Article | Shu Shu

Last week I touched a Lotus Eletre and happily shared it on my WeChat moments, which attracted a potential car owner. Our conversation went as follows:

Him: “I already ordered the car.”

Me: “Why would you spend a million dollars on an electric car?”

Him: “What do you mean? It is an electric car.”

Me: “Don’t you know it’s an electric car? It’s not too late to cancel the order.”

Him: “I just wanted to support the Lotus SUV. It’s electric, so be it. I won’t cancel it.”

This is not a story of poverty limiting imagination. It is a story of how conventionality limits people’s understanding of Lotus car owners. If the old rogue Antony Colin Bruce Chapman were still alive today, he would have been delighted to hear the conversation between me and my friend.

Perhaps only the Lotus created by Chapman, after nearly seventy years of history and achievements, still captivates car owners of the post-90s generation. People first see Lotus, then see SUV, and then finally realize that Eletre is an electric car.

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Love always begins with knowledge, especially for Lotus car owners who are loyal lovers. Delving into the origins of Lotus, there is no official statement explaining the naming of the brand.

Rumors say that Lotus may have been named by Chapman’s girlfriend, or it may have been named after his love for Eastern philosophy, where the lotus is the symbol of Nirvana. The most reliable explanation might be that Lotus Blossom was the nickname of Chapman’s wife and he used it to express his love for her through the mechanical love letter.

Regardless of which explanation is true, it conveys a sense of being carefree, casual, and mischievous, which has always been the charm of Lotus for fans of the brand.

Then there is the fact that Lotus is just plain fun. The number of awards Lotus has won is proof of how fun it is. It has won seven F1 Manufacturer Annual Championships, six F1 Driver Annual Championships, and 81 F1 Grand Prix wins. Outside of F1, Lotus has won nine Le Mans group championships, one Indian 500 championship, and one World Rally Championship.

The path Lotus has taken is proof of how fun it is. After taking the F1 Grand Prix championship away from Ferrari, the old man of Ferrari exclaimed, “Those who can’t make good engines will study aerodynamics.” Chapman kept working on his own, changing the rules of road cars and racing cars with Lotus alone, and making aerodynamics a serious subject in automotive manufacturing.Lotus doesn’t care about the silent rules of this world, they do whatever they like. For instance, even when the technology they develop is already satisfactory for themselves, they went ahead and created Lotus Engineering so they could create cars for others. They have supported Nissan GTR, Aston Martin DB9, DMC-12, and most notably, Tesla Roadster. In another tale, when luxury automakers refused to let a prostitute character drive their cars in the movie “A Better Tomorrow”, Lotus didn’t see an issue with it and gave them four cars for the film.

There are many similar stories like this, just like the Ferrari old man who once criticized Enzo Ferrari, but in the end, he conceded that “Enzo Ferrari was a genius at the cutting edge.” Lotus may not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of a rose, but anyone who has seen it must admit that it is breathtakingly beautiful.

Because of this attitude, as the first electric SUV that Lotus has produced, the Eletre has always been referred to as a product of the times since its inception. This kind of slightly derogatory statement is tricky since who isn’t a product of their time? Even Einstein could be argued to be a businessman if we trace him back far enough.

Lotus has officially positioned the Eletre as their first lifestyle vehicle. As the first traditional fuel sports car brand to embrace electrification and intelligence, isn’t this attitude of being at the forefront of the times exactly what Lotus has been aiming for during its more than seventy-year history?

People’s limitless imagination for the Eletre is nothing more than whether or not it can live up to Lotus’s reputation and whether it can bring Lotus into a new era and continue to ride the tide of the times.

The first problem Eletre faced was that Lotus had always been both lightweight and fast. Can they still achieve the same lightweight and fastness while being electric and an SUV? Before seeing the actual car, I had doubts, but after seeing it, I can say that they tried their best, even so much that it can be described as almost “obsessive.” Eletre has a total of 7 groups of Race-Aero wind tunnel designs, including the hood air duct, hidden air duct, upper and lower air curtains, side wing air duct, D-pillar air duct, and the exaggerated rear bumper air duct. These designs all help to reduce the air resistance that the vehicle encounters and comb through the airflow produced during the vehicle’s movement.

To achieve both a reduction in resistance and downward pressure, Eletre is equipped with a series of active aerodynamic packages:

• The infinitely variable active intake grille can open and inhale air flow to the radiator when the motor, battery pack and braking system need to be cooled, and maintain a closed state when static or needing to reduce resistance;

• The active spoiler, inspired by fighter wing designs, can actively adjust the angle of the spoiler to achieve a maximum net downward pressure of 90KG for the entire vehicle, with the active spoiler alone providing 116KG of downward pressure;

• The 23-inch blade-style five-spoke alloy wheels are equipped with carbon fiber inserts and 10-piston carbon ceramic brake systems * 2 that assist in airflow, further reducing drag coefficient and improving endurance performance;

• Even the lidar uses a flip design, so that it only reveals itself from the top of the windshield and front fender arches when needed, automatically hiding in unused states, further reducing the drag coefficient of the entire vehicle. It is due to this pursuit of “lightness” that ELETRE has achieved a drag coefficient of 0.26Cd, the lowest in its class.

Eletre has shown through facts that, as an SUV, it may be the heaviest Lotus to date, but as a Lotus SUV, it is still an innovative application of aerodynamics in mass-produced pure electric vehicles. The perseverance of the old man Chapman in making airplanes is still evident in Lotus’s pursuit of electrification.

As for speed, Eletre’s front and rear permanent magnet synchronous dual motors can achieve power performance of over 6.0T for fuel vehicles, with a maximum power of 905 horsepower and a 0-100km/h acceleration score of 2.95 seconds. The inherited F1-level chassis technology leaves no doubt about its speed and handling ability.

As a Lotus that pursues a lifestyle, Eletre is the smartest Lotus yet.

Before Eletre debuted, Lotus set itself a “small goal” for technological development, namely that in the next ten years, with the assistance of intelligent driving by Lotus, as long as the car owner has a driver’s license, they can beat the F1 champion, and this intelligent driving is initially effective in Eletre.

Eletre is equipped with 34 driving assistance sensors, including 4 128-line lidars, 7 8MP high-definition cameras, and 6 4D millimeter-wave radars, which create a 360-degree stereoscopic sense and overall vehicle judgement around the car.The intelligent cockpit design complements the external intelligent driving assistance, and the full LCD instrument panel with a running light strip is full of high-tech feel. The 15.1-inch horizontal touch screen adopts the new OLED technology, which can directly access the vehicle-mounted information entertainment system. This screen can also automatically retract when not in use. The built-in chip is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155, which has six times the computing power performance of the previous generation Snapdragon 820A.

In actual experience, the simplicity and intelligence of this system are praiseworthy, for example, 95% of functions can be achieved by no more than three main screen clicks. Users can also achieve customized requirements for the entire vehicle through the setting menu.

Like the friend who loved Eletre from the very beginning, I also believe that Eletre is first a Lotus, then a Lotus SUV, and finally a Lotus electric SUV, so its electric property was put last.

Eletre adopts 800V architecture, which is currently only found in the Porsche Taycan among the models on the market. Thanks to the 800V high-power architecture, Eletre can achieve 400 kilometers of endurance in 20 minutes of charging and is compatible with 22kW AC power supply charging.

Under the WLTP working condition, Eletre has a full battery life of more than 600 kilometers.

Also, because each drive motor of Eletre integrates a controller and a reducer, its three-in-one electric drive system is smaller in volume and lighter in weight than other three-electric structures.

There is still much to be said about Eletre.

For example, when you see the real car, the appearance of an sports car brand designed for an electric SUV is truly stunning, and luxury brands always have a pursuit of creating works of art in interior design. There are also many details and configurations, and each item is worth dozens of words of praise.

But to sum it up, the three words “Lotus” can encapsulate everything.

It is the rebellious luxury brand created by the old chap who also made airplanes, Lotus, which has been known for more than seventy years as one of the “world’s three major sports car manufacturers” along with Porsche and Ferrari. Thinking of this, it is not surprising that all the designs, luxury, and quality are remarkable.At the end of March this year, when Eletre had its global debut at the BBC building in London, a EMIRA was displayed on site, which is the last fuel-powered sports car of Lotus and the first electric SUV of Lotus. Eletre means “rebirth” in Hungarian, and their juxtaposition speaks for itself.

When the black cloth covering the body was lifted at the tasting session, Eletre stood in front of me, and I was already filled with recognition and expectation for the new Lotus.

However, I couldn’t help but ask my friend who placed the order, what if he was not satisfied with it when he got it. After all, it is a million-level electric car made by a racing brand.

He said: “Lotus has never let me down before, and this is not my first Lotus.”

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.