Lucid recalls 27,185 Air sedans over a software fuse that did not cut the power

Lucid is recalling 27,185 Air sedans because the software eFuse protecting their exterior lighting circuits can allow overheating, with owners told to park away from structures until the car is updated. The filing records three fires and four smoke incidents, the first in a Lucid-owned car in June 2023.

Lucid is recalling 27,185 Air sedans because the software protecting their exterior lighting circuits can let those circuits overheat. Owners are told to park away from structures until the car is updated, the filing says.

The cars have no conventional fuse on those circuits. Lucid uses a software-controlled eFuse, and its logic allowed a circuit to stay energised at an excess amperage level.

The circuits themselves are ordinary. They are the front combination lamp and the centre high-mounted stop lamp, the light in the rear window. Neither is exotic hardware.

It is the largest recall Lucid has issued and the fourth for the Air this year, InsideEVs reported. The company sold 15,841 cars in the whole of last year.

The filing is more specific than the headline number. It records three fires, four smoke incidents and 33 warranty claims for damaged wiring in the stop lamp harness. No injuries are listed.

The first of those was three years ago. A Lucid-owned 2023 Air caught fire at the front left corner in June 2023, and a customer car burned in March 2025.

Lucid released the remedy in July and filed the recall on 13 August. A week before that, chief executive Silvio Napoli told investors the company had launched products before they were ready.

By the time owners were told there was a defect, 20,719 of the cars had already been updated. Three quarters of the fleet was patched before it was recalled.

That ordering is possible because the fuse is software. It is also the part a European approval authority would be looking at.

Software updates to cars sold in the EU have been regulated since July 2024, alongside the safety package phased in under the same reform. The rules apply to every newly registered vehicle.

They require a certified software update management system, and an assessment of whether an update changes what the car was approved as. A safety fix delivered over the air is a documented event rather than a background task.

Which is the useful part of a recall with an easy remedy. The fuse became code, and so did the fault, and the three years in between were not code at all.