Minnesota winters are brutal. Your humble correspondent, who grew up in the land of Paul Bunyan and Gordon Bombay, can attest to this.
Those long winters provided ample rites of passage, including driving on frozen lakes and pulling the e-brake to drift around corners after a fresh snowfall — sometimes ending up in the neighbors’ yard. Thus, northern denizens require a certain oomph from their automobiles. So the announcement of a new electric luxury sedan (even when it has 1,000 hp) won’t light any fires.
But the latest test footage of said sedan — Lucid Motors’ Air — drifting in fresh powder on a -18 degree day in northern Minnesota? Ohh jeez.
In their blog about the tests, Lucid Motors explains, “This extreme environment allows us to build upon extensive simulations and climate chamber development, and to perform grueling real-world cold-driving testing and validation of our powertrain, battery, thermal, body, and chassis systems. ”
Test results? You’d be hard-pressed to find a Minnesotan not chomping at the bit to drive this out to the ice shanties. But as we wrote about in December, the electric vehicles aren’t available just yet, though you can put down $25,500 for one of 255 special edition “Launch” models or $2,500 to reserve a standard Lucid Air.
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