Lucid Chief Executive Silvio Napoli said no other car could match the company’s Air Sapphire sedan on acceleration, range and comfort together, using a magazine comparison built around Ferrari’s first electric car to argue that Lucid already leads the high-performance EV market.
Napoli made the comments in a LinkedIn post responding to a CAR magazine feature that set the new Ferrari Luce against three rivals, including the Lucid Air Sapphire.
He wrote that the most interesting thing about the comparison was “not who’s entering the space” but “what’s already here.”
The newly appointed CEO recalled Lucid Air Sapphire’s headline numbers — a 0-60 mph time of 1.89 seconds, 427 miles of EPA-estimated range, and room for four adults and their luggage — and argued that “no other car on this list does all three.”
He closed by welcoming the new arrivals, writing that the competition “validates the mission” the company had pursued from the start and pushes everyone to move faster.
The Comparison He Was Answering
CAR magazine ran the feature on June 11, setting the Ferrari Luce against the Porsche Taycan Turbo GT, the Lucid Air Sapphire, and the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe.
The Luce is Ferrari’s first electric car, unveiled in Rome with an interior penned by Jony Ive and Marc Newson, and the piece described its looks as divisive and its arrival as one that had dominated headlines.
On the magazine’s own reading, the Lucid sedan came out ahead of the newcomer on the numbers that matter most.
The Air Sapphire carried the highest output of the four at 1,234 horsepower, the longest range at 427 miles, and the quickest acceleration, while undercutting the Ferrari sharply on price.
Against the Luce’s roughly €500,000 figure, the Air Sapphire costs $249,000 in the United States.
By the same comparison, the Luce produced 1,035 horsepower and an estimated 329 miles of range, trailing the Air Sapphire on both, while the Mercedes-AMG managed 1,153 horsepower and the Taycan Turbo GT topped out near 1,019 in overboost.
That range gap is likely wider in practice, since the Luce’s figure is quoted on Europe’s WLTP cycle, which typically reads 20% to 30% higher than the US EPA standard behind the Sapphire’s 427 miles.
On charging, the Mercedes-AMG led the group with a peak of 600 kW, while the Air Sapphire’s 900-volt architecture is rated to add roughly 200 miles in 15 minutes, and the Ferrari’s 122 kWh pack was the largest battery of the four.
A Halo Car Pressed Into Service
The Air Sapphire is Lucid‘s performance flagship, a tri-motor version of the Air sedan priced at $249,000.
With more than 1,200 horsepower, a sub-two-second sprint and a 205 mph top speed, the Sapphire is the car the company uses to demonstrate the efficiency and power density on which it has built its engineering reputation.
Priced at $249,000, the Sapphire sits far above the rest of the Air range, which opens at $70,900, and functions less as a volume product than as a statement of capability.
That reputation has anchored Lucid‘s pitch even as the business prepares to move down-market.
Napoli, who took over as permanent chief executive on June 1, has framed the cheaper midsize Cosmos, a sub-$50,000 SUV due to enter production this year, as the company’s real volume play. The Air, meanwhile, remains its calling card.
Pressing that calling card into service against a Ferrari is a low-cost way to make the technology argument to a far wider audience than the handful of buyers who will ever order a $249,000 sedan.
A Confident Note From a New CEO
Arriving from the Swiss lift maker Schindler, he has said his first priority as chief executive was deciding what the company will not do, a message of focus and discipline after years of overreach.
Turning a competitor’s launch into an argument for a car Lucid already sells fits that posture, trading on someone else’s headline rather than buying its own.
Lucid has weathered heavy executive turnover and a share price near record lows, and its future rests largely on the Cosmos reaching the mass market on schedule.
His own arrival followed more than a year of churn that removed the company’s former chief executive and finance chief and, this month, its engineering and software head.
Against that backdrop, a reminder that the Air Sapphire still tops a field that now includes Ferrari works as both brand-building and reassurance.
That is also a more combative register than the company struck under its previous leadership, which tended to let the cars speak for themselves.
