Lucid Motors' first EV will come with LIDAR driving assistance as standard
The pricey sensor is available on the base model, for better future-proofing.
Lucid may not have been able to unveil the production version of its luxury electric sedan just yet, but it’s hoping some explanation of its features will get your appetite whetted. Today, the company is teasing the various Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), uh, systems, that’ll feature in the Lucid Air.
The ADAS platform has been dubbed “DreamDrive,” which includes 32 sensors, including camera and radar, plus those monitoring the driver. Of more importance to us, and fans of self-driving cars, is the inclusion of LIDAR as standard, which Lucid will make the car “future-proofed.”
The company says that when the Air launches, it’ll come with 19 of a planned list of 27 ADAS goodies, with the remaining eight coming over-the-air. This includes autonomous parking assist, pullout control, adaptive cruise control with lane centering, blind spot display, traffic sign recognition and emergency braking.
Lucid has also kinda/sorta said that Level 3 autonomous driving is in the works for the car, or, at least, that software to enable “Level 3 driving in certain conditions” is in development. That may just be enough for the folks who are eyeing up a Lucid Air as an alternative to that pricey Mercedes they’re gazing toward.
One other interesting safety system of note is that the Air has a fully-redundant connectivity platform that should offer drivers a backup should the primary system fail. The system, connected via an Ethernet ring, hooks up the steering, brakes and sensors, which should help you get to a service center after a fault.
Of course, a spec list is no substitute for seeing the Air actually driving around, which we expect to happen on September 9th. That’s the latest date for the company to show off the production version of the vehicle, where we can hopefully see some, or all, of this kit in action.
