Video: 2024 Lotus Eletre R Quick Spin: First Crack at Lotus’ New Direction

Well, they're about to reinvent themselves on a massive scale and become a global all electric performance brand thanks to their new owner's, Geely, who have given them a whole lot of money and a whole lot of technology and a mandate to become something more than just a two seat sports car maker. And they're gonna start with this. This is a new 2024 Lotus Electra, all electric SUV. An electric SUV from a company that really only makes two seat sports cars? Well, they've invited us here to actually drive the new Electra, so we're gonna go see if it's any good. Let's go for a ride. (R&B music) So what exactly is going on here? Why is Lotus making a five passenger electric SUV? Well, do you remember when Porsche said that they were going to make an SUV and basically all the purists and Porsche fans basically lost their minds saying, "Oh, they've sold out, they're making an SUV now, "it's the end of days." The sales of the Porsche Cayenne basically have funded all of the other good sports car stuff that Porsche has done. Lotus is about to take a page out of the Porsche playbook and do the same thing. But they're gonna do it with electric vehicles. Maybe that's gonna work, maybe it's not. But you can't keep making small two seat sports cars because there just isn't that big of a global market for the thing anymore. So that's why we have this, the new Electra. You can get it in either a five passenger or four passenger configuration depending on which rear seat package you want. And it's gonna come in three different trim levels. Base Electra, Electra S, and this one, the high performance Electra R. Now the Electra R is is kind of special here. You've got a 112 kilowatt hour lithium ion battery, which is actually pretty big for a SUV this size. And it is an 800 volt electric system as well. And it can charge up to 350 kilowatts on a DC fast charger. That means it can go from about 10% to 80% charge in a little under 20 minutes, and it has a 22 kilowatt onboard charger as well. So if you have a wall box at home that's capable of 22 kilowatts, you can actually fully charge this thing overnight in about six hours, which is really very good for a battery this size. Now, performance wise, you've got a dual motor setup for all wheel drive. All electrics will have that, but the R version has a two speed rear transmission. Overall, this thing is gonna be making 905 horsepower, which is crazy for a vehicle this size. And it's going to enable the Electra R to go from zero to 60 in right around three seconds. Now even the base Electra and the Electra S, they're gonna get to 60 in about four and a half seconds, which is really nothing to sneeze at. But you know, three seconds zero to 60 is even more fun. Now to look at this thing, you're gonna be like, wow, that's a whole lot of styling going on. But it actually has a lot of functional purpose. There's a lot of flow through on this design. The aerodynamics have a rating of 0.26, which is really almost as good as a Tesla Model X, which is a 0.25. It's all about active air management on the Electra. You've got active grill shutters on the front. You've got an active air dam, you've got flow through for various things like heat extraction in the rear and up through the front as well. You can actually come from the bumper up through the top of the hood, all about keeping that aerodynamics good, which is going to help with range. Now we don't exactly know what the range is yet. They've got a European range of about, it's a little over 300 and some odd miles, but that's the European cycle. So the American cycle usually is a lot less. So figure is gonna be probably somewhere in the mid to the high 200s is what we're expecting. We don't have the final numbers from Lotus just yet. The material quality in here is exceptional. One of the things that Lotus is trying to do is to make sure that everything in here is either sustainable or renewable or recycled. And they've done an excellent job in here. It really is an upscale interior. It feels actually considerably nicer than anything from Tesla and even nicer than anything from, you know, the new Mercedes-Benz EQ line as well, which is saying something. You actually have quite a bit of space in here as well. This is a big mid-sized SUV. This is probably the first lotus that I've driven in a long time that I actually fit in and fit in comfortably, which is saying something for a guy like me. Everything in here is controlled by this one large touchscreen in the middle, which is not uncommon for a lot of electric vehicles. But you've also got things like climate control integrated into it as well, which is never really something we want to see. A lot of the controls in here, it's a little bit dim and the control buttons themselves are a little small, so it is a little distracting in terms of trying to figure out what you actually need to touch at any given moment. But I have a feeling that's going to get easier with familiarity. You also have two smaller screens, one in front of the driver and one in front of the passenger. The one in front of the driver gives you all the relevant basic information. Things like speed and speed limit and range, external temperature, what drive mode you're in, things like that. So all the quick and easy stuff that you need to see at a glance is right in front of you. You don't have to look over onto the central screen in order to see that stuff, which is generally what we prefer. The steering wheel is interesting in that it is what we would basically call a squircle. Technically it's an octagon. You've got various facets, but you kind of get used to it fairly quickly. Unlike a lot of the Mercedes-Benz stuff, you can actually touch anywhere on here. Nothing's touch sensitive and it's not gonna trigger something. So that automatically makes it a winner in my book. Visibility out is really quite good. You're sitting up pretty high in the Electra and you've got a low hood. The belt line is a little high. It's right about at halfway between elbow and shoulder level. But again, the visibility all around is not bad at all, even out the back window, despite the fact that this thing seems kind of like a Fastback, that's a fairly large rear window and I can see out the back of it without a problem. Nice thing about the electra is you have a bunch of different drive modes and you control them through the right side paddle of the steering wheel. Tour, you got sport, which gives things a little bit extra kick. Individual, so you can set it up however you want. And track mode, which you won't get in the Electra or Electra S, you only get that in the Electra R, but that's not something you really want to do out on the street. You've also got one for higher range and an off road as well, although I can't imagine anyone taking this thing off road. So 905 horsepower. What exactly does that feel like when you're already traveling at a decent clip on the highway? Well, you put your foot down and bang. (man laughing) And the thing is, it's extremely stable, very smooth. You don't even get a whole lot of road noise. You do get some air noise from this glass roof overhead. But yeah, there is the Lotus-ness of this car. It is properly quick. You've got all that power, but again, from an electric car standpoint, it arrives with basically no noise, no drama. There is no powertrain noise from this thing at all. It is just speed, really incredible speed. And who doesn't love that? Well, your local constabulary really doesn't love that, but they gotta catch you first, right? Always obey traffic laws. How does this Lotus handle? Now Lotus's are renowned for having really light and direct steering, and this one actually does too. It is fairly light, but you do get some decent steering feel through it. I haven't had a chance to take this through anything twisty. This is suburban Detroit and it is a grid and choked with traffic and construction. So basically we've had a couple of turns, but in terms of an actual handling report, you might have to wait for a longer test. But in terms of ride quality, it does have some pretty big wheels on this thing, but it still does manage to ride really quite nicely. And it's quiet. There isn't a whole lot of road noise. There is some decent amount of wind noise rushing past some of these. You have frameless windows, which is really never a good solution for NVH, for noise, vibration, and harshness. It's hard to seal these things really well to keep out wind noise, but it's not so bad in here. And given the fact that you have a powertrain that really doesn't make any noise at all, you know, you're not really competing in terms of trying to find things that are making noise and things that are being quiet. The brakes actually feel pretty good here. The regen is adjustable, that's the left paddle on the steering wheel, and it doesn't really seem to have a one pedal driving mode, but the regen can be adjusted through a couple of different levels for greater degrees of bringing you down to not quite a stop. Yeah, it won't bring you quite to a stop even at max regen, but it does allow some adjustability. So if you prefer it to just coast instead of actually bringing you down, well that's your choice. And you can actually do that with just the left paddle. So we've really just had a brief drive of the new Lotus Electra, so full thoughts and full review, that's still gonna be coming a little bit later on. But in terms of a quick spin, this thing is actually really impressive. It's really quite nice. Is it a traditional Lotus? No, not in the slightest, but if Lotus is looking to reinvent itself, if they're looking to become something more than just a maker of two seat sports cars, and if building and selling things like this will help fund the two seat sports cars, I'm all for it. This is really one of the nicer electric SUVs that I've ever driven. It's got a nicer interior than anything from Tesla or the Mercedes EQ lineup. It's not weird like the BMW IX, inside or out. It's about the same cost, however, so that might be an issue. The new '24 Electra is going to go on sale very soon. You can actually reserve one at Lotus right now, but they're not gonna actually be arriving in dealerships until sometime in 2024. And terms of pricing, we don't have full details on that either, but Lotus has told us that a fully loaded Electra R like this one is probably gonna go for about $150,000. Which yeah, that's a lot of money, but it is a really nice SUV and that's really not outta the ballpark in terms of competitor pricing, like a loaded BMW IX. Well, when we have full information about the new Lotus Electra, you'll find it at cars.com. (soft music)