Yahoo Autos The 2024 Lotus Eletre Nails Comfort but Struggles with Connection
Pity the wind as it approaches the 2024 Lotus Eletre. From far away, it must be gleeful, spotting what appears to be a large SUV, perfect for settling down against in a nice relaxing whirl. But there will be no rest for our molecules. Instead, they'll find themselves sped up and rushed through in orderly lines, bullied through tunnels and tucked closely against the belly and sides of the Eletre, left breathless in its barely disturbed wake. It's a rough day for a would-be vortex when Lotus makes a slippery SUV.
The Eletre has a mission besides maintaining a drag coefficient of 0.26. Lotus had to get a day job, and the Eletre is it. For the past 70-plus years, Lotus has been noodling around in Norfolk, England, building the sort of cars whose simplicity and purity are admired by many and purchased by few. A big sales year for Lotus would see maybe 4000 cars leave its factory. Most years saw fewer than 1500. All this was fine because a Lotus was art, made by a small group of dedicated craftspeople, content simply to keep the lights on and the cars light.
Geely Group purchased a controlling stake in Lotus in 2017, and the Chinese conglomerate wants to make the brand a recognizable name outside of those who can quote Colin Chapman. With an ambitious goal of selling 100,000 cars a year by 2028—note that it took 70 years for Lotus to make its first 100,000 cars—Geely needs Lotus to offer more than sports cars for twisty roads. The solution, as it seems to be for so many sports-car brands, is a performance SUV. Lotus barrels into this segment with a two-motor, all-wheel-drive four-door that feels part Evija—electric, fast, Swiss-cheesed with aero from front to rear—and part Europa—fat-backed and likely to inspire heated design discussions.
The first Lotus SUV
There's plenty to talk about. The Eletre is a big machine, a couple inches shorter than a Lamborghini Urus, or, if you need a more prosaic baseline, about the same length as a Honda Pilot. Unlike a slab-sided Honda, the Eletre is a complex landscape of rises and gullies, its sides sucked in like it had buccal fat removal, its bodywork split with pass-throughs like a midcentury kitchen.
Without many places for the air to bunch up and cause a ruckus, the first thing we noticed in our Solar Yellow Eletre S was how quiet the cabin was, even by EV standards. There's no piped-in synthetic whirring, and the car's active road-noise cancellation works so well in concert with the strictly managed airflow that you can hear the susurrations of your arm against the various faux-suede-covered surfaces in the Eletre's well-padded interior. The only other noise during our drive is the occasional click and buzz of the active rear spoiler as it adjusts between its four settings, tucking away at low speed and fully deploying under hard braking.
The Eletre offers three trim levels, all with two motors and an 109.0-kWh lithium-ion battery pack capable of charging at up to 350 kilowatts and offering an estimated range that, once the EPA slaps their label on it, should be around 260 miles for the most potent variant and 315 miles for the most civilized trim. Even the base Eletre comes standard with adaptive air springs, 22-inch wheels, four-zone climate control, a head-up display, and wireless phone mirroring. The Eletre S adds in the effective—if noisy—active rear wing, soft-close doors, ambient lighting, and a truly impressive 23-speaker audio system. Turn that thing up and you'll easily drown out the spoiler. Both the base car and the S use the same permanent-magnet electric motors making a combined 603 horsepower and 523 pound-feet of torque. If that's not zippy enough, there's the Eletre R, with a more powerful rear motor that bumps up the total pony count to 905 and adds a two-speed transmission (like the Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron GT) for an efficient mix of launch performance and range at high speed. The R also gets a Track mode that minimizes the stability control's interference and ramps up accelerator response.
