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Lucid Air Vs. Tesla Model S Drag Race Tease Offers a Taste of the Future

It looks like Lucid Air, the new startup's first and yet unreleased electric vehicle is gunning for all of Tesla's top accolades. After trumping the range of the Model S, the upcoming luxury sedan can now be seen seemingly defeating its most important rival in a drag race as well.
Lucid Air vs. Tesla Model S drag race 1 photo
Photo: Twitter video screenshot
For years, the Model S P100D has been the undisputed king of acceleration among electric vehicles. With its 0-60 time dropping year after year, we've come to the point where we don't even know what the actual figure is. We know it starts with a "2," is followed by a "." and another number that's definitely below five. Some say it's four, others say it's even lower than that. Either way, it's definitely impressive.

Now, we get to see a short clip - posted on Twitter on the E for Electric account (of YouTube fame) - where the Air is pitted against a Tesla Model S on a drag strip. The track is flanked by Lucid flags, which leaves no doubt over who was the organizer of the meeting, so you can already guess who the winner is going to be.

Indeed, the tiny sample we have so far (it's a ten-second clip) suggests that would be the Lucid Air, yet a few questions are left unanswered. For starters, we can only hope that's a Tesla Model S Performance, otherwise, this entire demonstration is pointless. Second, the Tesla appears to linger for a bit too long on the start line. It's not much, but with cars that accelerate this quickly, any fraction of a second is converted into dozens of yards, making the loser look worse than it actually is. Hopefully, the full video will include more than just one run, preferably one with an even start as well.

We've seen this kind of promo before, and it doesn't bode well for Lucid. It was done by Faraday Future, the company that was supposed to put a car on the market what feels like centuries ago but hasn't managed to yet. Lucid's trick sure brings up unwanted memories of the FF 91 and its failure, even though it's pretty clear at this point the two companies are nothing alike.

Meanwhile, the Lucid CEO insists we shouldn't call the Air a "Tesla killer." That's probably his attempt at keeping expectations in check, particularly since Lucid lacks one key aspect of Tesla's success: a proprietary charging network that covers most of the U.S. and Western Europe as well as parts of China.

However, if this is what drag racing looks like - and, more importantly, sounds like - in the future, we're a little split over how we feel about it. The way the two vehicles just... go is highly impressive, especially if you consider they are completely stock family sedans, and with luxury credentials on top of that for at least one of them. The lack of sound, on the other hand, is something we're going to have to work on getting used to.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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