Dive Brief:
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Lucid Group has recalled over 27,000 model-year 2022-2026 Air sedans for insufficient overcurrent protection for the low-voltage exterior lighting. That could increase the risk of a fire or cause a safety-critical brake or front light malfunction, according to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
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The Lucid Air uses solid-state eFuses rather than traditional standard blade fuses, and the remedy requires no physical fix. The latest over-the-air software update for the Air includes a revised overcurrent protection strategy for the exterior lighting, which will remedy the issue.
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Nearly 6,500 potentially affected Lucid Airs haven’t yet been updated to the current software version, which was released in July, and Lucid is advising that owners should park their vehicle outside and away from structures until the update is completed.
Dive Insight:
Lucid says that owners of vehicles that still haven’t been updated to version 2.10.0 or later by Oct. 16, 2026, will be notified by first-class mail with instructions on how to update their software.
The Lucid Air is among the few new vehicles to use eFuses, which continuously monitor current and can respond much quicker than a standard fuse. Because there’s no element to melt, eFuses don’t need to be replaced or serviced.
According to recall documents, the issue was first reported in June 2023, with a fire reported on a Lucid-owned Air in the left front corner of the vehicle. Although no root cause was determined at the time, a third-party expert was able to eliminate the front combination lamp as the source of the fault.
In May 2026, Lucid’s Product Safety Working Group initiated a safety review after a customer report of a fire in the left front of a 2024 Air sedan. The review identified three other fires originating in the front left portion of of an Air sedan, as well as four additional reports of smoke due to overheating of the center high mount stop lamp circuit. Lucid investigation also identified 33 additional warranty reports potentially related to the issue.
While investigating these cases, Lucid lowered the current threshold of the eFuse system and disabled retry logic that would let it retry the system more than once in a key cycle, and it rolled the update into July’s software release 2.10.0. Then on August 13, 2026, the working group established the issue as a safety-related defect that would be remedied by that software version.
The recalled Air sedans were produced betwwen October 2021 and July 2026. According to the automaker, 20,719 Lucid Air customers have already updated their vehicles to the new software version.
The recall comes on the heels of a pivot at the California automaker, including a promise to focus more on its customers. As Lucid struggles to scale up with its Gravity SUV, Lucid made sweeping executive changes in July. Then in August it detailed a $1.4B “operational reset,” and a delay of its midsize Cosmos, as it emphasized that it has been underinvested in service and that it has responded too slowly to quality issues.