Lucid Motors will roll out hands-free freeway driving this month

Lucid Motors is ready to roll out a software program replace on July 30 that can allow hands-free freeway driving on its Air sedans, a significant step ahead for the corporate’s superior driver help system.

The rollout will put Lucid Motors on a brief record of firms which have made hands-free driving potential in the US. Ford has a system known as BlueCruise, Normal Motors has Tremendous Cruise, and Mercedes-Benz has Drive Pilot, though it’s not as broadly accessible. In the proper circumstances and in vehicles geared up with an in-cabin digital camera, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) will also be used hands-free.

Lucid says the hands-free replace is just coming to the Air sedans for now, with an replace rolling out to homeowners of the brand new Gravity SUV slated for later this yr. (The corporate has barely began delivery Gravity SUVs anyway, with Cox Automotive reporting this week that solely 5 have been delivered within the second quarter.) The system can be solely accessible to prospects who purchased an Air geared up with the $2,500 “Dream Drive Professional” bundle, which features a “complete suite of 32 sensors” that features lidar, radar, cameras, and ultrasonics.

The corporate declined to say what number of prospects have bought the Dream Drive Professional bundle so far. Lucid has delivered round 20,000 vehicles since 2021.

Drivers should hold their eyes on the highway forward and be able to take over at any second, very similar to the competing driver help programs. Lucid says this might be performed with an infrared camera-based system within the automotive that sits on high of the steering column. They’ll additionally solely be capable of use the hands-free system on “appropriate” pre-mapped divided highways.

Replace: Added details about pre-mapped highways and the system’s infrared digital camera.