Lotus Eletre S review: When ACBC does AC/DC
Now that the Eletre is here, you might want to rethink your Bentley Bentayga or Lamborghini Urus order. If you’re ready to go electric, that is
IF YOU somehow forget you’re driving a Lotus, the Eletre is happy to remind you. The interior is festooned with the brand’s logo, which elegantly bears the initials of founder Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman, the engineering genius who built his first racing car at the tender age of seven.
Excluding the steering wheel, where you expect to find these things, I counted eight of the stylised ACBC motif all around the cabin. That seems a bit in-your-face, but you can forgive the Eletre’s creators their insecurity. After all, there’s never been a Lotus remotely like this.
The Eletre is a hulking electric sport utility vehicle (SUV) that is a world apart from Chapman’s motto of “simplify, then add lightness”. It’s roughly as big as a Bentley Bentayga, with a little less length but a little more wheelbase. Its shovel nose, tapered rear and lower skirting mask its bulk effectively in photos, but in the flesh it has an imposing presence. Seeing the Eletre loom into view feels a bit like having a bodybuilder join you in the elevator.
At first glance, the Lotus treads a disappointingly familiar engineering path. Its battery pack lives under the body, and electric motors at both ends supply the go. So far, so humdrum. But it’s all fireworks when you stretch your right leg, with a gentle whir rising from somewhere to match a flood of torque that’s anything but gentle.
The base Eletre and dolled-up Eletre S have 603 horsepower, which is plenty even for a car this big and heavy. It isn’t sphincter-clenchingly fast, but the Eletre does sustain its hearty acceleration well into incriminating speeds, instead of running out of puff the way many electric cars do.
Better still, the Eletre zings around corners like it’s oblivious to its heft. The underfloor batteries give it a centre of gravity that’s practically subterranean, and the enormous tyres help it hug curves like spandex on a supermodel.
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For a big SUV it steers particularly nicely, with the precision, speed and feel at the helm to make you feel like you’re directing the action, instead of merely taking part. The Eletre R, with 905 horsepower, must be a mind-blowing thing to drive.
That said, the Lotus is just as appealing when used in leisurely fashion. Its air suspension brings a nice pillowy quality to the ride, and even in the Sport driving mode there’s little worry about the fillings being rattled loose from your teeth. Being electric, the Eletre is expectedly hushed.
Then there’s the size. Despite its sporty shape the Eletre has a cavernous cabin, especially in the back. You can have it with three seats or two back there, and while having a pair of individual chairs does ooze opulence, I can’t see the appeal myself. It shrinks the luggage capacity from 688 litres to 611 litres, and takes away the versatility of folding the rear seats down to expand the boot.
Besides, the best seat in the house is where the steering wheel is. Notwithstanding the wheel’s odd hexagonal shape, the cockpit area is gorgeous and tastefully trimmed in a plush, suede-like recycled fibre. The gold switches remind you how oily human fingers are, but they look lovely, and are much less tacky in real life than in photos.
A 15.1-inch touchscreen handles the main vehicle functions, but there are screens galore: two slender ones for the front occupants, a head-up display for the driver and even an 8-inch screen for folks in the back.
Naturally, the car has its own data connection so updates can flit through the air and unlock new features or squash existing bugs. Hopefully, Lotus will beam software over that removes the weirdly direct Chinese translations: it now tells you the speed limiter has been “setted” or that the seat massage has been “opened”. These things matter in a car that costs this much.
One thing that did drive me crazy was the need to switch off the lane departure and speed warning systems before setting off, every single time. Though well-intentioned, they bong and chime incessantly, which holds a lesson for all carmakers: safety aids that drive people batty with their intrusiveness are self-defeating.
Your purist friends might denounce your Eletre as a sham Lotus, too. After all, its 650-kg battery pack weighs nearly as much as an entire Elise, one of Lotus’ seminal sportscars. Then again, at 2.5 tonnes the whole car weighs less than the Bentayga, a feat Colin Chapman might have been proud of.
However you see it, now that the Eletre is here you might want to rethink that Bentayga or Lamborghini Urus order. Its abilities span that wide an envelope of performance, refinement and grandiosity.
That assumes you’re ready to go electric, but the Lotus covers 500 km with ease, so why not? Twenty-two kilowatt AC charging tops it up in less than six hours, and in a pinch, one of Shell’s 180-kilowatt DC chargers would add 100 km of range in roughly 10 minutes. That’s not the kind of speed that gives the Eletra its appeal, but it’s clear that when ACBC does AC/DC, the high voltage result is pure heavy metal.
Lotus Eletre S Motor power/torque 603 hp, 710 Nm Battery Lithium-ion, 112 kWh Charging time/type 5.8 hours (22kW AC), 20 minutes 10 to 80 per cent (350 kW DC) Range 600 km Top speed 258 kmh 0-100 kmh 4.5 seconds Efficiency 21.4 kWh/100 km Price S$598,800 without COE Agent Wearnes Automotive Available Now
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