Lucid Gravity's Designer Derek Jenkins Shows Us What's Special About This Luxe 3-row Electric SUV

Isn't it nice when a family car is actually designed by somebody who has a family, who is used to putting kids in the back seat, who's used to installing car seats, and who's used to having a conversation with people in the back? Add to that, they're used to hauling around a lot of equipment, say snowboards or hockey equipment or lacrosse bags and they're used to long road trips where everybody needs to be happy and comfortable. Well, that's the story behind the Lucid Gravity, but it gets even better than that because this is luxury and it's all electric. We are really excited about this very powerful, very fast and very long distance driving Lucid Gravity. It's the first three row 7 passenger SUV from Lucid. I said Come on, I'm going to take you for a little tour and I'm going to introduce you to the designer Derek Jenkins, who's a dad and has a lot of family experience and also has some nice design experience in his background before Lucid that makes him a great designer for this brand. The Lucid gravity can only be seen at places like this. We're at the Geneva Motor Show this week and we saw it at the LA Motor Show. We should see it at some other auto shows in North America and around the world. Lucid is a global brand and what that means is it's sold in markets outside of the United States. Even though it is designed and built in California, you're going to see it around the world because it truly is a global brand and I love that Lucid is bringing this three row SUV to Europe and beyond. The Gravity was designed for several things. I want you to notice these skis here up on the roof, there are roof racks as we expect in an SUV and that's a little bit of a surprise. When I get inside the car, I'll show you something that makes the roof rack a little bit of a surprise because it's not something that you typically expect on a car. What they told you glass roof, that was a bit of a surprise. But I love that they did it because in an SUV you need that space and I'll show you here too. They have the lift gate open, so I'm going to show you here. Lucid says that you can fit one large suitcase and four roller boards here in the cargo area. I look at this and I do see that there is going to be room for some nice big strollers. You could fit some large pieces in here. Hockey bags you would be able to fit here, I think. So here's one of the cool things about the lucid gravity. So these third row seats and there is a captain's chair option. So you can get captain's chairs if you like, but these two third row seats actually flip and Stow in here. This panel removes and then this seat folds down here and this seat will fold down, down under here. That's how they Stow and that gives you this large, flat, contiguous space for cargo. And if you want to put the center row seats down, you'll have even more. So this might be the biggest surprise here in the lucid, and that is the frunk. So this is an addition. You can get this stadium seat and this actually folds out to provide some comfortable seating if you wanted to use this as a seat. Or you can take it out and you can fit 2 roller board bags in here or some other things. So really a lot of space for holding things and it's a nice resilient space. There's a little, you know, hard surface there so it can be cleaned out. That is the release. There is a household outlet here. There's even that holds here, hooks there so you can put in cargo Nets if you'd like. And there are lights here, even cup holders. So they really thought about how you would use this space. And I have to say from years of tailgating with my kids and watching sitting in a on a rainy soccer field on a Saturday, I want to sit in a place like this where I have this canopy over my head and I can see everything, but I can still cheer and they can hear me. And that is one of the things I look at how finished this is and why you guys have noticed like this metal is really beautiful. So they did think about, it's not just raw metal, but they actually finished it. It is a painted surface. It's really gorgeous. And then you see the Gravity logo right down there on this lower part of the car, the air intake over here, and there's headlights. It's really beautiful. On the interior, we see Lucid's commitment to really top line materials, and this is something that we spoke with designer Derek Jenkins about. Let's take a look. So behind me is the Lucid Gravity, which I'm so excited to take you on a tour of, because this is a car that's very close to my heart and close to this guy's heart, too. This is Derek Jenkins and he is Chief of Design. You might know Derek's work. You never if you haven't seen the Gravity or haven't seen the Lucid and it's a new brand to you. And what do you think about this monster? Because that's where Derek came from before and has worked on many other cars as well in a a very deep career, deep bench career. But let's talk about your newest baby and that is the Lucid Gravity. What is the Lucid Gravity? Well, elusive Gravity is our first SUV offering. Of course we started with Lucid Air, which is our luxury sports sedan. It's been very successful for us in getting us going. But obviously the SUV market is growing and the three row electric SUV is kind of a new space that we're just getting started in. This car is A7 passenger, fully electric, very flexible, very efficient SUV that we think will be very significant for the segment. So will you take me on a tour? I will. All right, let's do it. So Grand Touring is our top of the line. We will have a launch edition that comes in above that, a limited series. But you see Grand Touring this is in a wonderful new color called Aurora Green. It's a very sophisticated green metallic. This is also a what is called the Stealth trim. What that means is all the bright work. The roof rail, the mirrors, the wheels are all done in that smoked aluminum finish, looks very sporty, looks a little bit stealth and under the radar. And it's a look that I personally like a lot. Can you tell me about this little guy here on the wheel? So you see there is a grizzly bear and of course this is taken from the California flag. It's the California grizzly and we put that there just to kind of remind us of our origin. But also it's a nice symbol for sustainability. Sadly, the Grizzly is extinct and we always use that as a reminder of the importance of our mission. They're heading all over the place. Yeah, it's like we've had a lot of fun with the bear. People seem to like it. So we we play on it and you on some of the other models, I noticed that it's actually on the exterior, on the pillar. Is that going to be a design detail we're going to see on Lucids going forward? It's something that we play with. We also offer that when people pick up for the the car for the first time, we ask them if they'd like a bear decal. We also do it on our sapphire or high performance version of the car. And so we always try to play it subtle. It's it's kind of our mascot logo. The main logo is, of course, Lucid, but that's something that we always play with. It was a nice little icon. It's cute. Yeah. So why don't we hop in the front seat? We'll hop in the driver seat. I'm going to hop into the passenger seat and let's take a little tour, look at this ambient lighting and tell tell me about why. Ambient lighting is something that car designers are really in love with right now. I think it's part to do with how to control the atmosphere of the car. You know, it's one thing to have nice materials and you know, you've got wood, we've got glass, we've got a really nice touch, suede surfaces, that's one thing. It's another thing to have beautiful graphics and experience, user experience on the car. But the ambient lighting, especially in lower lights, really brings the interior to life. We've worked really hard. You don't really see it here under these lighting conditions, but the light cast down the side, much like you'd use lighting in architecture, how you light the walls or landscaping. And so we really play on that. What's exciting when this goes into production, the ambient lighting will be fully animated, so we can move the lighting based on music or some particular feature. If you have launch control, the lighting can move with you. So that's pretty cool and it's just adds an emotional dimension to the interior that didn't exist just a few years ago. It's really cool. And am I able to change the colors if I'm worse? Yeah, we have blue different. Those are our harmony is our green. And of course the the, the, the green comes from the the lighting, but it also makes its way into the interior. That's our blue. This is confidence. And we have some crazier colors. Our purple, our passion is kind of this deep red. And Zen is just kind of like this cool black vibe that really kind of chills things out. That's really beautiful. Yeah, we've had a lot of fun with it. Yellow's a little crazy. And so talk about the multimedia system here. You've got, you call this the pilot panel. That's the pilot panel. And then we have this curved glass. That's right. This is a primary display, but there's more to this than the display itself. So one of the things we realized developing air is often most cars, 95% of cars, you view the screen or the gauges through the steering wheel. So what happens is the steering wheel often blocks the display. What we've done here, because we're in a higher SUV seating position, I've been able to bring the display up higher, reshape the steering wheel to what we call a squirkle. So it's a little bit of a square circle that makes the steering wheel slimmer in vertical height and allows me to view 100% of this display unblocked by the steering wheel, yet have an excellent view of the road below. And so it's very immersive and and that's something that we think is important. It also gives me, gives me flexibility up top. I can change through all my core features. I can take a feature that's up top and I can bring it down below. If I want to have navigation up above, I have navigation up above or vice versa, NAV up above, music up above. However you want to use it and that's very important that ease of use and intuitive nature. The other thing we've done is not everything is in the touch screen, simple stuff like temperature up and down, fan up and down, volume control. Doing that with what we would still call analog interface is this touch blade down below. So you have physical buttons. That's right. And a volume in a volume control. So if you need to get something really quickly, it's right there. That's correct. Yes, that's phenomenal. Talk about the the glass roof, which you call a canopy, glass canopy, a glass canopy. And you just, this is just the coolest thing. Look at how expansive this is. Yeah, this is a big part. It really lends a lot to loose this idea of space. Lucid is all about creating a sense of openness, airiness and space. We do that physically through how we lay the vehicle out, keeping a lot of space between the drivers, passengers, 3rd row. We do that with our design, keeping the shapes open to create physical width. It's carved away from you to create a sense of space. Colour does the same. And of course being able to view the sky above really gives you that open feeling. In our case, we have a single piece of glass from the windshield wiper all the way through to the middle of this pillar you see here. That's one piece of glass. And so that that's what gives you this open airy feel. In this case you'll see the visor up above these, you know fold down. You can also fold these to the side, but makes it even more open and that's a really unique experience. Well, we applaud it because we love panoramic sunroofs. And then when people say why do you want to spend money on that, we say you just don't get it. Exactly. And this is like that, but more you know And so it's a really cool experience. So let's talk about the center row and the third row in this car because you did some very cool things, including how the 3rd row stows. Is the third row controllable from the front seat. It's not. No. That's a that's an operation where we there's a release mechanism and you just kind of it's a single movement and they just fold away in the back seat. Can you show us how that works? I can. They're static at the moment, but I can explain it to you. But I do have a we do have a video. OK, Yeah. OK. But yeah. How does that work? Yeah. So unlike normal SUV, typically the 2nd and 3rd row just, you know, if this is the seat, they just fold over on themselves. The problem with that is you don't get a very low loading. You end up kind of with a shallow height from from the top of the folded seat to the ceiling. In our case, the 2nd row folds down and flat to the floor and the third row flips backwards and stows below the floor. And so you end up with this expansive cargo area unlike any SUV on the market. Did you ever drive a minivan? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I think there's some inspiration there because they're very flexible and who doesn't want that flexibility with space, but in an SUV in not a minivan, right. Right. And so talk about your approach to the third row in terms of passenger space and comfort. Yeah. So often times what we find especially with more sporty SU VS and we consider this a sporty SUV, the 3rd row is kind of an afterthought where like a full grown adult generally doesn't want to spend any meaningful time back there. And we worked really hard with this car to make leg room a priority and headroom and just general comfort and width a priority for the third row. So proper adults could spend 234 hours back there and not be uncomfortable or fatigued. And we just think that's super important. And the reason for that is often times with people that are buying large SUVs, they have to take a lot of people in cargo whether it's family, business associates, whatever the case may be. And it's important that we create that flexibility for comfort in space. So you're a dad, you have two kids. That's right. What was the most important thing to you as a parent in designing this car? Well, besides the, the, the really, really, really important thing, safety is critical, right? So we don't mess around there. We're really proud of our safety record. We put a ton of effort into structural integrity, making sure that everything is safe for occupants and that's a a science and design and engineering exercise within itself. Beyond that there's the practical use cases, things like general 2nd row room. You know, often times my two boys, they just sitting right behind me and they need to be comfortable. Might be arguing, they might be friends that day. Yeah, you know, anything could happen and being being able to be comfortable but also have that versatility. One of the things that we've done 2nd row is offer a convenience tables for bring your own device to assist in that rather than do some big displays that you can't work. The software and things like that give a wonderful table not unlike business class in in an aircraft, laptop, tablet, phone, charge, just make it easy for people and use them to eat whatever and with. That's something that in our user testings, we we found, especially with families with kids all the way up to teens and above, just love that. And I think having that flexibility is super, super cool. We talked about the 3rd row, but beyond that is the cargo flexibility. So like for example, we often go from Los Angeles to Mammoth to go skiing, you know, and it's not just my kids, usually it's like me oldest, the youngest and probably two other kids. So you're like 5-6 people. So that means you got to really be able to be flexible with the seating to get all the skis and snowboards in the car, all the gear and five or six people. And we have that flexibility in depth to the cargo to get all of it in the gravity. That's amazing. That's amazing because that is a feat. I will tell you, because you said one large bag and then like, what, 5 roller boards or something? 6. So six roller boards plus a large suitcase. Yeah. So that means seven people. So two in the front, two in the middle. Sorry, two in the front, three in the middle, two in the back. There's enough cargo still and after the 3rd row for a large suitcase and four carry ONS, and then there's still room in the funk for three more carry ONS. So I'm going to have to check out that's, it's pretty remarkable. And again, why that's part of happening in the SUV, is that flexibility? Yeah, because there are 7 passenger SU VS that are about this size that do not have that much cargo space. That's correct. I can tell you from experience. Yeah. And I'm right there with you. So as a driver, what's your favorite feature in this car? Well, there's two things. You know we've talked about the what we call the Clearview cockpit, this layout. I've driven our prototypes at high performance kind of testing and I can tell you this is a really great driving experience, this layout. I'm also strangely really excited about the centre console and we haven't talked about this, but the, the cargo, we talk a lot about space in the car for people and stuff. This is like its own little space study. So for starters, this is real glass, it's frosted glass centre console, yes. So this whole this and then this slides forward. So this opens up this way and then we have our area for our cup holders. This is of course the new gravity key which is a really nice piece capacitive charging. But if you need access to more cargo, this slides forward, this opens up and then we offer what we call little Bento storage boxes so you can organize all your stuff. And I know first hand with my wife's car, there's often just so much stuff between hand sanitizer, water bottles, you know, you name it. And this just helps people organize their their space. I love it in car organization is one of the top questions we get and one of the top research topics. It really is on our site and every time we run something it's you know, self organizing bins and that kind of thing from Amazon, we got a we got a ton of traffic on that. I think people really need that organization That is like what it's like to truly live with the vehicle. And sometimes I find it's not just about offering gigantic space or huge space. It's about how do I organize it so it stays neat. And if I want to hide it away, I just hide it away. You know, it's a little dusty and I want to be able to clean it out. That's right. I love the bins. Can I throw those in the dishwasher? Absolutely. You hose them out? Whatever you need to do. Let's take a look at the front. Yes, let's do that. So the front in itself was a its own project and we're really excited about this because it has multiple use cases starting with funk gating. I was just going to say it's a it's a tailgating front. Yeah, we all know tailgating, but this is a whole new sport for the beach or for the football game. So this is our front. One of the things we've done is we've made this really wide. We've lowered the opening down really low. Believe it or not, this is actually really comfortable to sit in here. We've got cup holders for for soda or or adult beverages and it just makes for a really, really nice space. And then you have the nice cover overhead in case it's little bit of shade or rain, you know. So this is nice for the beach or whatever. Then this can then fold away and you can just use it for cargo or just lift this out and you have a household outlet there. That's right. We have 110 here. And then you'll notice these hooks, we have a cargo Nets that can be configured to hold cargo this way, hold cargo flat or trapeze style just to float cargo. So. So you could fit two more roll of the aboard. Yeah. Once these are out, we can fit actually three roller bags across here and in store in the front and that's incredible. Becomes very, very versatile. That's beautiful. And what do you call this color? This color is called Aurora green. It's a, it's a grayish green metallic. It's got a lot of olive in it, very sophisticated. It gives it kind of that upper market tough look. It just complements the car really, really well. What was your favorite part of picking out the different features in this? Oh my goodness, I don't know where to start, you know, I mean, the steering wheel, I do love the steering wheel. Certainly the funk was a big one. The steering wheel. I'm super excited about the configurability of the centre console and of course the space, overall space inside the vehicle. A lot of thoughts gone into this. It's, you know, designing a vehicle like this is really a three-dimensional puzzle. And it's not just one person, it's hundreds of people that play a part in really figuring all this stuff out. And you think, well, what else can possibly be different from other vehicles? But once you go through it all, you realize like, it's quite remarkable and something very special. Which is your favorite color for the exterior? Well, I'm a huge fan of the Aurora, so I would go with this without a doubt. Thank you so much for spending time with me and showing us your baby. Thank you so much. Thank you. In the rear seat, you'll notice that these seats are on a rail, so they push really far forward. And that is what it looks like for the third row axis when the seats fold forward. And then here's what the 3rd row looks like. So that's the seat that's up. It's actually reclined quite a bit, so you can see that there's lots of space for someone to sit back and relax. Lucid says that these seats are going to be really comfortable for 3rd row passengers. I see two sets of lower anchors here for center row passengers and I see probably enough for a rear facing child passenger car seat. This seat seems very pushed very far forward, so. So will it fit? I'm sure it'll fit. How comfortable will it be? We'll have to try it out when they bring it out at the end of the year. I know you probably just saw that little bear. This is the California Grizzly that is sort of the mascot of Lucid. You'll see one there, you'll see one there. They are Easter eggs that you'll find throughout the car, which is kind of a fun factor. So here you can see the seat pushed forward. This is the fold and tilt to give access to the third row, and I'm not seeing child passenger car seat latches in the third row. So I'm guessing that we're probably going to have a seat belt install only for car seats in the third row. But I do see though there's a little bin there for to hold an iPad or toss your phone. There's a cup holder and oh, and I see ausb port right there. And there's ausb port. So we have two USB ports and cup holders, Lots of space for comfort. Another thing that I'll show you. Notice the space here. So there, this is where the seats Stow into this, into this space here. But look at this little rise here. So there's probably batteries or some sort of mechanics under there and what you'll find is this, they've used that space as to elevate the seat. So you don't have, you've got nice low foot, foot well here. So you're going to have a lot of comfort if you put this seat back and have all of this room for your feet. I think that's going to make for a pretty comfortable 3rd row. Now the take away that I have here is they really thought about it. They really reinvented it. It's not. It's in the The details are subtle, but it's not like any other third row that I've seen in another car. Now notice this too. This is this glass canopy and it is this glass panel that covers the entire roof. Of course there's a cross bar there that provides structure, structural integrity and keeps you safe on the road. But this is an incredible glass panel. It covers the entire roof as well as the windshield. Families who really want all electric power, all the luxury that Lucid is providing, and all of this really novel technology and great design are going to be delighted with this car. It really is beautiful. And because it is designed in California and built in Arizona at this point in time, it does qualify for federal tax incentive when it comes out on the market. You should be able to benefit from those if they're still in place and that's because the opening price will be under $80,000, the threshold to qualify for those incentives. However, if you want to go all in with all the power, the long range battery and all the top of the line features, it won't qualify. But that's the price for luxury, and we know it's worth it.