So, this is Lotus’s SUV. React as you choose (unless that is a YouTube reaction, in which case we’re good, thanks) but the fact is that an SUV pretty much saved Porsche, and solidified Lamborghini for the first time in its almost eternally shaky history. There’s an argument that the Eletre will be a money-spinner for Lotus like the Cayenne and Urus were for its German and Italian sport car contemporaries.
With that said, it’s not like buyers are exactly short-changed for it. With the basic Eletre good for 600hp and 710Nm, and the top-spec Eletre R capable of a broadly absurd 900hp and 986Nm, we’re free to make any number of overwrought analogies about where your internal organs will be forced under acceleration, or indeed speculate at how many sick bags rear-seat passengers will need.
But motive force alone is rarely enough to warrant a price tag that’s in constant threat of marching over the six-figure mark—even if it is, as Lotus says, the ‘fastest dual-motor pure electric SUV.’ So to justify the cost (and probably other reasons, of the ‘keep you alive’ variety) we find active air suspension, torque vectoring and LED headlights. There’s a 112kWh battery that’ll charge from 10-80% in 20 minutes—provided you have an appropriately Thor-spec amount of electricity to feed it—and deliver almost 500km of range... if you’re able to drive conservatively. Drive your Lotus conservatively. Yeah, we’re sure you’ll get right on that.
Completing the exterior appointments (that is, before you go to town on the optional carbon accoutrements) is proper LIDAR (you listening, Tesla?), as well as an active front grille for improved aero and 22-inch forged wheels. What the wheels are forged from is still a mystery; a decent guess would be an aluminum-based alloy, while a worse one would be bearer bonds. If you’re the sort for whom too much is never enough, you can spec 23-inch wheels, but perhaps the more sensible choice for... oh, y’know, actual roads, would be the no-cost 20-inch option. More sidewall, less unsprung mass, smoother ride and harsher scorn you can pour on those with painted-on tires. But your mistakes are your own to make.
As you’d expect from an SUV—but perhaps not from a Lotus until now—Interior appointments abound as well, from seats that adjust in 12 different ways to climate control that’s adjustable for four separate zones. And if a five-seat car with only four zones is the sort of thing you feel might cause arguments or anguish, you can sidestep the whole conundrum with the four-chair ‘Executive Seat Pack.’ Which, unless we’re mistaken, does rob some boot space (611 liters versus the 688 you get with the standard bench seat) and remove the ability to fold the rear seats down.
Clearly, the four-seat option has not been designed with children in mind. But then we’d have to say the 1,380-watt, 15-speaker KEF speaker system is hardly child’s play either. If you’re not familiar with KEF... well, chances are you’re not as nerdishly audiophilic as we are, but the abbreviated story is that it’s a super high-end audio company from England, which is now—like Lotus—owned by a Chinese company.
The slightly longer version, if you were interested, is that ex-Royal Navy radio operator, ex-BBC recording design engineer and all-round clever clog Raymond Cooke started KEF in Maidstone back in the 1960s, and immediately set about turning hi-fi on its head with new inventions and innovations. Needless to say, KEF speakers have never been what you’d call cheap, but neither have they been what anyone would call crap, either. In fact, they’re generally rather wonderful.
So, if we’ve rather sold you on the concept—or if you’re already something of an audiophile—watch as we immediately upsell you to the £104,500 (P7 million) Eletre S and its 2,160-watt, 23-speaker KEF system. Yeah, the Eletre S also comes with privacy glass, an active rear spoiler, auto-dimming mirrors and so on, but they’re really support acts to a Grateful Dead-spec wall of sound. That’s more than 2kW of stereo... if you could convert that into horsepower, which you really can’t (horses are rubbish sound engineers), it’d be 2.9hp... of sound. The mind boggles.
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As, frankly, it does when considering the practical effects of the Eletre R’s 900hp. Even considering its 80-120kph acceleration time—less than 1.9 seconds—does more to hinder than help. Sure, they’re the kind of power and acceleration figures that seem more common by the day, and seem like quite decent not-actually-bang-for-your-buck for £120,000 (P8 million), but that doesn’t mean they’re not still entirely bonkers.
Which also rather neatly describes the concept of taking the Eletre R on track. There is a track mode—exclusive to the R, it seems—which lowers the ride height, stiffens the suspension and opens the active grille for maximum cooling, but we’ll call it a day and go be postmen if a 900hp electric SUV is anything beyond a recipe for sweaty palms and a large tire bill. But for full sweat mode, we should mention that Lotus is working on a system that’ll apparently lap the Nürburgring autonomously, presumably at some considerable pace.
While we’re on the topic of ruthlessly quick computers, it's clear Lotus wants the 15-inch touchscreen system to be every bit as quick as the rest of the Eletre. As such, it’s packed full of processing power and uses the Unreal Engine you might remember from such games as... oh, most of them, really. Lotus has also gone to the trouble of specifying the exact chips the system runs on (a pair of Qualcomm 8155 ‘system on chips’ if you’re curious) and even calls its operating system ‘Lotus Hyper OS.’
And ‘Lotus Hyper’ rather sets the tone for both the Eletre and for Lotus in general these days. And not just the fearsome pace of its upcoming electric cars, either—deliveries for the Eletre start “during the first half of next year", according to Lotus Managing Director Matt Windle, which means that if all goes to plan, it’ll be a year from announcing the car to delivering it to customers. If only all electric cars made it from announcement to reality so quickly.
But who will these customers actually be, and what will matter to the people who actually put money down and sign up? Will they care about Lotus’s history, what its stock-in-trade has always been and how a huge electric SUV fits with that modus operandi? Will they just see an electric SUV that, unlike so many so-called efforts, was actually designed from the outset as an EV, to take advantage of its benefits and compensate for its drawbacks? Or will they just see a fast SUV that costs about Porsche Cayenne/Range Rover money but won’t cost the same to run?
Really, the question that only time and experience will answer is this: will the Eletre sell because it’s a fast electric SUV that just happens to be built by a company called Lotus, or because it’s Lotus’s SUV?
More images of the Lotus Eletre
This story first appeared in TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
