Lotus Eletre review

It was designed under the guidance of the late Peter Horbury in Coventry and is made in Wuhan, China, having been engineered both at Hethel and at Lotus’ new Innovation Centre in Raunheim, Germany. It’s named after a Hungarian word that stands loosely for rebirth, the literal translation for which is ‘coming to life’. Make of this what you will but the inference is clear: this is Lotus admitting it’s been in the wilderness for too long, and that the Eletre represents a way out of the malaise.

At its core sits a 112kWh, 800v lithium-ion battery pack powering a pair of 302bhp e-motors, one at each end. Its chassis is made from a blend of steel and aluminium and is suspended by air-sprung multi-link axles at either end. Its brakes are enormous steel rotors (412mm at the front). Rear-wheel steering is standard too. Across the locks there are just 2.5 turns, suggesting that Gavan Kershaw and his team of dynamic engineers have focused hard on delivering as much ‘Lotus’ as they can via the Eletre’s helm.

In S guise, the car’s powertrain produces 595bhp and 523lb ft, which is deployed via a single-speed transmission. Stump up the extra £15,500 required for the R model and you get a bigger 603bhp e-motor at the rear. Power then jumps to a vaguely surreal 893bhp, torque swells to 726lb ft and an extra gearbox appears, with first being super-short mainly to aid propulsion off the line. The S can hit 62mph in 4.5sec and has a top speed of 160mph. The R bends the space-time continuum with a little more conviction, taking just 2.9sec to hit 62mph before topping out at 165mph.

Both versions get active aerodynamics to help generate a claimed 115kg of downforce above 150mph. Vents in the nose open and close electrically as and when the car’s main brain dictates, be that to aid cooling when the car is charging or to open up the airflow through the nose at high speed, which in turn ignites the numerous wings and ducts (some of which are hidden and only appear at speed) that appear all the way along the car’s flanks, and even on the centre section of its roof.

If it all sounds quite a lot like a mobile tech-fest, that’s because it is. It’s quite an easy car to be bamboozled by given how much technology it contains, although there’s no denying the engineers’ commitment to the cause, which in the end has focused on making the Eletre as good – and as fast – as possible to drive. From this point of view it is very much a Lotus, albeit a differently shaped one.

Inside, the Eletre is a mix of high-tech and luxury, and it has a serious amount of space in all directions. The driving position is about as good as it gets (for an SUV) and there’s a refreshing absence of confusion to the cabin design. It’s not exactly minimalist but there’s a simplicity to the interior that just works. It’s not a car you climb into and spend the next five minutes trying to work out which buttons do what. Most of the car’s main functions are handled by a big central touchscreen. Some will love this, others won’t. But what you can’t argue with is the excellent all-round visibility, the superb seats, the quality of the part-leather, part-suede trim or the clarity with which the key information is displayed.

And when you select D by nudging back on a beautifully milled little aluminium lever down by your elbow in the centre console, you can feel the tension, literally, in the car’s brake pedal. Lotus debated long and hard on whether to engineer some creep into the transmission or not, many EVs not benefitting from this. They went with it in the end, and although it’s a small thing, one you might not even notice to begin with, it’s one of many aspects I reckon they got right. It makes the Eletre feel unexpectedly ‘normal’ when you first climb in and drive away in it; more like a conventional automatic car. And the further you go, the better it gets.

There are five drive modes: Off Road, Range, Tour, Sport and Individual. But the ones you use most of the time are Tour or Sport. In Tour, to which it defaults on start-up, ride quality is immediately impressive and instantly defining, as it should be in a Lotus. Yes, it’s a bit weird not hearing any noise beyond an occasional distant hum from the transmission as you move away, but from the way the Eletre flows across the landscape, you can tell at once what it is, and by whom it has been engineered.

The steering is entirely recognisable in its weighting and response off-centre, also in the way it loads up so delicately as you wind lock on. I reckon you could drive this car blindfolded and tell it’s a Lotus purely from the way it steers, assuming you’re familiar with the steering of Elises, Exiges, Evoras and even as far back as the later Esprits. Such is the intricacy of feel on offer.

It’s the same with the throttle response. There might not be a combustion engine at the other end of the pedal anymore, but nowadays that makes zero difference to the way a throttle feels beneath your right foot as drive-by-wire has been with us for years. But you can still engineer an electronic throttle pedal to react the way you want underfoot, and to incite a specific response from whatever powertrain it happens to be wired to, and in the Eletre’s case the powertrain has an immense amount to give in terms of pure thrust. Yet it still feels like a Lotus in the way it delivers that energy, be that at the lightest of pedal efforts when you move away or when you crank the accelerator wide open, or at any point in between. Always the throttle feels…right somehow. Just like the steering. And the ride.

And, I’m exceedingly glad to report, the handling as well.

You look at the kerb weight and the sheer height of the Eletre (with 22in wheels fitted it is almost as tall as two Ford GT40s on top of one another) and you think there can be no way is this thing going to do anything other than fall over itself at the merest whiff of a decent corner. Which makes you wonder the point of even bothering to find out what happens next. But you should because the results, trust me, are pretty mind-altering. Stick the blindfold back on then drive the Eletre hard along a challenging and twisty road and I reckon you might think it weighs 1600, maybe 1700kg.

As such, the way the Eletre handles – the speed with which it changes direction, the precision of its roll control, the way it manages its weight with such dismissive ease, and the feel it serves up to your hands and backside while doing so – is what defines it. I kid you not, this is a car in which you can have a major amount of fun driving hard across a favourite road. The four-wheel steering is what helps shrink it the most, say the engineers; without it you simply can’t generate the same combination of instant response just off-centre and the stability the car quite clearly has at much higher speeds.

But whatever it takes, the Eletre has it. If you then sprinkle some of Hethel’s magic dust over the whole lot as well, what you end up with is a pretty extraordinary vehicle, one that feels and drives and reacts like no other SUV I’ve come across, including those from Aston Martin, Lamborghini or Porsche.

It has other strengths too. One, it really does go like stink in a straight line, harder where it counts than any of its conventionally powered rivals just mentioned. Two, it doesn’t burn any fuel in the process, which is nice, all things considered. Three, it’s also a phenomenally refined and chilled thing just to knock about in once you dial it back to Tour mode and decide to watch the world go by from within its surprisingly high-quality cabin. Four, it has perhaps the best sound system I’ve ever listened to in a production car thanks to the efforts of British hifi company KEF. Five, it can be recharged from 10-80 per cent in less than 20 minutes at a 350kW fast-charge point, and has a seemingly genuine range of 373 miles. Six, it looks quite tasty in the flesh, too, albeit in a clumsy, oversized kind of way.

All of which would indicate that the Eletre is, in the end, just a very good car full stop. A great one, perhaps, under the circumstances because it gets so many of the key things right, and so very few of the things that actually matter, wrong.

But that still won’t prevent the die-hards, you suspect, from being thoroughly dismissive of it. Perhaps they always will be. But for anyone with an eye on the present, or the near future, the Eletre is as hard to fault as it is easy to like. And if you get it on the right kind of road, quite possibly to fall a little bit in love with.

There’s no way I thought I’d be writing that about this car a week ago. So yes, the Eletre is very much a car to hike Lotus into the 21st century and beyond. Maybe ACBC would approve after all.

What comes next for Lotus?

Will all new Lotus cars be EVs for the foreseeable future? Yes. Will they all be made in China? No. Will Hethel still play a role as the company develops? Yes. Will Lotus Cars be remotely recognisable in 10 years’ time? Who knows.

The grand plan as it stands, according to new CCO Mike Johnstone, is for Lotus to be selling 150,000 cars a year globally by 2028. That’s a seriously ambitious target, and we’ve been here before, remember. To achieve this goal Johnstone says Lotus will launch the following cars to the following timescale – and if they’re each as good as the Eletre (and the world hasn’t beaten itself up by then) maybe he, and they, will hit those numbers this time, and Lotus really might become a player again.

Next up (next year in fact) will come a ‘sedan’ version of the Eletre, using the same chassis and powertrain but with sleeker, sexier four-door coupé styling. Think Taycan Turbo S and you won’t be a million miles away. By the end of 2024 Lotus will also have begun selling cars in the US, with the eventual aim of shifting 45,000-50,000 a year stateside (around 30 per cent of its total sales).

In 2025 it will unleash ‘the big seller’ on all markets in the form of a smaller, mid-sized SUV that will use a shortened version of the Eletre platform with a little bit less power ‘but not by much’. So think Macan Turbo but with a 600-700bhp EV powertrain, rocket-propelled performance, and Lotus handling to match.

Then in 2027 the Emira will be replaced by another smallish mid-engined two-seater featuring yet another version of the Eletre’s EV powertrain, by which time goodness knows how much poke it will be producing. Either way, if the targets are hit and the stars align in the way Johnstone and his expanding team hope, they could well be selling 150,000 cars a year by then, at which point Britain’s answer to Porsche will be in full flow (at the moment Porsche sells just over 300,000 cars a year).

The SUVs will all be made in Wuhan, China, but the two-seater sports cars will continue to be made at Hethel, says Johnstone, which is nice to hear, although the fact he says the sports cars will account ‘for only six to seven per cent of our total sales eventually’ is a touch less uplifting. But then at least they’re not ignoring them altogether. Onward, as they say, and hopefully upwards at the same time.