Lucid Air Sapphire Is Officially Ready For Tesla Model S Plaid Battle

The firstLucid Air Sapphiresedans have started rolling off the line at the company's AMP-1 manufacturing facility in Casa Grande, Arizona.

Lucid says that customer deliveries will commence soon, and we imagine the owners are chomping at the bit to get a taste of the (possible) new king of the super sedans. Boasting 1,234 horsepower and 1,430 lb-ft of torque, this four-door hypercar will likely destroy everything except themost exclusive quad-motor exotica.

Expectations for the model are high, especially after a head-to-head video late last year showed the vehicledestroying a Bugatti Chiron, Tesla Model S Plaid, and even a Ducati Panigale V4 SP2 superbike in a drag race. In that race, the Lucid posted a 0-60 mph of just 2.1 seconds on its way to a ridiculous 9.1-second quarter mile time at 157 mph.

The company claims it can do better, so we're excited to see all of the inevitable drag race videos.

The Lucid Air has been a revelation since its debut, even though sales have been slow initially. The company has attempted to alleviate this by dropping the price on all variants of the sedan.

The Lucid Air Pure starts at $82,400, the Air Touring is now $95,000, and the Air Grand Touring now goes for $125,600. Unfortunately, the Sapphire starts at an eye-watering $249,000. This puts it firmly in supercar territory. More worryingly, it's more than twice the price of a Model S Plaid, which starts at $108,490.

Is the slight increase in performance worth that much more dough? That's up to the buyer, but we have no doubt that once the company can scale up production and sell more vehicles, the price will come down in due time.