Lotus Emeya review

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Spiritual successor to the iconic Carlton, or just another hugely powerful electric wannabe?

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Before we get stuck into the new Lotus Emeya, ask yourself: has any car maker changed its tune so abruptly as the historically Norfolk-based outfit?

It seems only months ago that we were haring around the track at Hethel, goading an Exige 390 Sport Final Edition – all 1138kg of it – into misbehaving. That day was in fact in 2021, but it may as well be ancient history, because the Exige is extinct and the now Anglo-Chinese marque is launching its second pure-electric, four-wheel-drive, two-tonne-plus, luxury-slanted, tech-drenched, five-door car. Exige-style unassisted steering is to the Emeya what hieroglyphs are to artificial intelligence.

This £90,000 Lotus is a slope-backed GT-type car arriving on the heels of the Eletre SUV. It has been on sale in China since the start of the year but is now here in Europe. It was conceived in quite an interesting way that makes it an alternative to both the Porsche Taycan and the Mercedes-Benz EQS.

Such breadth could prove pivotal if Lotus is to reach its stated target of selling 150,000 cars annually by 2028 – roughly the point at which it hopes to give us an asphalt-sniffing, two-seat electric sports car. Note, though, that in the same way the Boxster wouldn’t exist if the Cayenne hadn’t once lit a fire under Porsche’s ailing business model, any ‘Elise 2.0’ won’t surface if the Eletre and Emeya don’t sell convincingly.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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Like the Eletre, the Emeya is clearly not your typical Lotus of old – not in appearance or in terms of gestation.

The design work took place in Coventry but the dynamic development team was based in Frankfurt and production happens in Wuhan. Hethel isn’t really involved at any stage, although Gavan Kershaw, Lotus’s lauded ‘vehicle attributes’ director and somebody who most certainly gets what makes a scintillating driver’s car, did make regular trips to hammer camouflaged mules around the Nürburgring. He essentially signed off the car’s blend of ride and handling.

Three versions will be offered: the basic Emeya, the S and the R. With 905bhp, a Ferrari 296 GTB-slaying 2.8sec 0-62mph time and a price of £137,000, the R will grab the headlines, but the S will take the bulk of sales.

Mind you, the S isn’t slow either. With 603bhp, it will rattle off the sprint to 62mph in 4.2sec. Between 100 and 150mph, it’s also just as pulverisingly quick an RS6 Avant, judging by an impromptu autobahn dalliance on the launch event. This is a bit of a Carlton moment – a little bittersweet, perhaps, and a surprise for the chap in the Audi.

Lotus engineers say the Emeya can maintain its top speed from 100% battery charge right down to 10%. It’s a bit of an irrelevant flex, but when you consider that EVs would typically begin to degrade their performance after 10 or 15 minutes at flat chat, it serves to highlight the resilience of this Geely-built powertrain.

All Emeyas use a new two-layer, 102kWh nickel-manganese-cobalt battery pack, good for a claimed 379 miles in the basic model and (mechanically identical) S and 270 miles in the R. It rests on the floor of the same Geely EPA platform used for the Eletre. However, because the cooling elements are here housed in a channel through the middle of the pack, the height of it is a useful 20mm lower.

Surprisingly, the GT also has a longer wheelbase than the SUV, by a good 60mm. That’s one reason for its remarkable rear leg room. More broadly, the Emeya is certainly a large car. In length and height, it splits the difference between the Taycan and EQS, but its width is closer to the latter’s. Step out of the EV sphere and the Porsche Panamera – a car that Lotus benchmarked for all-round usability – has a similar stature.

As for visual presence, the Emeya has an elegant silouette but quite abrupt surfacing and an insectoid look about it. The Kamm-style tail, intersected by a full-width light bar, is dramatic, no doubt. 

 

INTERIOR

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The cabin is in essence that of the Eletre, which is to say opulent in a way that might surprise anyone experiencing a new-era Lotus for the first time. The dashboard is a fine mix of soft edges and broad planes and there’s an interesting blend of woven fabrics and leather, including – a real rarity these days – genuine Alcantara.

It’s a shame that the central touchscreen dominates. It’s crisp and responsive but robs the Emeya’s cockpit of some old-fashioned GT romance that it would otherwise nail and that certain rivals do manage to offer.

Heavy, cold, expensive-feeling metal rocker paddles allow you to shift through driving modes, which span from 'Range' through 'Tour' to 'Sport', with the Emeya R getting an additional 'Track' mode that winds back the ESP/TC, though none too generously, it must be said.
Richard Lane
Deputy road test editor

The ‘transmission’ tunnel and beltline are high-set. The intention is to make you feel embedded within the car (the width of the cabin and high panoramic roof ensure there’s no danger of the place ever feeling poky), but it can’t disguise the fact that you’re still sitting quite far off the ground. Slide aboard a Taycan, eyes closed, and you could convince yourself it was a 911. The Emeya is closer in feel to the Jaguar I-Pace – no bad thing for day-long drives but not overtly Lotusy.

While that rear space is immense, the boot is disappointingly small (509 litres, apparently), owing to a high floor. This might be to do with the fact that the R uses a Geely-built motor and two-speed gearbox assembly on the back axle. The S has less hardware to package and has the same ZF-supplied 302bhp motor in its long tail that every Emeya also has at the front, but one bodyshell needs to fit all. This is the car’s one notable ergonomic weak spot.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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We've already hinted at the scale of the Emeya's performance. The fact that beyond 100mph – the point at which EVs tend to wilt a touch in their rate of acceleration – the Lotus can keep an Audi RS6 honest is an impressive showing. And that was only the S – good for a claimed 4.2sec to 62mph. The R drops that to 2.8sec.

Both cars are limited to just over 150mph, and this is a result of the gearing rather than any artificial limit, as you traditionally see with super-saloons, particularly German ones. The R edges the S by 2mph, with a top speed of 156mph.

In terms of the character of the performance, Lotus has quite refreshingly side-stepped any odd-sounding synthetic soundtracks. These cars instead go au naturel, meaning you get a little e-motor whine at low speeds before it's drowned out by (commendably limited) wind and road roar.

Accelerator pick-up is also intuitive – only leaden-footed stabs will see the Emeya jerk forward uncomfortably, though for our money the performance of the S is more than enough, and feels vaguely sensible on the road.

Entirely let off the lead, the R can feel a bit big and boisterous – hardy surprisingly, given the combination of 905bhp and a kerb weight roughly equal to that of three S1 Elises… 

 

RIDE & HANDLING

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When it’s time to get going, you put your foot on the brake and drag a solid-feeling (all the switchgear in the Emeya feels impressively solid) gearlever stub into D. How things then unfold will depend on which version you’re in.

The R is equipped not only with the more thuggish rear motor but also active anti-roll bars, rear-axle steering and carbon-ceramic brakes (useful mainly for the reduction in unsprung mass). It also has its own tune for the two-chamber air suspension, which is responsible for managing the car’s 2590kg kerb weight.

There's a chance that a purely rear-driven Emeya will join the line-up at some point. Porsche did it with the Taycan, and in many ways that car is the highlight of the range. Expect a more indulgent handling balance, sweeter steering and a usefully lower kerb weight.
Richard Lane
Deputy road test editor

Yet it’s not the R that impresses but the 100kg-lighter S. In fact, I can’t remember the last time two flavours of the same car were this distinct. It’s in the details: the way the steering picks up weight, the way the body takes up roll and the linearity of the brake pedal. Both models will make fine long-distance EVs, thanks to a fine cabin isolation, charging speeds in excess of 300kW and a clever sat-nav. But where the R is a route-one super-EV, the S, dare I say it, has traces of old-school Lotus.

Does that line need qualifying? Perhaps not. Nobody is expecting the big, German-honed Emeya to corner like an Evora. But the S does conduct itself like a car developed by people who know what good handling is and have been allowed to fixate on all that stuff despite the fact this car will mostly be bought on the basis of a power/price/tech equation, not the fidelity of the steering as it moves through its initial degrees of travel.

Do get the right variant, though. The R is overwrought. It doesn’t much express itself. The S is technically more neutral in its torque split but easier to balance and sweeter to flow into and out of corners, through which you get a touch of gentle, mid-corner adjustability despite the absence of double wishbones. It has palpable class.

The S even has a whiff of real road feel underpinning the light, sports car-type take-up in steering weight. The rack is well sped, too, and in tune with the roll rate. The Taycan is a more alert, mechanical-feeling device (again, closer to the 911 experience and more rewarding when you have the dagger between your teeth), but this Emeya is cohesive.

Finally, note that the S driver can just about lay into the accelerator with abandon, not cold calculation, as the lunatic R always demands. Both cars have a healthy four levels of regenerative braking, though, including a free-wheeling mode.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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At the moment the base Eletre costs £89,500, rising to £104,500 for the Eletre S, and the Eletre R topping the range at £120,000. Given the quality of the interior and the capability of the powertrain, the Lotus it not unreasonably priced relative to rivals. Mind you, a new wave of tariffs for EVs from outside the EU may see these prices rise in the not too distant future.

In terms of optional spend, the Emeya is not different to its established German competition in that there are plenty of trim choices. Our test cars were generously outfitted with smartly wrought carbonfibre cabin panels and opulent blend of leathers and textiles. They also had the Comfort Seat pack, which brings extra adjustability, plus heating, massage and ventilation functionality, to the fundamentally excellent basic seat design. 

Meanwhile, wheel options range from 20in to 22in, though the smallest aren't available on the R and the largest can't be had on the entry-level Emeya. We'd be tempted to stick with 20in or 21in – for the slight improvement in ride quality, as well as the fact that a chunky bit of sidewall seems to suit the look of this Lotus.

The other notable option is the £3000 Highway Assist pack, which makes use of the Emeya's four deployable Lidars (they emerge from the body at speed, a bit like a headlight washer jet on an S-Class), 18 radars and 12 cameras, all of which combine to scan obstacles at a radius of up to 200m around the car. We haven't tested the car's assisted driving system yet but will do in due course.

And what of rivals? There are more than you might expect. Kia's EV6 GT has nothing like the handling appeal of the Emeya S, but it usefully undercuts the Lotus and offers similar straight-line performance and some of the same generously capacious GT-type appeal. There is also the Porsche Taycan – notably in £95,900 4S guise. It's a sweeter driver's car that with the £4300 'Performance Battery Plus' fitted outguns the Lotus on claimed range, but is conspicuously less practical, with poor rear leg room.

You might also cross-shop the Emeya with an Audi RS7, the Mercedes EQS and of course Porsche's Panamera, against which much of the Lotus's general usability was benchmarked. The fact the Emeya has such a diverse array of would-be rivals only shows how neatly it has, as a product, been dropped into a pocket of clear performance EV airspace. 

As for charging, Lotus claims the Emeya can charge from 10-80% in just 14 minutes, assuming that you are able to find a 400kW charger (there are none in the UK yet) and the battery is aware that onslaught of electrons is imminent and has prepared for the 331kW average required.

The ability to charge so quickly is the result of a new cell-to-pack battery structure, which Lotus says allows 20% more cells to fit in the same space than with a “standard module architecture”. The Emeya also has a newer cooling system than the Eletre, which is pegged at 355kW.

Also enhancing the Emeya’s GT appeal is its navigation system. You can use third-party apps via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, but the in-built route guidance will chain together charging options, rerouting if a unit becomes occupied. It should make long-distance drives surprisingly easy.

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VERDICT

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Lotus. Electric. Two and a half tonnes. No matter how good this car turned out, the company’s new paradigm was always going to sit uncomfortably for a while. Perhaps a long while.

And yet the Emeya S has definite charm to go with serious ability. 

Richard Lane

Richard Lane
Title: Deputy road test editor

Richard joined Autocar in 2017, arriving from Evo magazine, and is typically found either behind a keyboard or steering wheel.

As deputy road test editor he delivers in-depth road tests, performance benchmarking and supercar lap-times, plus feature-length comparison stories between rival cars. He can also be found on Autocar's YouTube channel. 

Mostly interested in how cars feel on the road – the sensations and emotions they can evoke – Richard drives around 150 newly launched makes and models every year, and focuses mainly on the more driver-orientated products, as is tradition at Autocar. His job is then to put the reader firmly in the driver's seat. 

Away from work, but remaining on the subject of cars, Richard owns an eight-valve Integrale, loves watching sportscar racing, and holds a post-grad in transport engineering.