the car had a drive-by-wire system. That’s not true. As the Air owner stated himself, as he and his father-in-law pulled the electric sedan out of the garage, “a lot of lights came on.” The “flashing warning indicators” told him that “the steering for the car had failed.”

Paffrath then describes what happened in a way that tells us he never drove a vehicle with no power steering without him being explicit about that. The YouTuber stated that “the car steering column had completely frozen up.” He immediately corrects that, noting that “it was almost as if the steering wheel was locked, but if you pushed hard enough, you could still turn the wheel.” Precisely like a car without power steering behaves: you only get to turn the wheel more easily when the vehicle is moving.

That must be especially difficult in a vehicle that weighs up to 5,236 pounds (2,375 kilograms) and sits on Pirelli P-ZERO HL 245/35 R21 tires. If not in movement, a car weighing half as much with 17-inch wheels would already be pretty difficult to turn. In other words, that’s obviously a problem with the power steering, which suggests we should be alert to new situations in which the electric sedan presents this issue.

Paffrath said that Lucid confirmed the problem has no connection with the recall Bloomberg revealed on February 22. He also said that his car is the 214th produced by the company and that he got delivery on the third week of January 2022. That implies that Lucid did not deliver the 520 Air Dream Edition units (not 550, as Paffrath states in his video) in 2021.

The car was towed to Lucid’s facility in Torrance to be repaired. We contacted Paffrath to find out what was the issue, if his vehicle is involved with the recall, and how fast he got the Air Dream Edition back.

While that may be something easy to fix, it shows the nuisance of being an early adopter. They may rejoice from driving a “head-turner of a car” – as Paffrath puts it – but they are also the first ones to face issues that testing did not detect or that early production still did not sort out as it should.

If you are curious about the benefits and hurdles of owning a Lucid Air Dream Edition, check all 40 minutes of Paffrath’s video about that right below.

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About the author: Gustavo Henrique Ruffo
Gustavo Henrique Ruffo profile photo

Motoring writer since 1998, Gustavo wants to write relevant stories about cars and their shift to a sustainable future.
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