A prototype Lucid Air undergoing a flow visualization test at the Windshear wind tunnel facility in Concord, North Carolina. Lucid Motors Side intakes in the front fascia smooth airflow around the wheel wells, which are a source of a lot of turbulence. There is also a vortex-generating air intake under the front bumper, but you can't see that in this image. Lucid Motors You can see here the airflow remains attached to the surface of the Air's roof and doesn't spiral up into a huge turbulent wake at the rear. Lucid Motors
A few weeks ago, we took a look at the most aerodynamically efficient vehicles ever made. At the time, the lowest-drag production car for sale in the US was the Porsche Taycan, which cuts through the air with a drag coefficient (Cd) of 0.22. But the rather excellent electric Porsche won't wear that crown for very long. Lucid Motors is readying production of its first battery electric vehicle, the Air, and it has just released the results of some wind tunnel testing. Tests at the Windshear facility in North Carolina have determined that the Air has a Cd of only 0.21.
Moving through the air as easily as possible is important if you want to travel the farthest distance using a given amount of energy. As such, optimizing a car for low drag has become more important, first as regulators in Europe demanded more efficient cars, then more recently as range has become the most important attribute of a battery electric vehicle.
"Aerodynamic efficiency plays a key role in achieving world-beating range and performance and is particularly valuable to an EV in that it provides 'smart range' independent of battery pack size. So naturally we intensively focused upon aerodynamics throughout the Lucid Airs development. Our aero team worked seamlessly with design and engineering counterparts, establishing aero efficiency as a core tenet of Lucid Air from its very inception, enabling us to achieve this new standard," said Peter Rawlinson, CEO and CTO of Lucid Motors.
What about frontal area?
You will have noticed that I've only listed the Cd figure for each of these cars, but the aerodynamicists out there will rightly point out that a car's drag coefficient isn't actually as important as its drag area, or CdA. This is the number you get when you multiply its Cd by the frontal area of the car, but it's also a number that OEMs and designers rarely release. So we've gone with just the Cds for now.
Cutting drag was also a main conceRead More – Source
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