ELECTRIC STORM (some text hidden) SECTIONED_new_lotuseletre_2024

By Jonathan Crouch

The battery-powered Eletre SUV is controversial but Jonathan Crouch drives it and thinks it defines what a new-era Lotus can be.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 42

Lotus describes its Eletre high performance EV crossover as 'a desirable all-new lifestyle car for our next generation of customers'. It's very different from anything you'd expect a car from this British brand to be. But the same time, satisfyingly Lotus too.

Backgroundword count: 245

Should Lotus be building an electric car? Or a full-EV? Well the facts are that if it doesn't, it won't survive. And the British brand has spent too much of its seventy year history barely surviving. Time for something different: time for this, the Lotus Eletre. With this performance SUV, the British brand reinvents itself as an electric performance car maker, in the process leap-frogging rivals Ferrari and Aston Martin, both yet to take that final step. Several other uber-fast Lotus EVs are set to follow, including the Evija hypercar. It's all a far cry from the Lotus of just a few years ago, a cottage British brand hand-building lightweight little sports cars for the few that wanted them. The company's acquisition by Chinese giant Geely in 2017 changed all that. Now, Lotus is so well funded that its boss Matt Hindle has been poached from Tesla and it has a dedicated Lotus Technology Centre in Coventry 'for the creation of lifestyle cars', of which the Eletre was the first. Impressively, instead of merely borrowing a platform from fellow Geely brands Volvo and Polestar, Lotus has created its own, the 'Electric Premium Architecture'. And manufacturing (alongside this model's similarly-engineered Emeya GT Fastback stablemate) takes place at the Geely plant in Wuhan, China which will eventually be putting out up to 50,000 examples of this car a year. A whole new world for Lotus then. Would you want to be a part of it? Read on.

Driving Experienceword count: 414

To drive, this car obviously can't be like any kind of Lotus we've ever known before - there's 2.6-tonnes of Chinese real estate to waft around after all. But Lotus R&D Chief Gavan Kershaw and his team were given the unenviable task of trying to make it Lotus-like. Have they succeeded? Well yes and no. There's no doubt that this car struggles to hide its prodigious weight. But there's clever engineering - a three-in-one electric motor system integrating motor, controller and reducer into one package. And the steering's more feelsome than with rivals, so the Eletre inspires more confidence through the corners, where you can't help but be impressed by the astonishing grip from the combination of Dual Motor AWD, Integrated Chassis Control and Pirelli P-ZERO rubber. You'll need that confidence too because this car is frantically fast. Even in its standard Eletre and Eletre S forms, there's 603bhp, so you'd need the fastest versions of Mercedes, Audi and BMW rivals to keep up. The 62mph sprint is dispatched in 4.5s en route to 160mph, providing you're not really interested in replicating the claimed 373 mile driving range figure. If that kind of performance is somehow not enough, then there's the top Eletre R variant, which replaces the base 450kW motor and 1-speed EV transmission set-up for an uprated Eletre 675 motor with 2-speed transmission, both of which allow for faster acceleration. The result is a wild 905bhp and 0-62mph in a flaming 2.95s on the way to 165mph (only a fraction away from the class-leadingly quick Tesla Model S Plaid). Range is claimed at 304 miles. This R variant includes a 'Lotus Dynamic Handling Pack' (optional on the other two models) which includes an active anti-roll system, active rear-wheel steering and an extra 'Track' driving mode. The standard drive settings are 'Tour', 'Range', 'Sport', 'Individual' and 'Off Road'. These are controlled via a right hand steering wheel paddle and alter not only throttle response and steering feel but also responses from the Continuous Damping Control adaptive dampers. Suspension feel though, is always on the firm side. The drive modes also alter the ride height of the 2-Chamber air suspension, which lowers itself in 'Sport' and 'Range' (as part of the active aerodynamics) but raises in 'Off Road' (which also offers an even loftier 'Highest' setting). That, along with the standard Hill Descent Control system, might make surprisingly gnarly tracks passable, provided you were brave enough to attempt them in a six-figure luxury Lotus.

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