If you need more proof that you need to keep water as far away from your electric vehicle as possible, here you go. A Lucid Air driver was recently presented with a $15,000 repair bill after a minor water spill in the trunk caused the car’s entire system to fail.

According to the car’s owner, he was in his brand new 2026 Lucid Air the night before Thanksgiving when he accidentally hit a pothole. When he hit the hole, a container of water he was bringing home tipped over in the trunk. (You see where this is going, right?)

“Right away, the car lit up with warnings, went into low power mode, disabled regen braking, and told me to pull over,” the Lucid owner explained in a post on Reddit. “After pulling over in a nearby residential neighborhood and rebooting the system, the car refused to shift out of park. I suspected something had happened in the trunk, but the powered trunk opener stopped working, and the manual release was almost impossible to reach from inside.”

Getting his bricked Lucid fixed turned into a nightmare

When he called Lucid Customer Support, they told him to call his insurance company. They said to have the car towed to a certified body shop. He was also told not to take the car “directly to Lucid, because the shops will work with insurance.”

The customer service rep also told him that his Lucid Air “was probably totaled.” He had only purchased the vehicle in October, so he was understandably upset.

When the tow truck arrived, they refused to move the car because it wouldn’t go into neutral. Eventually, he found a tow company to take his car to a body shop. Unfortunately, the body shop said it wouldn’t work on the vehicle “until an insurance claim is open.” So he started a claim.

The insurance company then informed him that the damage “wouldn’t be covered under either comp or collision coverage.” He was then told that the body shop where the car was towed doesn’t work on those vehicles. So he had to have it towed, again… to a Lucid service center, because the second body shop told him “they don’t handle interior damage.”

Once at the Lucid service center, he was told the repair wouldn’t be covered under warranty. It would probably cost under $1,000, though. A few days later, he was given the official repair estimate: $15,000.

Thankfully for him, unlike what happened recently with a Hyundai Iconiq 5, his insurance representative kept working. They negotiated the cost with Lucid and eventually got the repair authorized under his comprehensive coverage.