Lucid Motors began rolling out a new key fob firmware update to Gravity owners on Tuesday, the latest in a months-long effort to resolve the recognition failures that have dogged its flagship SUV since customer deliveries began last year.
The rollout, first flagged on X by the tracking platform ‘LucidTracker’, is delivered through the Lucid mobile app as version 02.35.13.
The release follows the UX 3.6 vehicle update that reached owners in June, and extends a sequence of at least eight software and firmware releases aimed at a problem the company’s own executives have publicly called embarrassing.
The fob firmware also lands as Lucid prepares a separate vehicle software patch, version 3.6.2, that customer-service representatives told owners would repair intermittent hands-free driving failures introduced by UX 3.6 and carry a key fob firmware fix, as EV reported on Tuesday.
The company has not formally announced 3.6.2 or set a release date.
The fault at the center of the saga is deceptively simple.
Over the last 12 months, Gravity owners have reported “Key Not Detected” alerts when approaching or trying to start the car, and in the most severe cases the SUV has refused to shift into drive, leaving drivers stranded until a reset or workaround restored function.
A Fault Since Launch
The Gravity’s key fob has struggled to communicate reliably with the vehicle since the SUV reached its first customers in 2025.
Owners have described a compact, single-button fob that often works only at close range, sometimes requiring several vigorous shakes to wake, and occasionally displaying an on-screen prompt to shake the key gently to rouse it.
The failure extends beyond unlocking.
When the vehicle cannot authenticate the fob, the SUV can refuse to shift into drive or reverse, a soft-lock that has stranded owners even after the doors opened.
Lucid supplies an NFC key card as a backup, yet owners have reported that tapping the card on the center console frequently does nothing during the worst episodes.
Some owners have also flagged accelerated fob battery drain after certain updates, with the key pinging the car continuously when stored nearby and batteries lasting days rather than months.
The problems have carried over in part from the Air sedan, and have been documented extensively on LucidOwners.com, Reddit’s r/LUCID, and Facebook owner groups.
Stranded Owners
The stakes came into sharp public view in April, when a Reddit user posting as “Schmevin” described being left stranded with his pregnant wife and toddler by a five-day-old Gravity.
The owner wrote that the SUV would not sense the key fob inside the cabin and could not be put into drive, leaving the family “completely stranded.”
The vehicle had failed in the same way on delivery day, according to the post, and required a hard reset to recover.
The owner added that the NFC backup card had failed several times over the same stretch, and that a dealership had already replaced the fob battery without resolving the problem.
The post drew over a hundred upvotes and 87 comments within ten hours, and some commenters noted that an app-based remote start, available since the 3.5.1 update, could have moved the car, underscoring how unevenly owners understood the available workarounds.
Similar accounts have surfaced across owner forums throughout the past year, describing repeat failures, service visits, and frustration at the pace of a durable fix.
Repeated Fixes, Repeated Promises
Lucid‘s effort stretches back to at least September, and the company has released at least six updates with key fob improvements since then — versions 3.3.1, 3.3.2, 3.3.5, 3.3.20, 3.3.23 and 3.4 — followed by the 3.5 series in the spring and UX 3.6 in June.
Several of the early fixes, including a separate key fob firmware update, initially required owners to visit a service center or arrange a mobile-service technician, before the company later enabled fob firmware updates over Bluetooth through its app.
The candor from leadership has been unusual for the industry.
Then Interim Chief Executive Marc Winterhoff emailed Gravity customers in December, telling them, “To be candid, I share that frustration.”
At CES in January, Winterhoff called the key fob failures “sometimes embarrassing” and predicted the SUV would be “over the hump” by the end of March.
Winterhoff also confirmed the company had dismissed a number of software staff, a figure a spokesperson described as “more than a handful,” after senior vice president and chief engineer Eric Bach was let go in November and engineering veteran Emad Dlala took over product and software.
In early February, Dlala said the 3.4 update had resolved “90% — or even close to 95%” of the issues, and Lucid told owners in the 3.4 release notes that updated recognition would deliver “more consistent unlocking and quicker readiness to shift into Drive.”
Dlala decided to leave the company last month.
By May, VP of Communications Nick Twork told an owners group that the next Gravity update was in “final validation” with employees and would further improve key fob stability, while confirming that a phone-based Mobile Key was expected in the third quarter.
Mobile Key, which authenticates and starts the vehicle over Bluetooth and bypasses the physical fob entirely.
