Vijay Pattni
EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Hot on the Eletre’s heels, the Emeya is another EV and the first four-door Lotus since the Carlton
This is the new Lotus Emeya, and it is 17mph slower than the last saloon car to wear four doors and a Lotus badge. That infamous Nineties troublemaker – because not enough has been written about it – was a Vauxhall breathed on by Norfolk’s specialists deemed too fast for public roads.
TopGear estimates there’ll be 100 per cent less parliamentary debate and newspaper campaigns to get this car off the public highway, such is the 21st century motoring landscape. You’ll likely have some internal debate over the Emeya’s silhouette and visual language, though.
And how that debate materialises rather depends upon your feelings about the Eletre SUV, from which this new Emeya clearly takes its aesthetic. The twin headlight treatment sits atop a similarly fang-like front, sweeping back over the four-door silhouette to reveal a familiar single line brake light treatment. If the Eletre had been sat on by something heavy, the Emeya is the result.
Like that car – and the Porsche Taycan it is clearly born to rival – the third all-new Lotus comes bursting at the seams with power and technology. Lotus tells us the Emeya features a pair of electric motors – a single speed unit up front, a dual speed unit at the back – for full-time AWD, powered by a 102kWh battery (able to accept a 350kW DC charger to add 93 miles in 5mins), and harnessed through a two-speed gearbox. Optional carbon ceramic brakes, too.
Lotus claims 905bhp, 726lb ft of torque, 0–62mph in 2.8secs and 159mph flat out. Not quite the infamous 176mph achieved by the Lotus Carlton, but plenty fast enough in the so-called ‘real world’.
And it’ll apparently be able to read the ‘real world’ incredibly quickly, like some sort of hyperactive voiceover reading out credit card terms and conditions. The adaptive air suspension can read the road “1,000 times a second”, constantly adjusting the dampers to deliver what Lotus claims will be a “confident and comfortable drive”.
A stable drive, too, courtesy of aero trickery applied throughout. An active front grille helps reduce drag (and cool th
