With a maximum range of up to 520 miles, making it the one of the electric cars with the longest range, the Lucid Air has the potential to make Lucid a major player in the electric car business. But there’s a problem that might get in the way, in the short term, with a recall of 1,117 vehicles over issues with faulty wiring.
Given Lucid is very new on the scene, it hasn’t actually delivered very many cars. In fact, the automaker has confirmed that the recall affects every single one of 2022 Lucid Air delivered to customers so far.
According to the recall notice posted with the NHTSA, the issue is with unsecured wires that could cause the car’s displays to switch off. According to Lucid this is down to the possibility that the wires connected to the display weren’t secured properly during the assembly process.
Considering all the essential information stored on those screens, including warning lights and current speed, that’s a pretty serious problem to have. The last thing you want is for all your screens to die when you’re several miles down the highway.
Fortunately, Lucid claims it isn’t as bad as it sounds. The automaker told Engadget that the defect is only present on an estimated 1% of its cars — meaning it should have only affected 11 or 12 cars. Lucid claims there haven’t been any reports that “these components have failed in a vehicle or caused an interruption to the instrument display panel either.
Despite the rarity of the defect, Lucid doesn’t appear to be taking any chances — hence the pretty extensive recall.
Lucid isn’t the only automaker in the process of a high-profile recall right now either. Hyundai has had to recall a number of cars over an exploding seatbelt problem. While it sounds ridiculous, the problem here is a hidden component called the pyrotechnic pretensioner. In the event of a crash this tightens the seatbelt almost instantly, by releasing gas that triggers a small turbine.
Unfortunately for Hyundai, the pretensioner could malfunction and launch small pieces of metal inside a car. This essentially turns a life-saving feature into a miniature grenade, and it affects 239,000 cars. Hardly ideal, and a little bit more worrying than some dodgy wiring.
According to Lucid, letters informing customers of the recall will be sent out on June 20. Alternatively, they can call the company on 1-888-995-8243, with the recall number NCR-2201-0.
Problems like these are just a side effect of the increasingly hi-tech systems in place in modern cars. 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.
But, as far as problems go, let’s be thankful that this one is pretty minor.
