A viral review from one of YouTube’s biggest car channels is putting Lucid’s software under the microscope – and reminding everyone that even brilliant engineering can be undone by bad code.
Jason Fenske, the engineer behind the hugely popular Engineering Explained channel, has posted a 30-minute takedown of his 2025 Lucid Air Touring after six months and 3,400 miles of ownership. The video, titled “Owning A Lucid Has Been Super Disappointing,” has already racked up one million+ views and over ten thousands comments, with many EV fans stunned by just how rough his day-to-day experience has been.
“I bought it because I genuinely believe the Lucid Air is one of the best engineered vehicles the world has ever seen,” he says, calling Lucid’s cars “some of the most efficient, quickest, best packaged, brilliantly designed vehicles with a team of extraordinarily talented engineers behind them.”
“But at this point, maybe that’s just Stockholm Syndrome talking, because as it turns out, life with the Lucid is a whole lot different than the brief stints for which I tried them out previously before buying one,” he adds.
From there, the review becomes a long list of frustrations, grouped into hardware problems, software bugs, and software design choices he simply disagrees with.
On the hardware side, his Air Touring has already been in for multiple service visits. The frunk would open and immediately slam shut on the first try every single time until a misaligned striker was fixed. Two powertrain coolant pumps “were not able to reach their target speed” and had to be replaced. A failed detent meant the entire left fan button assembly was swapped out. Even basic touch points feel off: the charge door only responds if you push it unusually hard, and the cup holders grip so tightly he measured “nearly nine pounds to pull an empty can out of the cup holder.”
But it’s the software that really pushes him over the edge. “This thing is just riddled with software glitches and bugs,” he says. For three months his car threw an “unable to install update” popup every time he got in, even while insisting it was “up to date.” Audio has cut out entirely on multiple drives – no music, no turn signals, nothing. Wireless Apple CarPlay regularly connects to the wrong phone or profile, at one point yanking his music off his AirPods and into his wife’s Lucid as she drove past their house. Some issues have only been resolved with full factory resets, which “takes about an hour to redo all of your settings.”
The most frustrating issue, in his view, is Lucid’s decision to block driver-profile changes while driving, combined with unreliable automatic detection via phone keys and a facial recognition scanner that can be physically blocked by the steering wheel. In a car where seat, mirror, and steering adjustments live on the touchscreen, that design becomes “incredibly distracted driving,” he argues.
Despite all of this, Fenske is careful to separate Lucid’s software from its hardware. “It’s just a shame to me because I do think this car looks great. And it drives great. Has great range. Has great practicality. Has absolutely brilliant engineers that have developed it, but the software, unfortunately, is anything but great.” He reiterates that “this car, by an enormous margin, is the most frustrating vehicle I have ever owned,” even as he continues to hope Lucid can fix it.
He also addresses the inevitable Tesla comparisons. Fenske has long praised Tesla’s vehicles, saying he has “again and again, said the Model 3 is one of the best daily drivers out there.” He previously owned a Tesla Model 3 Performance and sold it not because of any flaw with the car, but as a principled stand over what he views as Elon Musk’s role in the firing of his wife from her government job earlier this year.
In a follow-up clarification to the video’s comment storm, he sums it up bluntly: “That said, in my experience, the software sucks.” At the same time, he urges viewers to remember that competition is good for everyone. “Collectively, we should want a wide variety of car companies and products out there to be successful.”
You can watch the full video below.
