Lucid’s Air Grand Touring recently completed a Guinness World Record‑verified 1,205 km run from St Moritz to Munich on a single charge — a real‑world demonstration the company says showcases battery management and efficiency as its Saudi backers scale local production and charging infrastructure.
Lucid’s Air Grand Touring has again pushed the boundaries of what an electric saloon can achieve on a single battery charge, completing a Guinness World Record‑verified run of 1,205 kilometres from St Moritz in the Swiss Alps to Munich. The company’s announcement says the distance beats its own previous mark by 160 kilometres and was carried out in regular road conditions rather than on a closed test track, a detail that Lucid emphasised when publicising the attempt.
It’s hard to keep up with Guinness World Records for EV distance driving, however. We reported last month about Polestar’s new record for driving an SUV (as opposed to a sedan) 935km. This battle for range supremacy is ultimately very good news for drivers and indeed for the sector as a whole, reducing the range anxiety which hampered take-up early on.
Underpinning the Lucid’s feat are the Air’s headline technical figures: Lucid states a WLTP range of up to 960 km, combined energy consumption as low as 13.5 kWh per 100 km, a peak output of 611 kW (831 PS) and a 270 km/h top speed. The manufacturer also highlights very fast charging capability — up to 400 km of range in around 16 minutes — as part of the package it says made the endurance run possible.
Lucid and its press materials stress that the drive was a “real‑world” demonstration across alpine passes, motorways and secondary roads, planned and led by London‑based entrepreneur Umit Sabanci. The company points out this is its second long‑range Guinness record; Lucid previously organised a nine‑country, single‑charge trip in 2024, which it used as a proving ground for systems and logistics.
In the company’s press statement, Eric Bach, Lucid’s senior vice‑president of product and chief engineer, framed the distance as evidence of a technological edge in efficiency and battery management.
That technological story is bound up with Saudi Arabia’s industrial push. The Public Investment Fund, Lucid’s largest shareholder, owns a controlling stake and has positioned the manufacturer as a strategic partner to Vision 2030. PIF materials and government announcements describe the opening last year of a Lucid assembly operation at King Abdullah Economic City and a government agreement to buy up to 100,000 vehicles over ten years, part of a broader plan to localise electric‑vehicle manufacturing and stimulate jobs and skills transfer.
The plant in KAEC began as a semi‑knocked‑down assembly operation, with industry reporting indicating almost 800 cars had been assembled there by December 2023 as part of an initial, training‑focused phase. Official statements set an early annual capacity target of 5,000 units in this phase, with plans for the KAEC complex to scale to as many as 155,000 vehicles a year as full localisation progresses.
Lucid’s efforts sit inside a wider Saudi ecosystem that is rapidly taking shape. The PIF has also backed homegrown brand Ceer in partnership with Foxconn and BMW technology licensing, aiming to bring Saudi‑made EVs to market. At the same time, established global players such as BYD have entered the Saudi market through local partnerships, offering a range of battery and hybrid models. To underpin vehicle uptake, PIF and Saudi Electricity Company formed the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Company (EVIQ) with the aim of deploying more than 5,000 fast chargers at over 1,000 locations by 2030. Separately, NEOM’s investment into Pony.ai signals ambitions to pair electrification with autonomous and smart‑mobility projects.
For drivers and fleet operators in the Gulf, the record is more than a PR milestone; it is a practical data point in conversations about range anxiety and the case for switching to electric. But infrastructure remains the gating factor. EVIQ’s rollout plans are significant, yet widespread, interoperable fast charging — and the commercial models that make it usable day‑to‑day — will determine how often cars can exploit headline range figures in everyday life.
Lucid’s claim is now backed by a Guinness‑recognised result and by the company’s debrief on how its high‑voltage architecture and battery‑management systems were used. That said, WLTP numbers and special endurance runs are different measures: WLTP is a standardised laboratory methodology, while a single‑charge marathon across carefully managed conditions can still be optimised in ways that typical owners will not replicate. The meaningful test for drivers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia will be sustained production growth at KAEC, the maturity of charging networks and the total cost of ownership once incentives and running costs are factored in. For now, Lucid’s record is a headline‑grabbing demonstration of how far EV technology has come — and a reminder of how much the surrounding ecosystem must scale if those gains are to be widely enjoyed.
