Lucid Motors showed it wanted to be taken serious last month, when the start-up announced the base model for its electric sedan will have a starting price under $60,000. To coincide with this week’s auto show in New York, the company unveiled the Alpha Speed Car prototype of the Air—and this thing can move: 217 miles per hour.
Now that Lucid’s done taking videos of the Air drifting on snow, it took a test prototype and refitted it with a roll-cage and large rear spoiler, with the intention of evaluating “at-the-limit performance.”
The test, conducted on a 7.5 mile track in Ohio, was software-limited to 217 mph, and Lucid says the data will be used for additional improvements that’ll be tested at even higher speeds later this year.
Lucid hopes to start producing the Air in 2019, and if it manages to get a production facility humming, the automaker would be positioning itself as a possible arch-rival to Tesla. Lucid’s chief technology officer, Peter Rawlinson, previously worked at Tesla as the chief engineer for the Model S.
While the fully-equipped Air with 1,000 horsepower is going to run over $100,000, Lucid said last month that the base model with 400 hp will cost around $52,500—after federal tax credits are applied—but the base model will still be equipped to handle fully autonomous driving hardware.
But yeah, for now, check out the Speed Car prototype’s test below.