Lucid Wants To Be First Brand Offering Level 4 Autonomy To Consumers, Teases Upcoming Cheaper Crossover

It feels like everyone and their mother is racing to see who can crack private autonomy first, and Lucid is no different. Today, Lucid announced a partnership with NVIDIA to use its Drive AV platform to hopefully offer Level 4 autonomy soon, “while also unlocking next-generation manufacturing efficiencies through NVIDIA’s Industrial AI platform.” What does that look like, you ask? Well, “Lucid aims to deploy a unified AI factory to build smart factories and transform their enterprise leveraging NVIDIA Omniverse and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software libraries.”

So, the AI factory is going to build the smart factories, I guess? It’s all a bunch of Silicon Valley investor bait, if we’re being honest. Which I guess makes sense. It takes an absurd amount of money to start and then operate a car company, and apparently, if you want that sweet investor cash, you’ve got to say a bunch of stuff about how you’re “implementing predictive analytics, intelligent robotics, and real-time process optimization to achieve manufacturing excellence.” Although, if it actually can get to the point where it’s able to offer Level 4 autonomy, that would still be pretty cool.

Currently, Lucid does offer a Level 2 driver assistance system that it calls DreamDrive Pro, which currently offers some hands-free driving and hands-free lane-change capabilities. According to Lucid, the next step in this NVIDIA partnership is offering “eyes-on, point-to-point driving (L2++) for Lucid Gravity and the company’s upcoming midsize vehicles,” with the goal of eventually being able to offer eyes-off, hands-off, true Level 4 driving at some point in the future. 

When will that be? No one can say. But allegedly, it’s happening at some point, with the help of NVIDIA. I’ll also believe it when I see it. 

Speaking of seeing things, though, in the image included with the press release, you can’t see much, but it definitely shows a Lucid Gravity in the foreground. But behind it you see a second, smaller vehicle that sure doesn’t look like another Gravity — it seems like the upcoming sub-$50,000 crossover that Lucid first teased last year, and that’s set to debut next year. Zoom in a bit, start playing around with some of the settings in the free-to-use PhotoShop alternative I have access to, and it appears to be smaller and swoopier, with more of a fastback-style roofline and rear haunches that appear to be more pronounced than what you get on the Gravity. 

There’s only so much you can discern from this still-shadowy image, but I’m at least pretty confident it won’t look nearly as minivan-like as the Gravity. So if you don’t need a vehicle that’s quite as large as the Gravity and prefer a more typical electric crossover shape, here you go. It should also be a good bit cheaper, too.

While the shape of the side-view mirrors and the rear light signature may not be the most exciting discoveries in the world, if you aren’t a fan of the Gravity’s recessed door handles, I have some great news for you. Based on what we can see here, it appears Lucid plans to use more conventional door handles on its upcoming smaller crossover. Less expensive, smaller, hopefully still nearly as enjoyable to drive and a different style of door handle? Oh yeah, now we’re talking. 

According to MotorTrend, it will also be called the Lucid Earth, and Car and Driver seems to agree. When will it get here, though? Based on their expectations, most likely sometime in 2027. So we’ll still be waiting for a while, but hopefully, in the next couple months, we’ll get a little more information (and potentially a full product reveal).