[imagesource: MotorTrend]

California-based electric vehicle start-up company Lucid Motors’ latest luxury sedan has been named MotorTrend’s 2022 Car of the Year.

MotorTrend called the Lucid Air “the new [electric vehicle] benchmark” according to CNN, celebrating its incredible range, engineering, and efficiency, as well as its overall performance, and luxurious design.

Lucid developed the electric motors in-house, with Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson once having worked at Tesla to help engineer the Model S.

It is estimated that the Lucid is actually the most energy-efficient electric car sold in America, something that has allowed the automakers to be one of the first to win the award with just its first car.

The only other automaker to win the award was Tesla in 2012 for their Model S, which was Tesla’s second car, after the Tesla Roadster.

Here’s MotorTrend:

Were we wowed by the whopping numbers Lucid has been touting recently—up to 1 111 horsepower and 1 390 lb-ft of torque in the Air Dream P edition and up to 520 miles of EPA-official range in the Dream R edition?

No. Anyone can buy big numbers by installing giant motors and batteries. Rather, it’s the sophisticated way Lucid achieves them in a package that ranks highly in each of our six key criteria that captured our attention and our calipers.

It gets quite technical, with MotorTrend explaining how the engineering works, how its efficiency is off the charts, how its value can be praised, as well as its advancement in design, safety, and performance.

Basically, the Lucid Air is today’s fastest charging EV, capable of adding 483 kilometres in 20 minutes.

In terms of design, the Air was praised for its “gorgeous-looking, purposeful, clean, classic lines” reminiscent of classic French cars from the 1960s:

The interior design blazes its own trail, eschewing both the wall-to-wall screen concept of the Mercedes EQS and Tesla’s fanatical minimalism. The Air mixes colors and materials in fresh ways, blending cloth, Alcântara, and perforated leather, with contrast stitching. Making the front and rear seats different colors lends an avantgarde feel.

Check it out:

The design is further advanced with its ultra-slim micro-lens array LED headlamps:

The luxury EV comes packed with gizmos, too, including a seat-massage program and a Dolby Atmos Surreal Sound system.

The prices are through the roof, but despite the high cost, MotorTrend’s judges thought the Lucid Air represented a strong value:

They tested the Grand Touring version with a starting price around $140 000 [just over R2,1 million].

Less expensive versions, with prices starting around $77 000 [around R1,2 million], will be available later, but they won’t have the driving range and power of the pricier cars.

This video covers everything else you might need to know:

[sources:motortrend&cnn]