FINALLY YA’LL! Nearly two years after its initial announcement, we drove the 1,234 horsepower Lucid Air Sapphire in all its tri-motor glory. Spoiler alert! It did not disappoint. This EV is a masterclass in power and efficiency, setting the bar for a new breed of vehicles that are as fast as they are luxurious. Peep the full video review at the bottom.
Lucid Motors continues to gain notoriety in the EV space for its industry-leading efficiency and in many cases, bonkers performance specs. All of those accolades have come from just one model so far – the Air sedan.
While the American automaker is still looking to find its stride in brand recognition to boost sales of its flagship vehicle, it is not from a lack of effort. All variants of the Air sedan are impressive, delivering some of the best range in the entire industry, all within a sleek and luxe 924V package.
We recently saw Lucid roll out its 2024 model year versions of the Air, which now includes a RWD version of its entry-level Air Pure and a range-boosted Grand Touring. We’ll save thoughts on those versions for another day (although we did just drive them both).
Today’s focus is on the pinnacle of Lucid’s current portfolio and arguably of all mass-produced passenger EVs – the Air Sapphire. This exclusive tri-motor variant was first announced in the summer of 2022 with some redonkulous performance specs. We’re talking 0-60 mph in 1.98 seconds (from a standstill, mind you), 0-100 mph in under 4 seconds, and a top speed of 205 mph.
If you’re asking yourself why that sort of acceleration is necessary, first off, you’re a fool, and second, because Lucid has the technological prowess to do so. This halo EV is a major flex – not built for the average consumer (it does cost $250k after all), but exists as an exercise in futuristic all-electric performance.
I’d argue it’s also a nod to another American EV automaker (and any other automaker for that matter) saying, “That’s right, look what we can f@$king do. Top that.”
It’s not my place to choose a winner in the equation, but my career does put me in an excellent position where I get to test out insane rides like the Lucid Air Sapphire and report back to you lovely readers.
If you’ve read my work before (you better have!), you may recall I’ve been calling out the Lucid team directly every single time I cover the Air Sapphire, asking begging them to give me a chance to drive it. Finally, that opportunity came my way, and I made sure to document my genuine reactions as I put the accelerator to the floor for the first time… then again, and again, and again. Here are my thoughts.
The Lucid Air Sapphire is the fastest thing I’ve ever been in
We got invited to the Bay Area to tour the Lucid Motors design studio and test-drive all the 2024 Air models, including the Sapphire. While I was interested in testing out all variants of the Air, I was genuinely clamoring to get into Sapphire, and the Lucid team must have known it because they put me in that bad boy first (thanks, team).
Right out of the parking lot, the acceleration of the Lucid Air Sapphire was undeniable—so much so that I missed my first turn on the planned route and drove about four miles in the wrong direction without even noticing. This was a theme for me throughout the day, and I swear I have proper navigation skills. I was simply more focused on putting Sapphire through some windy roads and wide-open straightaways around Half Moon Bay.
What can I say that has yet to be shared? Is Sapphire fast? Probably the fastest… at least from what I’ve experienced. However, that is just one simple element of this dynamic sedan. The overall ride is unapologetically smooth at any speed, from any angle, and in any of the three drive modes… as long as you know what you’re doing.
This is only a vehicle for someone with adequate driving experience, both in EVs and in general. It’s a wild stallion of a vessel that will try to buck you off of it at every turn if you’re not careful. I was living for it, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t puckered a few times.
As you’ll see in my video review below, the first proper straightaway delivered visible shock in my body language as I tightened up and shortened my neck like a turtle trying to hide. I thought 1,111 horsepower in the Dream Edition was wild when I experienced Air for the first time back in 2021, but Lucid’s Sapphire edition takes it to a whole other echelon.
Yeah, I broke some speed laws, but how could you not when you get an opportunity like this one? Be cool, and don’t snitch; I was safe. I promise. Whether from a standstill or already in motion, the pure speed of this EV is unmatched, giving you the freedom to overtake any vehicle whenever you want with zero delay.
Aside from the acceleration, I was in awe of the Sapphire’s handling. It’s sticky as hell, as proved by miles of winding wet roads surrounded by redwoods in California. The Alcantara seats and steering wheel offered plenty of comfort while driving, and you know I had those air-conditioned seats to keep my back cool during my adrenaline-fueled ride.
I did notice that the Sapphire’s cabin was not as quiet as the other Lucid Air variants, but it wasn’t a huge difference. While I tested out all three drive modes of the sedan, I actually found myself in the lowest “Smooth” mode the most – that was more than enough speed for me. If you’re always driving this thing in Sapphire mode, you’re either a maniac or belong in Formula E… or both.
This is one of the rare instances in all my drives where it’s challenging to relay how impressive the drive of the Lucid Air Sapphire is. It’s something you have to experience for yourself. To aid in my demonstration of its power, I put together a little video of my experience, complete with expressions of fear, thrill, and pure elation.
The Lucid Air Sapphire is available now for a price of $249,000. Here’s my video for your viewing pleasure:
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Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging and Starbucks have officially opened their first DC fast charging hub together, off the I-5 in Red Bluff, California.
The 400 kW Mercedes-Benz chargers are capable of adding up to 300 miles in 10 minutes, depending on the EV, and every stall has both NACS and CCS cables – they’re fully open DC fast chargers.
Mercedes-Benz HPC North America, a joint venture between subsidiaries of Mercedes-Benz Group and renewable energy producer MN8 Energy, first announced in July 2024 that it would install DC fast chargers at Starbucks stores along Interstate 5, the main 1,400-mile north-south interstate highway on the US West Coast from Canada to Mexico. Ultimately, Mercedes plans to install fast chargers at 100 Starbucks stores across the US.
Mercedes-Benz HPC opened its first North American charging site at Mercedes-Benz USA’s headquarters in Sandy Springs, Georgia, in November 2023 as part of an initial $1 billion charging network investment. As of the end of 2024, Mercedes had deployed over 150 operational fast chargers in the US, but it hasn’t disclosed an official number of how many chargers are currently online.
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Andrew Cornelia, CEO of Mercedes-Benz HPC North America, is leaving the company at the end of the month to become global head of electrification & sustainability at Uber.
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The race for autonomous driving has three fronts: software, hardware, and regulatory. For years, we’ve watched Tesla try to brute-force its way to “Full Self-Driving (FSD)” with its own custom hardware, while the rest of the automotive industry is increasingly lining up behind NVIDIA.
Here’s a table comparing the two chips with the best possible specs I could find. greentheonly’s teardown was particularly useful. If you find things you think are not accurate, please don’t hesitate to reach out:
Feature / Specification
Tesla AI4 (Hardware 4.0)
NVIDIA Drive Thor (AGX / Jetson)
Developer / Architect
Tesla (in-house)
NVIDIA
Manufacturing Process
Samsung 7nm (7LPP class)
TSMC 4N (custom 5nm class)
Release Status
In production (shipping since 2023)
In production since 2025
CPU Architecture
ARM Cortex-A72 (legacy)
ARM Neoverse V3AE (server-grade)
CPU Core Count
20 cores (5× clusters of 4 cores)
14 cores (Jetson T5000 configuration)
AI Performance (INT8)
~100–150 TOPS (dual-SoC system)
1,000 TOPS (per chip)
AI Performance (FP4)
Not supported / not disclosed
2,000 TFLOPS (per chip)
Neural Processing Unit
3× custom NPU cores per SoC
Blackwell Tensor Cores + Transformer Engine
Memory Type
GDDR6
LPDDR5X
Memory Bus Width
256-bit
256-bit
Memory Bandwidth
~384 GB/s
~273 GB/s
Memory Capacity
~16 GB typical system
Up to 128 GB (Jetson Thor)
Power Consumption
Est. 80–100 W (system)
40 W – 130 W (configurable)
Camera Support
5 MP proprietary Tesla cameras
Scalable, supports 8MP+ and GMSL3
Special Features
Dual-SoC redundancy on one board
Native Transformer Engine, NVLink-C2C
The most striking difference right off the bat is the manufacturing process. NVIDIA is throwing everything at Drive Thor, using TSMC’s cutting-edge 4N process (a custom 5nm-class node). This allows them to pack in the new Blackwell architecture, which is essentially the same tech powering the world’s most advanced AI data centers.
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Tesla, on the other hand, pulled a move that might surprise spec-sheet warriors. Teardowns confirm that AI4 is built on Samsung’s 7nm process. This is mature, reliable, and much cheaper than TSMC’s bleeding-edge nodes.
When you look at the compute power, NVIDIA claims a staggering 2,000 TFLOPS for Thor. But there’s a catch. That number uses FP4 (4-bit floating point) precision, a new format designed specifically for the Transformer models used in generative AI.
Tesla’s AI4 is estimated to hit around 100-150 TOPS (INT8) across its dual-SoC redundant system. On paper, it looks like a slaughter, but Tesla made a very specific engineering trade-off that tells us exactly what was bottling up their software: memory bandwidth.
Tesla switched from LPDDR4 in HW3 to GDDR6 in HW4, the same power-hungry memory you find in gaming graphics cards (GPUs). This gives AI4 a massive memory bandwidth of approximately 384 GB/s, compared to Thor’s 273 GB/s (on the single-chip Jetson config) using LPDDR5X.
This suggests Tesla’s vision-only approach, which ingests massive amounts of raw video from high-res cameras, was starving for data.
Based on Elon Musk’s comments that Tesla’s AI5 chip will have 5x the memory bandwidth, it sounds like it might still be Tesla’s bottleneck.
Here is where Tesla’s cost-cutting really shows. AI4 is still running on ARM Cortex-A72 cores, an architecture that is nearly a decade old. They bumped the core count to 20, but it’s still old tech.
NVIDIA Thor, meanwhile, uses the ARM Neoverse V3AE, a server-grade CPU explicitly designed for the modern software-defined vehicle. This allows Thor to run not just the autonomous driving stack, but the entire infotainment system, dashboard, and potentially even an in-car AI assistant, all on one chip.
Thor has found many takers, especially among Tesla EV competitors such as BYD, Zeekr, Lucid, Xiaomi, and many more.
Electrek’s Take
There’s one thing that is not in there: price. I would assume that Tesla wins on that front, and that’s a big part of the project. Tesla developed a chip that didn’t exist, and that it needed.
It was an impressive feat, but it doesn’t make Tesla an incredible leader in silicon for self-driving.
Tesla is maxing out AI4. It now uses both chips, making it less likely to achieve the redundancy levels you need to deliver level 4-5 autonomy.
Meanwhile, we don’t have a solution for HW3 yet and AI5 is apparently not coming to save the day until 2027.
By then, there will likely be millions of vehicles on the road with NVIDIA Thor processors.
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Velotric’s Black Friday Sale switches gears with up to $750 increased savings and new lows starting from $999
Velotric has switched its Black Friday Sale into a higher gear with increased savings, new low prices, and expanded bundle packages on its e-bike lineup for a short-term window through Cyber Monday – plus, the option to save 30% on three accessories. One notable expanded package is the Velotric T1 ST Plus Lightweight Urban e-bike, coming with a FREE range extender battery ($400 value) for $1,299 shipped. You’d have to pay $1,649 for the e-bike on its own without any discounts, with that extra battery running that price up to $2,049. The brand’s early Black Friday deal only offered $350 savings (with the bundle being a rear cargo rack), but for this short-term change-up, you’re getting $750 in total savings that returns the tag to the lowest price we have tracked in 2025. Head below to check out the full lineup of Velotric’s expanded Black Friday Sale savings.
One of my favorite options from Velotric’s lineup, the T1 ST Plus e-bike, is a lightweight commuter that weighs only 39 pounds, and if you’ve read any of my e-bike reviews, you know I often lean towards models that can be easily handled up and down my rather large stoop. It brings a more European-style minimalist elegance to your travels, though keep in mind this model doesn’t possess a throttle, so it’s all PAS action. The 350W rear hub motor (with a 600W peak) is paired with a 352.8Wh battery for up to 70 miles of assisted travel at up to 20/28 MPH top speeds, depending on your local laws. What’s more, with the range extender battery, which connects right to this bike’s frame, boosts your pedal-assisted travel up to 100 miles in total, giving you serious commuting power.
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It comes with a nice lineup of features, too, but of course, I have to shout out the Apple Find My inclusion for the added peace of mind. From there, you’ll also be getting double hydraulic disc brakes, puncture-resistant tires, an 8-speed Shimano derailleur, an integrated LED auto-on headlight, a 3.5-inch LCD screen for setting adjustments that also has a USB port to charge up devices, and more.
EcoFlow Black Friday flash sale drops DELTA 2 Max power station to new $799 low ($600 off) + other bundles from $698
As part of its phase 3 Black Friday Sale event, EcoFlow has launched a 24-hour flash sale that is taking up to 61% off four offers, with a notable deal on the DELTA 2 Max Portable Power Station at $799 shipped, which beats out Amazon’s pricing by $100. While it carries an $1,899 MSRP, you’ll more often find it going for $1,399 these days, with the discounts we’ve been seeing in the latter half of 2025 regularly dropping things lower between $999 and $899. Now, for only 24 hours, you can pick it up $100 lower than we’ve ever tracked, giving you a total $600 off the going rate ($1,100 off the MSRP) for the lowest new price we have tracked.
***Note: some of these flash sale offers might start at higher prices, but for this 24-hour period, they have been given automatic discounts to these rates that activate in your cart.
Upgrade off-road commutes and adventures with Lectric’s XPeak 2.0 e-bikes and up to $583 in FREE gear from $1,499
As part of its ongoing Black Friday Sale, which is starting to show models running out of stock from the offers of up to $893 in savings across e-bike bundles. During this sale, Lectric’s XPeak 2.0 Long-Range Off-Road e-bikes are seeing the largest bundles of the year with $583 in FREE gear joining your purchase at $1,699 shipped. You’ll also find Lectric’s standard XPeak 2.0 Off-Road e-bikes coming with $434 in FREE gear at $1,499 shipped. These packages would normally cost $2,282 and $1,933 in full if not for the discounts on the bundles, which are the largest we’ve seen for the long-range models. The standard e-bikes come with a rear cargo rack, fender set, Elite headlight upgrade, a suspension seat post, a bike lock, and a phone holder, while the long-range counterparts get those, as well as a 5A fast charger that “is 250% faster, allowing you to power up in approximately 4 hours or less.” Head below to more on these all-terrain e-mobility solutions.
Lectric XP4 Standard Folding Utility e-bikes with $326 bundle: $999 (Reg. $1,325)
Lectric XP Lite 2.0 Long-Range e-bikes with $449 bundles: $999 (Reg. $1,448)
Heybike Mars 2.0 Folding Fat-Tire e-bike with Black Friday gift: $999 (Reg. $1,499)
Heybike Ranger S Folding Fat-Tire e-bike with Black Friday gift: $999 (Reg. $1,499)
Best new Green Deals landing this week
The savings this week are also continuing to a collection of other markdowns. To the same tune as the offers above, these all help you take a more energy-conscious approach to your routine. Winter means you can lock in even better off-season price cuts on electric tools for the lawn while saving on EVs and tons of other gear.
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