One of Lucid’s prototype Air vehicles returned to the Transportation Research Facility’s oval race track recently for a second round of high-speed performance testing – and this time, it ran the tests without a software speed limiter in place.
The first time around, said speed limiter meant that the Air prototype never exceeded speeds of 217 mph; without that limiter in place, it went up to 235 mph during this new round of testing. Based on what Lucid learned from that first test, they took their high speed prototype back to the shop and made some improvements.
Those tweaks include a software update to improve the car’s air suspension system performance under heavy load, and more cooling for the front motor, which ran hotter than expected.
With these changes, the team felt confident in doing a run without the limiter in place, and achieved a max top speed of 235.44 mph coming off the track’s banking oval through the straightaway. Lucid notes that this isn’t the final production top speed for the car, but it is impressive as heck nonetheless.