Compared to the estimated silly price of the Faraday this is encouraging. Good to see real competition. It is an attractive car. If all things were equal (time on market, Supercharging infrastructure) I may well have chosen the Lucid.
Time on the market is tiny for either one, so although there's a slight bit higher risk on the Air than the S in that department, it's not all that much, it will take a couple years to see how that plays out.
Supercharging... This remains to be seen, Lucid hasn't talked much at all about charging yet, and it's something they'll definitely have to address before launch. I expect we'll see that in one of their announcements soon. There are several ways they could go here:
1) Partner with Tesla on the Supercharger network. Tesla has previously stated anyone is welcome if they build a car that can handle it, and it's pretty clear that the Air could. It would also help take steps to ensuring that the Supercharger network becomes an actual industry standard and pave the way for even more adoption, and an increased buildout of chargers.
2) Build their own competing network. It would take a bit of time, but if Tesla could do it, there's no reason that Lucid couldn't too. And really, Tesla's done most of their work on that in a very short time.
3) Let others build it. This is the approach of the major automakers, and while it was a laughably bad approach even a couple of years ago, things are changing, and the infrastructure is actually being built. Sure it's not coordinated well, and it's still in it's infancy, but this won't be as bad an option as it was a couple of years ago. Especially if you let it charge from both CHAdeMO and CCS.
My personal preference would be a combination of 2 and 3. Build their own network using industry standards. it benefits everyone, and allows their customers a wide range of charging options (more than Tesla have honestly as Tesla can't use CCS which is likely to be the overall winner of the format war)
But just as it was silly for people to proclaim that the Air would start at over 100k it's also silly for people to proclaim that there will be no way to charge it. Let's wait for the official announcement and see. There's no rush, the cars won't come off the assembly line for a couple of years yet.
