Lucid will begin delivering its Air luxury EV in late October

EVolved said:

The cells that Lucid are using are cylindrical, not pouch. They won't suffer the same reduction of safety, performance, or energy density as the pouch cells in most legacy EV's. That's probably why if you look at the longer range/most efficient EV's, they typically use cylindrical's. Most lists show Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian at the top and they all use cylindrical's.

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Cylindrical cells leave some space between the cells, so they trade off energy density for better heat management and fire resistance. The NCA chemistry is among the highest in energy density, but also among the highest in flammability (the NCM chemistry common in other companies' EV batteries is only slightly lower in both characteristics), so the argument for cylindrical cells is strongest for this chemistry.

Note that Tesla's LFP batteries use tightly packed prismatic cells, because LFP chemistry is less flammable, but also lower energy density. Hence cylindrical cells make less sense for LFP batteries than they do for NCA batteries.