Not only can you use all 1,050 horses-a preposterous statement, I'm aware-but mein gott this thing sticks to the pavement when cornering. In Sprint, the suspension, braking, torque vectoring, throttle, and steering responses are all tweaked for maximum yeehaw. The Air's default comfort drive mode is Smooth, a sportier mode is called Swift, and Sprint is like track mode. To get its full capabilities, touch the on-screen button to activate Sprint mode to unleash full power and all 921 lb-ft of torque. There's a back way to Pismo that offers a few miles of twisting roads, too, so I figured this would be the time to get some dynamic driving done. Welcome to EV road trips using the nascent charging infrastructure. The Electrify America app does tell you when all the chargers are in use I stopped in Paso Robles specifically because the app had erroneously reported two chargers as available. I had about 160 miles of range left, and there's a 350-kW Electrify America station a bit further south in Pismo Beach. Then a Ford F-150 Lightning pulled in, and I made the decision to just go eat lunch. "How'd you get it to work?" asked a flustered Kia Niro EV owner. "It's working," the man said into his cell phone, presumably to the poor EA employee who'd just reset the charger, an all too common occurrence. Just then, the couple that was standing next to their VW ID4 threw their hands up in celebration. I got out of the GTP and heard, "Hey, us and this car are ahead of you." I nodded at the Chevy Bolt owner and admired the Hyundai Ioniq 5 waiting behind him. All three chargers plopped incongruously in a Bank of America parking lot were occupied. Speed limits? We don't need no stinking speed limits! Fast-forward 11 months, and my assignment is to jet up to the Bay Area, grab the new 1,050-hp Air Grand Touring Performance, and drive it back to Los Angeles. The thing made 933 horsepower, people! And 57 in a 55 sucks even worse. Oh, the humanity! Truth be told, going 70 in a 70-mph zone freaked me out, so I kept cranking it up to 72 mph. But to achieve the impressive range that we did, my co-driver (and Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson) did the unimaginable. Oh, in terms of the sheer traffic and interest that first drive generated, it couldn't have gone any better. That said, the headline-grabbing part of the two days I spent driving an Air Dream Edition R-that we drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco and then some on a single charge-didn't go the way I wanted. It was a big moment, one that I'm still amazed happened. One of the best things I've done in my career was scoring the world's first drive review of the Lucid Air electric sedan.
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