Lucid Motors, Tesla’s Main Competitor, Announces Major Recall

May 27, 2022 Topic: Electric Cars Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: LucidTesla CarsElectric Cars

Lucid Motors, Tesla’s Main Competitor, Announces Major Recall

The Lucid Air has emerged in recent years as a major challenger to Tesla.

Lucid Motors’ Lucid Air has emerged in recent years as a major challenger to Tesla. But the company is now facing a recall of over 1,000 vehicles, which, as confirmed by Tom’s Guide, represents all of the cars Lucid has sold so far this year. 

“Disabled display screens will not show critical information, such as the speedometer, gear selection indicators, and warning lights, which can increase the risk of a crash,” the NHTSA recall notice says. "Lucid Motors, Inc. (Lucid) is recalling certain 2022 Air vehicles (all grades). The display wiring harness may not be secured properly, which can disable the display screens. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 101, ‘Control and Displays,’” the notice continues. 

The notice said that car dealerships will “inspect and secure” the wires, free of charge. Letters will be sent out on June 20 officially informing Lucid Air owners of the recall. According to Engadget, the company says that the issue only affected about 1 percent of the Lucid Air cars. 

"For Lucid, the safety of our customers and their families is the highest priority. Lucid is recalling certain model year 2022 Lucid Air vehicles because of the possibility that the wiring connection to the instrument panel may not have been secured properly during assembly,” the electric car company said in a statement to the site. “The recall applies to 1,117 vehicles that have been delivered to customers, and it is estimated that the defect is present on 1% of cars. Lucid is not aware of any instances when these components have failed in a vehicle or caused an interruption to the instrument display panel," the statement continued.

Tom’s Guide looked at why there have been so many auto recalls of late. “Problems like these are just a side effect of the increasingly hi-tech systems in place in modern cars,” the site said. “Old-school analogue driver information systems are a thing of the past, with everything showing up on digital screens. Even cars like the Lucid Air, that don’t fall into the trap of squishing everything into a central touchscreen, have to contend with the fact things can and do go wrong.” Lucid had a different recall back in February. Last August, Motor Trend took a ride in the 2022 Lucid Air Dream car, and called it “an absolute mic drop.” 

“The Lucid Air is shockingly fast, with quick, well-weighted steering. It's hard to call anything exceeding 5,000 pounds a sports car (Lucid's saying around 5,050 pounds), but after what I experienced it's equally hard to not to think of the Air Dream R as a four-door, five-passenger luxury GT-R,” the magazine said, also positively comparing the car’s interior with that of Tesla’s cars. 

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters