Connect with us
lucid air dream edition interior lucid air dream edition interior

News

Lucid Air prepares for its first recall for strut damper replacement

Credit: Teslarati

Published

on

Lucid Group is communicating to owners of the Air electric vehicle that it will be issuing a recall for front strut dampers that may have been manufactured by the supplier with the snap ring installed in the wrong orientation.

This will be Lucid’s first recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) since it started deliveries of the Air Dream Edition sedan in October 2021. “Lucid has determined that a defect, which relates to motor vehicle safety, exists in certain 2022 Lucid Air vehicles,” it said.

Lucid sent an e-mail communication to owners last night, telling them to prepare for a recall to 2022 model year vehicles. “This condition may result in sudden loss of ground clearance, vehicle vibration, and front brake line damage, increasing the risk of a crash,” Lucid said in the e-mail. “A snap fail could occur without warning to the driver. If the failure causes damage to the electrical connections to the damper, the driver would receive a warning message station ‘Suspension Control Fault. Contact Service Center.’ If the failure results in a brake hose leak and the brake fluid level falls below 81.9% of the minimum recommended brake fluid volume, the driver would receive a warning message station ‘Brake Fluid Level Low. Refill Required, Contact Service Center,’ with an accompanying audible warning.”

The recall is 22V090. It is not yet available on the NHTSA website.

Advertisement

Lucid will inspect and fix the front strut dampers, if necessary. The entire process could take up to four hours, but customers should expect an hour wait at a minimum so technicians can determine the problem. Lucid said. It will be completed at no charge to the customer if service technicians are required to replace the strut dampers. Lucid Customer Care will work with customers to arrange for a loaner vehicle or alternate transportation needed by the customer, the company added.

This is the first recall for Lucid in nearly four months of deliveries. The automaker started rolling out some new features for DreamDrive, its semi-autonomous driving system, via Over-the-Air software update earlier in February.

Lucid’s full letter, sent to customers last night, is available below.

Lucid Air Recall 22v090 by Joey Klender on Scribd

Advertisement

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

Advertisement
Comments

Cybertruck

Tesla Cybertruck is officially the safest pickup, IIHS says

Published

on

Credit: Tesla

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has awarded the 2025-2026 Tesla Cybertruck crew cab pickup its highest honor: Top Safety Pick+. This marks the Cybertruck as the only full-size pickup to achieve this distinction in recent evaluations.

The award applies specifically to vehicles built after April 2025, following structural upgrades including front underbody reinforcements and footwell modifications.

These changes enabled strong performance in updated crash tests. The Cybertruck earned “Good” ratings in the small overlap front (driver and passenger sides), updated moderate overlap front, and updated side tests—core requirements for the Top Safety Pick+ designation.

It also secured acceptable or good headlights across trims and a “Good” rating for its standard front crash prevention system in pedestrian scenarios, along with acceptable or good performance in vehicle-to-vehicle testing.

Advertisement

The Cybertruck avoided every single pedestrian collision, including:

  • Daytime child crossing
  • Nightitime adult crossing
  • Night parallel adult

Advertisement

In the large pickup category, competitors such as the Toyota Tundra received only a standard Top Safety Pick, while the Ford F-150 and Ram 1500 did not qualify for either award. This positions the Cybertruck as a standout in occupant protection and crash avoidance among its peers.

Credit: IIHS

Ironically, the same vehicle celebrated for superior U.S. safety performance remains banned from public roads in the United Kingdom and much of Europe. Regulators there cite the Cybertruck’s sharp external edges and highly rigid stainless-steel construction as failing pedestrian-protection standards. European and UK rules require rounded surfaces on protruding parts to minimize injury risk in collisions with vulnerable road users.

Critics also point to the truck’s substantial weight and unyielding body structure, which some argue could transfer more force to other vehicles or pedestrians rather than absorbing it.

Tesla’s engineering philosophy underpins the Cybertruck’s strong IIHS results. The vehicle features a distinctive stainless-steel exoskeleton made from ultra-hard 30X cold-rolled stainless steel. This provides exceptional structural rigidity and a robust safety cage that resists deformation in side impacts and rollovers.

Engineers designed integrated load paths to channel crash forces away from the occupant compartment while allowing controlled energy absorption in key zones. Post-April 2025 refinements to the front underbody further optimized performance in overlap crashes.

Advertisement

Complementing the passive structure is Tesla’s advanced active safety suite, including the standard Collision Avoidance Assist system with automatic emergency braking. This contributed directly to the vehicle’s strong front crash prevention scores. The skateboard platform and low center of gravity also enhance stability and handling, reducing the likelihood of certain crashes.

The IIHS recognition highlights how Tesla’s combination of high-strength materials, structural innovation, and software-driven safety systems can deliver top-tier protection in rigorous testing. While global regulatory differences on design and pedestrian interaction continue to limit the Cybertruck’s availability outside North America, its U.S. safety credentials set a new benchmark for full-size pickups.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete

Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.

Published

on

By

Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites

It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.

SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history

Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.

Advertisement

Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.

SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.

The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

News

Tesla pushes back against unfair reporting of accidents

Published

on

tesla
(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla is pushing back against the unfair reporting of accidents involving its vehicles. Many media outlets were quick to jump to conclusions about a fatal accident involving a Tesla in Katy, Texas, that happened recently.

The driver of the vehicle, which slammed into a brick house and killed a woman inside, stated the car was operating on Autopilot. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Head of AI Ashok Elluswamy both challenged that claim, with Elluswamy revealing last night that the system was overridden by the driver, who pressed the accelerator pedal “all the way to 100%.”

Tesla finally clarifies fatal Texas crash, confirms driver manually overrode acceleration

The car reached a speed of 73 MPH during the crash, Elluswamy detailed, and stated that the accelerator pedal was even pressed after the crash.

Advertisement

The story has been spread throughout the media with either incomplete or incorrect reporting, with some stories still not updated nearly 24 hours after Musk and Elluswamy posted answers about the crash on X.

The reporting has been a thorn in the side of Tesla for several years. Vehicle accidents involving Teslas are usually reported with the manufacturer’s name in the headline, while other companies are free of criticism when their cars are involved in accidents.

Here’s an example of that:

Many media outlets stated the car was in “self-driving mode” or “Autopilot mode” when the car crashed. The truth is, now that Tesla has chimed in, that the driver had manually overriden the system by pressing the accelerator. Elluswamy commented on the unfair reporting:

“This blatantly irresponsible reporting does more harm to people than they realize.

Advertisement

Using Tesla self-driving is far safer than manual driving, and this was measured over 10B miles.

Planting such FUD in the minds of general public, who might not know the all the facts, might prevent them from using this technology that makes them safer.”

The damage these headlines do to Tesla and the self-driving car movement is unexplainable. Most people do not realize the safeguards that are in place with Tesla’s self-driving functions; many people who have used it know the car would never travel at that speed in a residential area, not even on the most aggressive “Mad Max” setting.

It is important to remember that Tesla Full Self-Driving is not autonomous, and the company never claimed it was. Drivers are still responsible for paying attention and remaining vigilant. They must be able to take over at all times.

Advertisement
Continue Reading