Lucid Buys Back YouTuber’s Air After Months of Software Issues

What started as a principled switch away from Tesla has ended with Lucid buying back a YouTuber’s Air sedan under lemon law protections after less than a year of ownership.

Jason Fenske, the engineer behind the hugely popular Engineering Explained YouTube channel, revealed this week that Lucid is repurchasing his 2025 Air Touring following months of software glitches, hardware failures, and increasingly bizarre vehicle behavior.

The situation has attracted massive attention online not just because of the problems themselves, but because of how the story began, and ultimately ended.

Fenske had previously sold his Tesla Model 3 Performance, not due to issues with the vehicle, but as a stand against Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Musk’s perceived role in the firing of his wife from her government job. Fenske then moved into a Lucid Air, praising it as one of the most impressive engineering achievements in the automotive industry.

Then he got to spend some time with the car, and now less than a year later, the ownership experience has turned into a public relations nightmare for Lucid.

In a new video titled “Lucid Is Buying My Car Back – More Problems!”, Fenske explained that the final straw came during a 400-mile weekend trip packed with technical issues. Before even leaving, the rear doors refused to open despite the car being unlocked and the handles deployed. Once on the road, the rear climate system blew different temperatures from each side of the cabin despite identical settings. Apple CarPlay repeatedly failed to launch navigation or stopped working entirely.

The most concerning issue involved the Air unexpectedly changing its stop mode setting from “hold” to “roll” while parked with nobody inside. Fenske says he backed up expecting one-pedal driving to keep the car stationary, only for it to begin rolling unexpectedly.

Other problems included random audio failures, incorrect speed-limit readings, heated seats behaving unpredictably, navigation glitches, and an incident where the car acted as if it was plugged in and refused to shift into drive or reverse. At one point, he summed up the ownership experience bluntly: “The car feels broken.”

According to Fenske, Lucid initially tried to replace the Air with another matching vehicle while keeping his lease payments unchanged. However, matching his exact specification proved difficult due to the massive number of possible configurations for the Air Touring lineup. Instead, Lucid offered a full buyback under consumer protection laws, refunding every payment he had made.

“This offer is intended to provide you, at a minimum, with what you may be entitled to under Lemon Law,” Fenske said while reading from the agreement.

Ironically, despite all the problems, Fenske continues to praise Lucid’s engineering team and the Air’s core fundamentals, including its efficiency, packaging, range, and driving dynamics. “I love this car on paper, and I love the way it drives,” he explained, while making clear he had no interest in risking the same software experience again.

The situation has also sparked backlash from other Lucid owners who say they have been dealing with many of the same software and reliability issues for months, and in some cases, years, without receiving the same level of attention or resolution. Across social media, owners questioned whether Lucid would have agreed to a full buyback if Fenske did not have an audience of more than four million YouTube subscribers.

Fenske himself acknowledged that his platform likely played a role in accelerating the process, even while praising Lucid for ultimately “doing the right thing.” Still, the situation raises uncomfortable questions for the automaker as it works to improve its reputation and convince buyers that its software problems are being taken seriously across the entire customer base, not just among high-profile owners.