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Lucid launches new Air Grand Touring Performance following ‘strong demand’ for speed

Credit: Lucid Group

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Lucid Group announced this morning it has launched a new version of its Air all-electric sedan: the Air Grand Touring Performance. The launch of the new, 1,050 horsepower trim level of Lucid’s first EV model answers the wishes of customers, who showed “strong demand” for “higher-performance versions of the Lucid Air,” CEO Peter Rawlinson said.

Set for initial deliveries in June 2022 in the United States, the Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance is the newest trim level of the all-electric sedan. Deliveries are set for August 2022 in Canada.

With 1,050 horsepower and a 0-60 MPH acceleration rate of just 2.6 seconds, the all-new Grand Touring Performance sets new standards for the Air lineup, as more performance has been a strong wish of Lucid customers thus far. The automaker surely answered.

Two powerful, all-electric motors will drive the Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance to the forefront of the company’s EV lineup. With an EPA-estimated 446-mile range rating, it only falls short of the 520 miles its sibling, the Dream Edition, offers. “Two of Lucid’s proprietary electric motors – one at each axle – propel the Air Grand Touring Performance from 0 to 60 miles per hour in just 2.6 seconds,” Lucid outlined in its press release for the vehicle. “It will have an MSRP of $179,000, and customer deliveries in the U.S. are slated to begin in June 2022. In Canada, the Air Grand Touring Performance will be priced at $242,000 CAD (before taxes), with deliveries beginning in August 2022.”

A Need for Speed

CEO Peter Rawlinson said Lucid’s new Air Grand Touring Performance configuration is simply an answer to customer wishes. Evidently, despite its young and fresh entry into the market, with its first vehicle deliveries occurring in late 2021, Rawlinson’s electric car company has customers who are thirsting for even more performance. The new trim level offers that and then some, and Lucid quickly brought the new vehicle to the market as the in-house development of its products gives the automaker substantial advantages over those who are supplier-focused.

“Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance answers the strong demand we continue to see for higher-performance versions of the Lucid Air,” Rawlinson said. “The remarkable speed with which we are able to conceive and bring this model to market is possible only because of Lucid’s high degree of vertical integration and in-house production of our proprietary EV powertrain and battery pack technology.”

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Standard Features

  • Glass Canopy spanning windshield to roof
  • Elegant and intuitive Lucid UX with 34-inch floating Glass Cockpit and 5K resolution
  • Extensive over-the-air software update capability
  • DreamDrive Pro, Lucid’s advanced driver assistance system, with 30+ features and future-ready hardware, including the first automotive LIDAR in North America
  • 21-speaker Surreal Sound immersive audio system with Dolby Atmos compatibility
  • Intelligent Micro Lens Array LED Headlights, a solid-state system developed in-house by Lucid
  • Heated and ventilated front seats with massage
  • Soft-close doors, power opening/closing trunk and frunk
  • Ultra-fast 900V+ charging system, enabling users to add up to 300 miles in 21 minutes at a 350 kW DC fast charger, as demonstrated in recent independent media tests

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

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Tesla’s AI Chief just hinted at something big for FSD v14 lite owners

Tesla’s AI chief suggests the newest FSD v14 Lite build may finally go wide release.

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Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, noted on Sunday that the newest FSD v14 Lite build rolling out to Hardware 3 cars is likely the version that goes to wide release, the strongest signal yet that Tesla is near to closing out an early access phase that Hardware 3 owners have waited more than a year for.

Elluswamy made the comment in response to an extensive review from Tesla owner Zack, known on X as @BLKMDL3, who tested software version 2026.20.6.10 and detailed the changes in a lengthy post. “FSD v14 Lite (for Tesla AI3 hardware vehicles) review.

The update restarts a rollout that had stalled after its initial release. Tesla began pushing FSD v14 Lite to Hardware 3 early access drivers on June 29, bringing driving behavior learned on the newer Hardware 4 computer down to the more limited chip that has powered Tesla vehicles built between 2019 and early 2023. That release, as we covered in detail, gave roughly 4 million HW3 vehicles their first meaningful update since being frozen on version 12.6 in early 2025.

Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features

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The latest build adds features that bring Hardware 3 closer in line with what Hardware 4 owners already have. FSD can now start directly from park without a brake pedal confirmation, a change Zack called a small but meaningful quality of life improvement. The interface also picks up the blue “P” park icon, approaching destination alerts, and a dedicated Self-Driving app with streak tracking, all details previously exclusive to the AI4 branch of v14, as outlined in Tesla’s original release notes.

The stakes around Hardware 3 go beyond software polish. Tesla sold the Full Self-Driving package for years on the promise that every vehicle equipped with it had the hardware needed to eventually drive itself without supervision. That promise broke down during Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call, when Musk acknowledged HW3 cars could not run unsupervised FSD, prompting Tesla to offer trade-in discounts and hardware retrofits alongside the Lite software track.

Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story

Tesla has continued to frame v14 Lite as the primary path forward for the HW3 fleet, telling owners in April that international markets would follow the U.S. rollout once regulatory approvals came through. For now, HW3 owners in the early access group are the only ones running the new build. A broader rollout would mark the second major software delivery to the legacy fleet since Tesla first released FSD v14 to Hardware 4 vehicles, and the first sign since June that the Lite program is still moving rather than stuck in early access limbo.

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Elon Musk sends first warning to SpaceX short sellers

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Credit: Grok

In a pointed message on X, Elon Musk warned that firms maintaining significant short positions in SpaceX over time face “very low” survival probability.

The statement comes amid post-IPO volatility for the rocket company, now trading under the ticker $SPCX.

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Five weeks after what was described as the largest IPO in history, the stock had fallen roughly 30% from its peak above $2.6 trillion, briefly surpassing Microsoft and Amazon in market value. Short sellers celebrated gains of about $8.7 billion, but Musk’s reply underscores his long-term conviction.

The warning directly echoes a detailed bullish analysis arguing that Starship’s cost reductions could unlock a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. Projects ranging from solar power beamed from orbit and asteroid mining to orbital data centers and Mars terraforming were projected to create over $100 trillion in new market capitalization.

In this vision, SpaceX acts as the essential infrastructure provider, akin to AWS for cloud computing, capturing monopoly-like revenues from launches, crew transport, and data traffic across a rapidly expanding frontier.

This is far from the first time Musk has targeted short sellers. With Tesla, he has repeatedly framed persistent bears as destined for major losses. In July 2024, Musk declared that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and volume production of Optimus robots, “anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates,” referencing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ reported short bets.

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Elon Musk reveals what Tesla stock surge could do to Bill Gates

Earlier, in 2018, he taunted shorts that they had “about three weeks before their short position explodes,” a remark followed by sharp stock gains. Musk has also called short selling “value destroying” and once suggested it “should be illegal,” viewing it as betting against innovation and progress.

Critics often dismiss Musk’s optimism as hype, especially when near-term metrics like quarterly deliveries or stock fluctuations disappoint.

Yet his pattern remains consistent: framing short positions against his companies as fundamentally misjudging exponential technological leaps. For SpaceX shorts, the message is clear: betting against multi-planetary ambitions and the infrastructure monopoly they enable carries existential risk for the firms involved.

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As Musk and supporters see it, the space economy’s upside dwarfs Earth-bound valuation models, making today’s dips temporary in a decades-long ascent.

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Tesla reveals first vehicle model to receive Starlink integration

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Tesla has evidently revealed which of its vehicle models will be the first to receive Starlink integration: the Cybercab.

Tesla’s Santana Row showroom now has a full-fledged display of the Cybercab, with an extensive bit of information hung around an exhibit that seems to reveal the vehicle’s newest feature: an integrated Starlink antenna that will enable secure and reliable internet access during trips.

Credit: @Starscream_SJC | X

Cybercab is geared toward autonomous ride-hailing for one or two passengers. The production units rolling off the lines at Gigafactory Texas are built without steering wheels or pedals, meaning when public rides begin, passengers will not need to interact with a human being or control the vehicle in any way outside of what appears on the center screen for their entertainment during the ride.

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Along the display, Tesla wrote this message about Cybercab:

“Cybercab is built for autonomy. It has no steering wheel, no side mirrors, and no pedals. It goes where you tell it to go and how you want it to, so you can relax along the way. It is hyper aware and responsive to your surroundings, monitoring other drivers, responding to emergency vehicles, utilizing its expertise in the rarest scenarios to help keep you safe.”

Tesla has been teasing a potential Starlink integration for quite some time now. In December, the company hinted at potential Starlink internet terminal integration within its vehicles in a patent that described a vehicle roof assembly with integrated radio frequency (RF) transparency.

Tesla hints at Starlink integration with recent patent

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The company wrote in its patent application that a new roof design built with materials that differ from the standard metallic or glass elements used in today’s cars would allow it to integrate modern vehicular technologies, in particular, ones that require radio frequency transmission and reception.

Tesla suggested high-strength polymer blends, like Polycarbonate, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, or Acrylonitrile Styrene Acrylate.

This is the first time we’ve seen Tesla officially confirm the Starlink integration into the Cybercab. It’s not much of a surprise considering the company’s intention behind the Cybercab, which is to make travel autonomous.

Productivity will now be at a maximum during a work-related commute, while the center screen could be utilized for Netflix or potentially even live TV for those who are heading to dinner or to a fun activity.

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