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.

Driving the Eletre

On the subject of accelerator response, we can’t exactly call the Eletre S slow, but we were surprised at the laid-back approach it took to off-the-line acceleration. From a roll, it will stretch your jowls to your ears, but a stoplight start comes with a noticeable pause before the Eletre sets its Lotus-spec Pirelli P Zero PZ4 Elects in motion. Lotus says the relaxed start is on purpose, as the proposed audience for the Eletre S might be entering the electric-vehicle space for the first time and would prefer a more civilized start. For the feral among us, the Eletre R twitches and wriggles under power like a fighting trout, even with stability control on. Like Goldilocks, we might prefer something in the middle.

When not tasked with attempting jack-rabbit starts, the Eletre S rides smooth as custard, thanks to lightweight aluminum suspension components, electronically controlled dampers, and the air springs. We never caught the car out with a bump or a pothole, and even an unexpected cattle guard couldn’t unsettle it. The Eletre is Lotus’s first venture into electrically assisted power steering, and here we find the electrons less favorable. The steering is quick and easy to dial in but heavier than necessary and short on feedback, diminishing the sense of connection.

Heavier than necessary also describes the Eletre’s feel in corners. The Lotus rotates like a barrel racer, but even Lotus’s training can’t hide that it’s more Clydesdale than quarter horse. The Eletre’s approximately 5500 pounds make themselves known in sharp turns and under braking, when even the front Brembo six-piston brake calipers clamping aluminum hats and iron-faced rotors require a solid push of the pedal to bring things to a halt—and that’s with the brake regen cranked up to max.

The Eletre’s interior

The positives of a big Lotus are found in the Eletre’s top-shelf interior. Every touchable surface is sueded or knurled, with subtle pops of color and bronzed-metal finishes. The seats are plush yet supportive in the front, and the rear seat offers limo levels of legroom. Both the bench and the rear sport buckets are padded enough that calling shotgun will be a game of the past. Details like the metal mesh speaker grilles and pop-flush cupholders offer visual rewards from the moment you open the door. The long-term wisdom of covering those cupholders in suede is another story, but that’s a problem for after the spill.

If you’ve ever been in a Lotus Evora with its minuscule 7.0-inch infotainment screen, you may be taken aback by the Eletre’s vast, glossy interface. The driver faces a 12.6-inch digital instrument cluster with a head-up display that was not customizable in our test cars, but Lotus says will become tweakable through a later over-the-air update, if not at delivery. The center touchscreen offers 15.1 inches of crystal-clear graphics, and even the passenger gets a slim strip of touch-sensitive display that allows control of the radio. Physical controls for media are on the steering wheel, and some climate controls have physical switches—lovely, textured toggles. Other controls, including for the air vents and the driver-aid settings, can only be accessed through the screen, but we found that most were within one or two taps of the main menu.

Several of the Eletre’s flashier tech features—like the delicate cameras replacing the side-view mirrors and the adaptive LED headlights—won’t be available in the U.S. Others, like the deployable lidar, are attempts to get ahead of possible upcoming technology. Should more heavily automated driving become a reality, Lotus wants to have the hardware ready for an over-the-air software update.

The Eletre is innovative and ambitious, but it struggles to find the middle ground between the expectations of a Lotus shopper and those of a luxury-SUV customer. One wants a vehicle to be raw, nimble, and connected; the other wants something comfortable, well optioned, and elegant. While it tries to straddle both lanes, the Eletre pulls hard to the SUV side. It nails comfortable, well optioned, and elegant. It’s also fast and supple, but even Lotus hasn’t figured out how to make an EV feel light and simple just yet.