Lucid Motors has achieved a new personal record getting closer to Tesla Model S Plaid’s own record at the Laguna Seca racetrack with its own tri-motor electric performance vehicle.
But there are caveats.
The Laguna Seca racetrack is becoming the scene to develop the highest performance electric car and consequently, the highest performance production car ever.
Last year, Tesla completed a lap in 1:36.55 with an early prototype Model S Plaid at the track.
Earlier this month, Lucid beat the time with the prototype of its own top performance version of its electric sedan with a 1:33 time.
When Tesla officially launched the Model S Plaid last week, Tesla confirmed that it completed a 1:30.3 lap time with its latest Model S Plaid prototype.
Now Lucid is coming back with a new test on the track that produced a 1:31.3 lap time — getting fairly close to Tesla:
However, there are some caveats to this new lap time by Lucid.
It was achieved with a development car doing some chassis testing and the interior has been stripped.
Lucid also said that the electric car was equipped with “wider-than-stock wheels and tires but used street tires and production brakes.”
Those are all things that would have improved the performance over a production version of the car.
On the other side though, the time was achieved by John Culliton, a Senior Mechanical Engineer at Lucid Motors, and not a professional driver like Tesla’s best time.
Though Tesla was using production tires and the interior was apparently not completely stripped, but it had a bucket seat.
Both the Tesla Model S Plaid and the Lucid Air tri-motor version are planned for late 2021.
Tesla and Lucid are both going to keep developing the vehicles that are expected to have very close performance.
Who is going to come out on top? Place your bets.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
