What happens to EV cars when there is a power or software glitch that prevents it from operating properly? Well, in the case of a Lucid Air – it goes into “Turtle mode.” This is also known as limp mode, where the car basically barely operates.

What Turtle Mode Looks Like

Above is a photo of turtle mode that I spotted an owner upload today at the Lucid Owners Forum.

As you can see, there is an icon of a yellow turtle at the left side of the 5k screen and it says “Driving Power Reduced.” It then adds that the “vehicle can be driven but performance may be limited.”

A large hazard sign comes up and reads “Drive System Fault.” It says “pull over and contact customer care.”

What Turtle Mode Feels Like

On March 4, 2022, one Lucid Owner posted saying that it is “terrifying.” He wrote “my Delivery Advisor forgot to set up my car on the Electrify America account when he delivered the car last week. When I went to charge it at EA, it kept throwing error codes on the EA kiosks and on the car. The car went into Turtle Mode (“limp mode”), which is terrifying if you haven’t experienced that yet — the car basically accelerates like a 1967 VW Beetle and won’t go over 30 mph.”

On March 25th, another Lucid Owner posted saying “picked up the car yesterday and went back to the office plus a couple of errands. Got home, wife and kids wanted to check it out. Took them for a quick spin and the car dumped into limp mode. Kids laughed that dads electric rc car broke. Called Customer Service and between them and the service center, they had a tech out this morning. The declared fault is a door handle sensor. I flat bedded the car back to the service center, now we wait and see how this goes.”

How Fast Can You Drive In Turtle Mode?

It seems like you can drive somewhere between 15 miles per hour to 30 miles per hour, max, while in Turtle mode. The owner on March 4th said he was able to drive up to 30mph and the other one said he thinks he was going 15mph, he said “It built enough momentum to get up to 15 mph or so… Frankly I didn’t look as I was just trying to get it home.”

Why Does The Lucid Air Go Into Turtle Or Limp Mode?

Generally, the car should only go into turtle or limp mode when the car needs to go into low power mode and requires immediate charging. I guess sometimes there can be other issues, software or maybe hardware, that trigger the car to go limp.