This is simply the most impressive electric SUV I’ve driven

I was not only confident that I would dislike this car, I was certain I would find it offensive, and was looking forward to giving it the kind of review that burns off eyelids in a PR department. I was in for a surprise.

Stephen Corby

3 min read

10 hours ago

A whopping great family hauler with a Lotus badge really should be impossible to swallow.

What does it signify when a brand entirely abandons the principles it has long been defined by? Imagine, for example, that Ikea suddenly started selling furniture that felt solid, permanent and classy – and delivered its items to your home fully constructed and without any need for Allen keys, tissues or therapy.

This is the kind of mental mix-up I was faced with as I approached my first drive in a fully electric Lotus SUV built in Wuhan, China.

Lotus might be famous in popular culture for charming James Bond, and Julia Roberts when she was in Pretty Woman, but in Car World it’s a brand known for the singular focus of its creator, Colin Chapman, whose mantra was “Simplify, then add lightness” (yes, I struggle with the concept of adding lightness, but please don’t feel the need to join me in Pedant Hell). Lotuses have always been so light that they feel barely tethered to the Earth, and this meant that, even when fitted with small engines, their power-to-weight ratio made them hilariously fun and frantic to drive.

Lotus’s cashed-up Chinese owners have decided to jump on the electric bandwagon.

But now Lotus’s cashed-up Chinese owners, Geely, have decided to jump on the electric bandwagon, which is to lightness what Shane Warne was to shrinking violets. The Eletre is a very large SUV, which would be un-Lotus enough on its own, but its dual-motor electric drive train and hefty 112kWh battery – which give it up to 675kW and 985Nm in the top-spec Lotus Eletre R, and a theoretical range of 535km – mean it’s also very heavy. Like 2.6 tonnes heavy, which, for Lotus, is the equivalent of your favourite tempura restaurant putting Dagwood Dogs on the menu.

I was not only confident that I would dislike this car, I was certain I would find it offensive, and was looking forward to giving it the kind of review that burns off eyelids in a car company’s PR department. But I was surprised to find that the Eletre manages not to be ugly; it actually looks like the kind of sexy SUV Lamborghini might have made if its design wasn’t cruelled by the fact that it’s actually an Audi Q8 underneath. I was further delighted to discover an interior that feels properly classy, with Alcantara under your elbows, solid switches and paddles, a vast 15.1-inch touch screen that would make those annoying people with giant iPad Pros coo with jealousy, and a properly sporty steering wheel.

It is what that wheel delivers that is the most stupendous surprise of all, however.

Aside from lightness, the other asset that has long made a drive in a Lotus special is what nerdy types call its “turn-in” – basically the instantaneous sharpness the steering delivers when you throw the car at a corner.

Inside the Lotus Eletre S.

I drove the Eletre back-to-back with a proper, petrol-burning Lotus Emira, and the steering was inseparably wonderful in both, which is truly a feat of engineering. Despite being obese, the Eletre also handles wonderfully; it does not pitch or porpoise under braking, or even during its typically violent electric acceleration (the fastest version can hit 100km/h in 2.9 seconds).

Click this vast and very comfortable SUV into Sport mode and the air suspension literally hunkers the car down to the road and your shoulders are given a reassuring squeeze as the seat grips you, ready for action.

I was warned that the Eletre has a camera on the dash that can tell if you’re yawning and will urge you to stop for a coffee, which I thought would be a problem, as it usually is for me in any SUV – yet I never got bored.

Indeed, I had so much fun trying and failing to upset this fat Lotus, hurling it up the twisting Mount Glorious Road in Queensland, that I burned off 88km of its predicted range in just 42km, which made me scoff loudly at the suggestion it could take me anywhere near 500km off a single charge. But then, on the drive back into Brisbane, down a steep hill with lots of hard braking (excellent for battery regeneration) and through stop/start traffic, I somehow restored all that lost range, and after 100km of driving I still had an indicated 400km to go.

A whopping great family hauler with a Lotus badge really should be impossible to swallow, an abandonment of core principles as shocking as Steve Waugh playing for a draw, or King Charles calling for Australia to become a republic. And yet I found myself eating it up, right up until the point where I dared to look up the price and found that the Eletre S version I was driving is $248,500, while the more absurd Eletre R stretches to $279,990 (the entry-level one is $189,990).

There’s nothing lightweight about those prices, but the fact is this is simply the most impressive electric SUV I’ve thus far driven, which proves that abandoning your principles doesn’t necessarily mean so much the end of your brand, as, effectively, the start of a new one.