The Lucid Air Sapphire stands out as the swiftest vehicle you can purchase for a quarter-million dollars, and it will surpass automobiles in the quarter-mile that are priced significantly higher. It is even faster than the strip-focused Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. During a recent assessment by Hagerty’s Jason Cammisa, the Lucid completed an impressive 9.002-second run at the Famoso dragstrip in California. Well, isn’t that just slightly behind Dodge’s claimed 8.99 seconds for the Demon 170? In actuality, with a real driver at the wheel, the Demon managed a slower (yet still incredibly rapid) 9.721-second pass.
Run after run, the electric super sedan firmly outpaced the supercharged beast.
The marvel of gasoline-powered performance has not only been equaled, but it has been surpassed. Particularly at the drag strip. When it comes to high-speed straight-line performance, all you need is a Lucid Air Sapphire and an empty stomach.
What’s even more compelling is how vast the difference between these two vehicles becomes when the road isn’t “prepped” with VHT. Despite having sticky Mickey Thompson drag radials (as opposed to the Lucid’s street-ready daily driver Michelin PS4S tires), the Demon 170 simply cannot translate power to the pavement on regular asphalt. At the end of the drag strip, this results in the Demon 170 being a full two seconds slower than the Sapphire. The disparity narrows with VHT on a prepared track, with the Demon reducing its time by 1.5 seconds, but that’s insufficient to catch America’s new straight-line speed champion.
