905bhp, German Autobahn’s and the Alps, it’s not going to be hard to explore everything the new Lotus GT car, the Emeya has to offer. As a serial Lotus owner of several decades it is however going to be hard to assess the car when comparing it to Lotus royalty such as the Elise, the Esprit and the Evora. I’ve owned several models of each, and all of which were orders of magnitude lighter than the 2,550kg Emeya and in the case of the Elise, didn’t even have electric windows, let alone more processing power than a small sovereign state. So how did it do and what did it leave as lasting impressions of Lotus’ new direction into the EV world with their Grand Tourer?
We arrived in Munich for a gentle introduction to the Lotus EV range with a drive from the airport to the event space in the German countryside in an Eletre S. After a gentle journey to unwind after several hours of travel we were then greated by a display of a dozen Emeyas in Solar Yellow – quite the lineup of both horsepower and price! Lotus had arranged a display of some of their previous 4 seater GT cars to whet the appetite and remind us that while of late they are the masters of the 2-seater sportscar, this hasn’t always been the case. Mr Chapman himself did what he could to push the brand into this segment 50 or so years ago. On display were the Elan +2, Lotus Elite and Lotus Omega (the European Carlton) to enjoy their history and heritage and a presentation on the 1984 Lotus 2000 Eminence (Type 80) again bought up memories of the elegance with which Lotus pursued this direction in the past.
With the history lessons fully absorbed and appreciated it was back to the matter at hand and time to take in the details of the car before we can get behind the wheel of the Emeya with a journey into the foothills of the Alps, just over the border into Austria.
First impressions matter, and to fully appreciate where Lotus cars are now situated I cleared my mind of the past and looked at the current Emeya through fresh eyes. Now – it’s nice, really nice inside and in terms of fit, finish, feel, quality – it really is up there with the best and in fact leading the way in many respects. The tech is class-leading with 4 deployable LIDAR sensors, 18 RADAR’s and 12 cameras along with various ultrasonic sensors which when legislation permits will allow for Level 4 (fully automated) self-driving and the NVIDIA brains of the system will calculate a real-time environment up to 200m around the car 30 times per second. For now, this is used for the smart cruise control and to project a real-time display on the large central screen, of everything nearby – even people walking by the car! Tech aside, the driving position is driver forward allowing the car to rotate around you, and in very adjustable, very supportive seats which have automatic lumber adjustment when you select the ‘Sport’ or ‘Track’ driving mode. Even the seatbelt joins in, pulling you into the seat when pressing on and adding an element that you’re being bolted into the car and it’s a part of you, rather than something you’re sat in. All seats in the car have massage functions, ideal on a long GT drive and the panoramic sunroof can be clear or opaque in triangular segments, a very neat trick! Being the 21st century, the thread used in the interior (WYRON truecycled) is repurposed scraps from the fashion industry. Green credentials further ticked!
The interior’s overriding impression is that of space, it’s very uncluttered with the barest minimum of switchgear and most controls being accessed via the 15.1″ central touchscreen (running an iteration of Unreal Engine, the gold standard of gaming graphics). Now without reading (the no-doubt lengthy!) manual, it’s actually very intuitive and most functions that I needed to use the car were easy to find and no more than a couple of button presses away. Sadly, one missing dial was for volume which would have been a ‘nice-to-have’ but it’s 1 press away in the top right of the screen – easy once you know how! It’s a first for me to try cameras rather than wing mirrors and surprisingly after only a few glances at the external camera rather than the screen, it really didn’t take much getting used to and to be honest, on the autobahn at speed the lack of mirrors does no doubt contribute to an eerily quiet ride with just a trickle of wind and road noise making their way into the cabin.
The exterior of the Emeya rocks a very sleek profile with a very low roofline, aided by a redesigned battery pack allowing for a 20mm thinner ‘skateboard’ and lower floor pan. Lotus have taken the tradition battery pack which sits atop its cooling and thinned it down by relocating the cooling to between the batteries. With the battery being a large amount of the bulk of the weight of the car, this small but important difference also lowers the CoG of the car along with the roofline. Working from the ‘single line‘ design, the car is well-proportioned and does hide it’s 5.13m length well. For us Lotus fans however, the devil is in the performance details and with front and rear active aero (splitter, diffuser & spoiler) and the Lotus ‘carved by air’ design throughout, it hides its GT credentials behind a very sporty looking car (the plentiful carbon fibre & huge 412mm carbon ceramic discs also help) with a drag co-efficient of only 0.21, a huge plus for a BEV and importantly, lower than its German rivals.
The bit that we, and I hope you, were looking forward to was getting behind the wheel of course. Our trip was cut into 2, with a journey south in the Emeya R and the return journey in the Emeya S. The Emeya R is the top of the 3 model range with the twin motor, twin speed powertrain delivering 905bhp and 985NM of torque, numbers previously alien in their magnitude. Starting with a full charge and route programmed via waypoints in the nav to give us a good mix of driving, we set off towards Austria. Germany benefits from some beautiful driving roads and it seems Lotus picked the cream of the crop for us with a mix of unlimited Autobahn, wonderful sweeping a-roads and the heaven that is the Alpine pass!
First impressions were that the car really didn’t feel that big with a nicely sloped bonnet mainly hidden from view – yet with the important Becker points prominent, the high point of the front wing showing the apex position of the tyre for road positioning, a very Lotus-esque view. A neat trick with the previously mentioned ‘driver forward’ cabin means that the car rotates around the driver (your hips to be precise) which again makes the car feel smaller and you feel more a part of the car. Straight line acceleration is mind-bendingly fast as you can imagine with the power on tap, the car has a 0-60 of sub 2.8 seconds and all of that power is available at any point, at any speed. Even on well-surfaced, hot roads on the very high performance Pirelli P-Zero R tyres you could feel the Lotus ICC (Intelligent Torque Distribution) feeling its way between the front wheels looking for maximum grip when you floored the throttle. It wants to break traction and a gentle tug of the steering wheel tells you where it’s finding it. The R is also fitted with an active chassis, rear wheel steer and active 48V ARB’s front and rear coupled with air suspension in each corner. The results of this is increbibly flat cornering, there’s not really a limit I found on how fast and how hard you could enter a corner and the car would just, well, go around it. The more pushed the car, the less idea I had of where its grip ran out and it certainly was beyond what I was prepared to do while keeping my sanity! There’s more grip than the most spirited of driver will ever need. With a surface friction detection system (similar, but different to the Exige Cup 430) for when the road conditions mean grip does start to run out, the system doesn’t take over but guides the car and Lotus have gone to many tuning lengths to ensure that the car doesn’t take over, but allows the driver to drive. It uses the BCM (Brake Control Module) combined with a miriad of other sensors including vertical control to keep you on the black stuff, and the right way up! The R is fitted with the huge carbon ceramic brakes as mentioned and these do take some getting used to. While on threshold braking the car pulls up with an urgency enough to unsettle the surface of the road I’m sure, the top few mm of travel of the pedal can be too biting so needs careful modulation for minor adjustments in speed during normal, high-speed driving. Around town at lower speeds this happens to be much less noticable, perhaps a trait of all carbon cermamics.
Cornering prowess aside, the car is really a GT and a 100+ mile trip would help to see if this works and in truth, it does. It’s a very comfortable place to be, excellent views (aside from a marginally thick B-pillar at the most awkward of oblique junctions) and a surprisingly good turning circle when required. The power on demand means that overtaking is simply no problem, a squeeze of the accelator pedal and the rockets go full-burn and you’re past in the blink of an eye, albeit with the other eye on the speedo as the quiet drive does make it very easy to see big numbers without really noticing.
Our return to Munich was to be much tamer with the more sedate (!) 603bhp Emeya S. With that power, 710NM of torque and the active chassis but no rear wheel steer or active ARB’s it would be an interesting comparison to drive the same roads in reverse (direction, not gear!). After a dizzy day of the R, the S felt more comfortable and more ‘Lotus’, bringing a smile factor as we heading back down the curves of the pass and into Germany. Rather than outrageous speeds and a deity-summoning cornering ability, the Emeya S was much more playful, wanting to be thrown into corners and replying with some tyre noise, lateral movement and excitement rather than out-and-out competance. The reward as a driver was clear and without doubt 600+bhp is plenty of power to use and felt more accessible, again more ‘Lotus’ like for the driver. Still blisteringly fast without doubt, the S for me was the sweet spot of the Emeya range and pulled my Lotus strings more than the R. Perhaps I need more driving lessons and experience, or an F1 super licence but the S was a really exciting, engaging place to be and a huge amount of fun.
Being a BEV and having owned one myself for several years, I’m familar with the limitation in range of current electric cars. The factory stated WLTP ranges are: Base – 379 miles, S – 336 miles and R – 270 miles but the Emeya has a very clever trick up its sleeve. On a 350KW rapid charger, all Emeyas will charge from 10-80% in 18 minutes. Let me say that again, 18 minutes!!! We pulled up each day to an Ionity charger and at around 30% SoC in the car, popped for a coffee, walked back to the car and it was done. 100%. Fully charged. Gone are the days of a 2 hour charge and it really does completely remove range anxiety. When you can charge that fast, you find you’re not looking at the range constantly worrying if you’ll make the next charger or how long it’s going to take once you’re there. Yes, it costs but convenience does and this really is the future of EV charging.
Having an Evora in the drive and having had the experience of several years of EV’s I didn’t think I was in the market for another, thanks to the charging network and limitations and pain a long charge adds to any journey but I’m finding myself pricing up an Emeya and picking a colour. A tech marvel, great GT and with the S being the one for me, it’s fun with it. The Emeya is priced as follows and more info on the car is available here – https://www.lotuscars.com/en-GB/emeya :
EMEYA
The entry point for the range, starting at £89,500 (€106,400).
EMEYA S
A well-equipped Hyper-GT model, beginning from £101,950 (€126,950).
EMEYA R
The flagship, which starts at £129,950 (€150,990).
Book a test drive, you’ll be glad that you did.
