431 Miles of Range, Best-in-Class Frunk, and Door Handles That Refuse to Work. The Lucid Air Is Almost Brilliant.

Jacob from TheStraightPipes has been waiting five years to review the Lucid Air. The 2026 Touring finally arrived, and it opens with a strong hand: 620 horsepower, 885 pound-feet of torque from two electric motors, a 92 kWh battery, and a rated range of 431 miles (694 km). In real-world conditions around 3 degrees Celsius, 50 percent battery remaining still showed approximately 300 km on the display. The 900V architecture supports up to 350 kW of DC fast charging. The glass canopy roof creates a genuinely dramatic interior atmosphere. The frunk is, as Jacob puts it, probably the best in class among any production EV on the market. The Touring starts at $112,800 CAD, sitting above the Pure trim and below the Sapphire, which is a different machine entirely.

The Lucid Air Touring positions itself against the Tesla Model S and the better versions of the Mercedes EQS, and it beats both at most of what matters. Interior space is genuinely good: Jacob is 6 feet 1.5 inches and has room to spare in the back seat. The car is very quiet at speed. The screen layout is clean and not overwhelming, closer in philosophy to a Porsche Taycan than to a Tesla in terms of complexity. Climate controls include physical dials for temperature and fan speed, which is a straightforward choice that many competitors have abandoned. Heated seats, cooled seats, and a heated steering wheel are all present and working. Wireless Apple CarPlay connected immediately on every startup and worked flawlessly, at least until it did not, which happened the same day Jacob filmed his praise of it. After that, it refused to reconnect no matter what he tried. Wired CarPlay worked fine.

A week with the car surfaced a few things that should not be issues at this price. The key fob is the lightest Jacob has encountered, and it has no buttons, just proximity sensing. Learning the sequence of beeps for different functions takes adjustment. Door handles are electronic and present themselves automatically when you approach, except when they do not, which happened more often than it should have. On one occasion, Jacob could not open the rear door while his son was inside, and the handle took a moment before responding. Regenerative braking has three settings: off, standard, and high. Off has a small amount of drag. Standard is too aggressive and non-linear for comfortable daily use. There is no one-pedal mode that brings the car to a complete stop. Drive modes are smooth, swift, and sprint. Sprint makes the biggest difference. The suspension felt good across the week, with no complaints about ride quality on winter tires.

Bottom line: The range is real, the frunk is real, and the ride quality is genuinely excellent. Lucid needs to fix the daily-use basics: make the door handles reliable, put a button or two on the key fob, and sort out wireless CarPlay. Those things should not be rough edges on a $112,800 car.