A 5.1-meter SUV is quite a step away from the 2-seater sports car comfort zone for Lotus but the company is confident about its plan and is bringing four EVs to the market by 2025. Lotus Eletre is just the first chapter in the new Lotus book. The Eletre is just 2cm shorter than Mercedes EQS SUV. With the company now owned by Geely, the car is clearly intended for the Chinese market, with the US being its secondary destination. Europe will eventually get it as well with the price estimated at around € 118,000 on the continent and just over £ 100,000 in the UK.
The company claims this is the first
performance electric SUV and it points to its competitors - Lamborghini Urus is
petrol powered and Ferrari Purosangue will be a hybrid. So it seems there is no
competition for the Eletra as long as you are willing to ignore the Mercedes
EQS SUV 580 4MATIC or the NIO ES7.
Lotus didn’t go through the spare parts
bin at Geely or its other many companies in order to create the Eletre. The car
is built on a bespoke EPA platform and the company plans to sell it to other
automakers to recoup its significant development costs. Similarly to the MEB
platform from Volkswagen, this new all aluminum architecture can be adapted to
different sizes of cars, different sizes of batteries, different motors and all
sorts of layouts.
The Eletre will be available in three
trims offering different levels of performance and equipment but all versions
will have 4-wheel drive. The most powerful version will come with 592 hp and
will have a top speed of 260 km/h and will get from 0 to 100 km/h in
less than 3 seconds. Batteries will be larger than 100kWh and can be recharged
in 18 minutes when using a 350kW DC charger. The longest range will be 560 km and will come from the least powerful model.
All models will come with air suspension,
active ride height and active aero as standard. The optional items will include
rear wheel steering, active dampers, torque vectoring and electronic LSD.
