Author: EVAI

• Lucid is gearing up to launch its first SUV, the Gravity.
• Designing a car that can handle a decade of life in the real-world is hard, as Tesla’s frequent durability problems have proven.
• To get around that, traditional automakers, Lucid and others use “proving grounds” that torture-test their vehicles.
• Lucid’s latest video highlights what sort of testing the Gravity has gone through.

How do you simulate an entire 150,000-mile vehicle lifetime in a couple of months? That’s the fundamental challenge facing engineers at automotive proving grounds. In the latest video from Lucid, you can see a peek into how it works.

I love this video, because I love proving grounds. I’ve only been to one—Hyundai Motor Group’s facility in the Mojave desert—and absolutely loved the experience. Hyundai laser-scanned and recreated some of the most tortuous bits of the U.S. interstate system at the facility, and torture-tested vehicles by driving them on undulating pavement, high-speed ovals, off-road trails and through salt baths. It bakes its vehicles in ovens—with salt still on their underbodies—and uses sun-tracking cases in the desert sun to do accelerated UV-wear testing. It was an incredibly impressive facility, and a trip I still recount frequently today. 

Yet while that approach is common among so-called “legacy automakers,” who almost all have Arctic, desert and specialty proving grounds, some startups take a less serious approach to durability testing. Tesla, for one, famously uses its consumers as beta testers. The brand still does some durability testing, but I’ve never seen evidence that Tesla has a similar-caliber facility to what the big companies use. 

Lucid wants to set itself apart from Tesla. Not just in efficiency, but in its approach to durability and quality. Early Lucid Airs had quality problems you’d expect from a brand new company—and MotorTrend’s long-term tester had plenty of issues—but it’s been working hard to build a reliable and durable product. That’s especially true for the upcoming Gravity, its first SUV, which may be asked to do some harder off-road work.

Lucid’s durability testing video shows the Gravity negotiating some gnarly rocky roads, dealing with undulating “cosin” bumps, plodding through sand, sitting on a suspension shaker, towing trailers and doing repeated acceleration attempts on a steep hill.  

It’s a tougher testing regimen for what’s supposed to be Lucid’s toughest product yet. Based on the testing procedure, it looks ready to handle a beating. But Lucid obviously isn’t going to show if the SUV has problems or breakdowns in its promotional videos, and the real world can throw curve balls rarely seen in repeatable, intentionally designed test. We’ll have to wait until the Gravity launches later this year to see Lucid’s work at the proving grounds results in a product that’s ready for prime time. 

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Ford has filed a new patent application for hardware that would allow EVs to charge while driving.

The new patent filing was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Aug. 15 and was submitted by Ford to the agency earlier this year. It deals with a method for aligning the wireless inductive charging coils mounted on an EV with ones embedded in the road surface.

Wireless inductive charging relies on transmitting electricity through the two sets of coils, in this case with the road-embedded coils connected to some form of power source. However, efficiency is based on how closely the vehicle is aligned with the row of coils in the road surface, so Ford is looking at ways to to achieve precise alignment beyond simply having the driver steer to maintain a consistent course over the coils.

Ford in-road wireless EV charging patent image

This was discussed in a previous Ford wireless-charging patent published by the USPTO in 2023, but this time the automaker is focusing more specifically on the use of ground-penetrating radar to allow the vehicle to better track the coils.

In addition to locating them, radar could be used to determine the condition of the coils, with the system advising the driver to switch lanes and potentially informing maintenance crews if coils are found to be inoperable. Vehicles could also communicate with each other, potentially negotiating the use of certain lanes depending on their state of charge, Ford suggests in the application.

Ford in-road wireless EV charging patent image

Drivers could manually steer vehicles over coils, with guidance information conveyed via a head-up display or other interface, Ford says in the application, but the automaker also suggests various levels of automation. Feedback similar to that used by active lane control systems could help nudge the car in the correct direction, or hands-free driving systems like Ford’s BlueCruise could take over the task completely.

While it’s unclear if Ford’s system will ever be deployed at scale, the inductive wireless charging industry as a whole is finally on its way toward genuinely competing with charge ports, connectors and cables—potentially doing for electric cars what wireless connectivity has done for smartphones.

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