As we know, electric vehicles are capable of delivering oodles of power, propelling a car to astonishing speeds, especially in a straight line. Ben Collins, formerly known as The Stig from Top Gear’s television series, has taken it to a whole new level with the Lucid Air Sapphire.
At the wheel of the car, Collins was given two empty tracks to play with at a recent launch event at Sonoma Raceway, in California. With the high-powered electric sedan, he took a lap of the racetrack, and set a quarter-mile time of 8.989 seconds on a prepared drag strip.
That’s a remarkable number, but it’s one that needs a little context. There was a time in recent memory when running a quarter-mile drag in less than 10 seconds was the exclusive province of purpose-built racecars. Prior to the year 2000, it didn’t matter how much money you spent, even if you sold your soul for a McLaren F1, you could only complete the sprint in 10.8 seconds.
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Although there are now 12 production cars that can run a quarter in less than 10 seconds, per Wikipedia, a quarter of those are variants of the Bugatti Chiron. Meanwhile, the only production car on earth that is listed as having run this distance in less than nine seconds is the Rimac Nevera.
So it’s impressive that the Lucid Air, a comfortable family sedan with five seats, can do what bespoke, two-seat hypercars with monstrous displacements and even bigger cylinder counts can’t.
Although it is a family sedan with 427 miles (687 km) of range, there can be no doubt that it’s a focused performer. Its three motors combine to put out 1,234 hp (920 kW/1,251 PS), and get it to 60 mph (96 km/h) in just 1.89 seconds. And it’ll keep building speed until it reaches a top speed of 205 mph (330 km/h).
All of which makes it “a monster,” according to Collins. But it isn’t just a monster in a straight line. Designed to be the ultimate performance sedan, it’s also quite handy on a proper racetrack.
“They’ve put these gigantic brake discs to help stop this car in a short space, and to give it the repeatability, you need that around this place because you’re having to put such big braking inputs,” says Collins. “And the grip is really supporting this car. And it’s nimble, I can fine tune it on the throttle. You can see my steering inputs, quite surgical.”
A monster on the track, it also has a price that could scare a few towns folk. Starting at $249,000, the Air Sapphire is no joke on the road, nor on the price sheet.
