Lotus Eletre 900-mile review. It might look good but there's a problem with this EV. Range..

[Applause] well welcome to a new Harry's Garage video and today's car is the Lotus Electra the all electric SUV that I've been very keen to get in the garage because this is such a different proposition from Lotus how's it live with the legacy of the AL land I've got over there and the am miror there the new age sports car all electric huge battery on it huge car look at the size of this thing we've been discussing with Charlie who's holding the camera what is its rival and I think it's a sort of design statement that's what the Lotus DNA offers it it is a very modern design and I say over 5 m long but does it work as electric car and does it work as is a family SUV as well so I've lived with it for a week so far let's go and have a closer look and see what this Lotus Electra is all about there are three versions of the Electra available the Electra which is this one an Electra s and Electra R the high performance one and I was looking at the horsepower of the ultimate version this is crazy powerful 904 horsepower they rate it as and has some other techn changes it's got a two-speed gearbox in the rear to really give it some punch off the line but I'm keen on looking at the base one because actually in this mad world I think it's reasonably priced the price of a base one on the road 9,855 that compares to the price of a mirror V6 today of £89 755 so it's £1,000 more to get this size of car over the mirror this particular one with a few extras on it on the road 96,4 so what do you get with it and how do you tell the difference well the design of them is very similar on the outside it's very hard to tell which model it actually is you can get carbon brakes on your ass you might see that but basically they look the same and it's just the size of it they've had to upscale the Lotus bad so it all sort of fits we Charlie and I actually went to the launch the world premere of this car in London and it was quite a thing now you'll see this car doing things I have the key on me and as we walk around it it was always saying oh so I open the car so I put the lights on and things I have no control over it about taking a key and banishing it I'm afraid it will do this every now and then but yeah down in London there was quite an event where this appeared and the engineers were was so excited because you got imagine if you've done Lotus sports cars all the time and then you get to do a completely fresh model we don't get very many fresh brand new cars from Lotus but oh my goodness this Electra was one of them you'll see these sort of vents down here doing things these seal up as you can see now or they open up if they actually need to feed air to the radiator there and the reason these are shaped like this is they're actually like a lotus flower that's the idea there and the other thing to learn is there the daylight running lights and then your headlights are actually down here this slot here these are just on all the time when the headlights go on it's down there and there's this porous design as they term it there's all sorts of holes in it that actually when you walk around the car then you see they actually open up into the wheel well and the wheel well vents out of there there is a little boot under there we'll look at that in a moment but come on around and there you go I it's not me I don't know what I think it's opening up and now the doors come out so you see it's like landro they have the flush handles and they come out when they you know you've opened the car also on this car you'll notice has the camera rear view mirrors here the wing mirrors that is an option on this car it's a drag reduction sort of package 3,999 and a rear spoiler and these when we get to the drive-in we're not sure these are a good idea uh this car is on 22in Wheels they seem to be a no cost option there is a 20in arrow wheel available as well there it goes again Monster brakes I think they're they 412 mil brakes on it huge canas and I say there is actually a carbon option on it as well and it's festooned with cameras so we've got cameras there got cameras there we've got a camera here and then it's got this Li this crazy system of level four um autonomous driving is actually on this car there's a little one that pops up there on the roof as well that makes it look like a London taxi this car they they haven't got it signed off for use in the UK so they're not actually operating at the moment but it' be a over theair software update and they'll go live as soon as Lotus get the permissions to use it um inside now is it going to actually let me in now I want to get in probably not so I'm going to press the here again there we go great big door you'll notice a bit of mud on this car December in the UK has been horribly wet and muddy in our part of the world but yeah I like the way the door seals right down the bottom again and you step in it and obviously the battery pack is underneath so it's you sit relatively high and you can see how it's yeah there's no real sill on it because it's all battery um one thing about this car is worth noting there's so much space in the back if you want a quick look at that this is a five seater option there is also a sort of executive four seater option but then the boot gets its own bulkhead and it doesn't it shrinks down the actual boot capacity of it huge thing this car's also got roof rails on it there an option and you can get the Pano roof and things this hasn't got it but everywhere I look I can see tar down there I can see another scoop around there and it'll come all the way around the back there's great big holes here that go right down to the wheel I can see the tread of the tires there um rear spoiler here that operates does things you hear it woring as you come to a stop U no wiper on the rear screen these funny little winglets here and more of that liable detection craziness and cameras all sitting up there I think I can open open the boot from here yes I can big boot I mean it's Range Rover s this car if I look at the size of it it is 5103 M long and a range row is 5.05 to so it is bigger than a Range Rover overall in length and it's almost got as bigger boot I think I'm not sure what's down here you a little thing you not very much space in there a little Hideway back there we've actually put the that is meant to live in the front but it's a bit of a tight fit the cable charging cable seats fold down all very practical and this light bar that actually flashes green when you're charging it let's have a quick look at that boot up the front I think for the size of car and you actually open this up this is quite fun it says Pioneers since 1948 and under there is a little boot there 46 L little tiny boot up the front front so not huge at all so there you go there's a brief walk around this Electra Let's Take It Outside take it for a drive I have to say in here is one of the highlights of the Electra just feels so modern so different to anything that we've ever seen from Lotus before as of you get the iPad huge um screen here but you also yet I've got a el a readout here that little Dash here and also the passenger gets information as well and heads up is standard on this car as well I ought to just show you that actually I think there's a Tesla like um card or you have this what they term the pebble so this is the the lozin that is the key for this car my dear wife absolutely hates this says well how am I going to hang the sort of house key off it or something like that it is his own very beautiful thing and if you press the middle you'll lock the car if you want or it locks As you move away actually on this particular car I can't get it to do that it's very odd you get in it's all live and go I can put it in drive straight away there's no sort of onoff button when you step inside it's just live when you get in also you still got heater controls or little switches like that which is nice you can go into a screen and do heating in more detail but it's quite nice that you actually have a heater control and left and right there I can put heated seats on heated wheel all sorts I mean there is so much information on this and yeah they talk about how much lag there is in it it seems all right so I'm I've got a 154 whoops 154 mile range 49% of battery we're going to discuss a lot about range with this car and I can go to here and these are my last journey so far I've done 574 miles in this car average um consumption is 49.9 kilowatt hours per 100 Trip 2 sort of resets itself we've done 20 miles so far today that sort of thing so anyway that that the screen I'm not going to delve right into it oddly at the moment there's no carplay on it but that is a UK thing it's all to do of a license that's required be able to use Android carplay and it isn't quite on the Electra but they hope that will be in in January uh yeah buttons on here yeah I've got obviously control Windows what's interesting actually if you sit in the back the window controls you can do left and right wind rear windows depending which side you're sitting it doesn't matter you get two switches which I've not seen before little detail and a proper Lotus wheel very shaped and you think you've got paddles but the leftand one controls regen and how much regen you have and then I've got drive mode controlled by the one on the right noral columns look at that does wipers and it does indicators on a column who would have thought um a charge point for your phone here um these peculiar sort of cup holder things that you press down they do lock down and you press a button here and they come back up uh say yeah charging phone there and a very deep center console in there space oddments massive shelf underneath here and the door pockets are huge as well have I got a glove box I don't know actually I'm looked don't think I have but I've got loads of space in the back yeah it's a Char seat in the back my grandson has been doing his school run in this most days um a lot of space quite a nice screen there I can see further charge points there yeah just huge I think that's the interior into drive head out normal size little tug on there you set off in t yeah all good so yeah what I'm going to do now disappear off go find some better roads just before we get going here one thing I should have done before I left home was just show you on here how you have to deactivate the sort of Lane assist and the um speed limit warning this is a 2024 car this is something that's gone all cars from July 24 so mainly all 24 cars already have it you have to press safety uh dra Drive Assist I want off yes I'm still close automatic speed limit alarm I'm going to put that off as well off and there you go there's six buttons you have to press to be able to turn all of that off I left it on actually I was in London yesterday driving there and back and it was quite useful then but around here I just find it gets completely overwhelmed it just can't cope with sort of country B roads and avoiding puddles and it gets itself in a bit of a knot it's not a crazy loud alarm but it's not something I really need and speed recognition I don't think they seem to pick up all the speed limits correctly you quite often see yourself traveling in a speed limit and it's displayed wrongly and you're getting a constant ching ching ching ching because you're not doing a speed limit the car thinks you should be doing but you are actually doing the correct speed limit um that's something we're going to have to live with I'm afraid for all 20124 cars in the UK and away we go silence it it's not super aggressive this car I've got it in tour that is how it set off every time uh you get into the car we'll go through the other ones once with the other side of berford but um yeah you have a sport setting an individual I think there's even an off-road version uh setting as well but no I'm not doing any of that it's just too muddy around the fields at the moment I have measured the noise in here and it's good it's just on 70 DB on my nois bit of road at 60 MPH which is very quiet thing I notice with this car is your great visibility out the back but it's a little bit tight at the rear and therefore you're quite reliant on the mirrors and especially so being such a big car it's very wide it's actually wider than a new rang over and I want to get on with these mirrors but I cannot get on with these camera mirrors I don't you don't see distance very well and I find at night there's this glare air that comes from headlights behind you can't see it's just Whited out and this has got very strong regen on it and when you just come off the accelerator you see this load of red if you've got sort of verges beside you all lit up in red they're not a good idea I'm going to squirt it up the hill and see what it does that oh oh a little bit of wheel spin and we're on 605 horsepower it means you don't press the a pedal very long and what if it does get a move on but you do it's been great actually having this car when it's a little bit damper around where we've had miserable weather at points we got reasonable dry roads today and you do notice a little bit of Scrabble from the tires they're 315 section at the back 275 at the front but even they struggle to deliver the horse power and Tor this car produces 710 Newton M and if you imagine what they are is like I think they do um special P0 trao tire for that dedicated tire and it probably needs it with 9 something horsepower part of the thing is obviously weight and I did weigh this car uh they say it's 20490 kilos absolute minimum I weighed it 2560 kilos so a bit over what they state but it's on 22in Wheels and probably got one or two extras way extra but that does make it 180 kilos heavier than a Porsche takeen cross Turismo that I weighed the other day I wasn't really expecting that yes now Drive modes I'm in Tor at the moment and if I just flick up on this there you go I can go to sport sport I can feel the seat doing strange things it sort of tries to pinch you the bolsters come up and uh yeah it has yeah a stiffer ride quality as well so let's just try it down here I feel like I should be changing down but you can't turn in I can feel oh yeah traction limited [Applause] again this what electric cars do isn't it I'm actually going to put it back I'm going to put it into individual actually that it's basically sport setting without the harder suspension it lowers uh this car lower the suspension and just toughen up the dampers but in individual I've taken that element out and bumping P of Road it goes down here pretty well the the difference there is is just a connectivity this is the little bit of lotus jees that just come through and you do feel connected with this car the steering feels good it feels sharp and it feels sporting and the ride is sort of sporting but not excessively so it's I don't know how I'll describe it it's just feels sorted when quite often you get in these cars and they do not feel sorted but you can tell that some clever chassis Engineers have been at work with this car and it's quite fun to punt around but it is quite a big thing as well but U yeah I think again bit like the dvx there's a lot of wheel travel and a lot of work has gone how it behaves down Road like this a little bit more testing down here see how it absorbs this bump good exp anything less really and around here oh this punch electric cars I mean the weight yeah it feels low down rolls well controlled there's no rear steer on this example it is an option yeah you can make very quick progress down a road like this the I mean it's 4 and 1/2 seconds to 60 this car but it it's almost the staring turn is actually mid-range punch off the line I don't know if they talk limited but it doesn't have the absolute BL that I expected from the 605 horsepower headline thing with the r version they get a two-speed gearbox and it has a lower gear for the rear motor setup and that gives it sparkling off the line performance and they dip under three seconds not 62 thanks to that extra gear but this has a top speed of 160 mph so it's a single speed it takes you not all the way to 160 and that slightly blunts it on the traffic light Grand Prix if that matters [Applause] yeah likes and dislikes for this car I I'm going to go in early CU there's a particular thing I want to discuss so yeah dislikes size it's a positive or A negative as a family car I've got loads of space inside as I saw that sporting Lotus I do feel its size and I particularly feel its weight I've had ABS trigger when I don't expect it to comeing into corners on conditions um you're just trying to slow down a very big Mass nothing wrong with the brakes but traction is just how much grip you actually have the control of the mass same on traction out of the corner it's it's using everything it can and sometimes on a corner i' just noticed oh there's a lot of mass here this would like go through the Hedge if I don't concentrate here and if I turn everything off i' not sure if you can you might be able to do that I have not delved into that yeah you see that I'm feeling the MK through there break into there a little bit of ABS into there slip slip oh yeah and yeah just again out of there yeah it's it you have to be fully aware that there is nearly 2.6 tons you're taking around these Corners just there I can just yeah I can just trigger it [Applause] again right I'm going to discuss my particular dislike with this car and it's come as a surprise and it's all to do with range and the efficiency and how far it travels on 1 kilowatt hour of electricity which is my Benchmark and it's not good and I it's weird this one because it's a great big battery on it's 112 Kow hour battery in this takan gets 93 so you expect the range to be right up there they actually quote I think it's 375 mile range on this it's nowhere near that I was a little shocked coming away from he it's 150 Mi journey and it just used more than I expected so I've been taking a closer interest at the actual range this car does and A Journey For example yesterday I had to go into lond and back 145 Mi and and I put it into range just to Absolute maximize what how far I could travel on the amount of electricity in the car and went there and back NE always at speed limits it's as smooth as I could make it and it did 2.16 m per KW hour that is not good it was 8° temperature I tested a tan in similar conditions back in October 22 admittedly it was 12° and that did 3 m per kwatt hour and this was 2.16 I've had a worst case one charge where I was doing cornering shots on here but we did other things School runs General roundabout it did 1.62 mil per Kow of battery capacity that's really poor and it means that the usable range in this is not the quoted 375 miles at maximum as far as in these conditions it is December it is cold I am around the 220 mile range and I'm bitterly disappointed with that and you got to remember if you were charging on the outdoor Network at worst case that worst sort of one charge I did and driving it enthusiastically and you were paying 75p for a unit L on the outside charger that is equivalent of about 30 14.7 MPG that would be the cost to you charge at home it's around the 35 MPG equivalent cost to run this car but yeah a big disappointment fortunately there are likes with this car and number one I just freshness and the design and the modernity and this interior there's a massive Feelgood factor with this car cuz it's yeah look at what Lotus are doing and that bit I absolutely love about this car I also love the right handling I feel as though I'm in a sort of sport in SUV I don't feel as compromised as I do in others and they just don't engage and I'm just drying driving an appliance I don't feel as though I'm driving an appliance with this car I'm driving something really quite fun and interesting and looks cool and Feelgood Factor right up there um other things I think it's well priced at home I keep saying it's like a Urus this car I compare it to a Urus just from that design and Street Theater taking it into London it gets the looks it gets has curbside appeal this car I mean and it it's the same sort of horsepower as Urus it is heavier than Urus but it still gets a bit of a move on so and it's half the price of a base Urus so that is pretty cool as well and just those chass engineers and the work they've done really noticeable so conclusion on this car well I desperately wanted to love it I'm a buyer of lotus and the price point and the big battery but I couldn't live with that inefficiency I'm absolutely gutted about it and maybe I've been sort of hypnotized by that Mercedes I drove at the milia cuz that was doing where this car is struggling to do 2 m per Kow hour that car was doing nine huge difference and that's going to be in production in 2025 so it just feels as though this might have an update it's it's got to be better than that a takan came out years ago and it can do 3 miles kilowatt hour it can go further on its smaller battery than this can the other really annoying thing about the range is the range indicator is wildly out again the trip into London yesterday they're in back say 145 mil uh the range dropped by 196 mil during that Journey so it's showed it was out by 51 miles so it has a range indicator that you absolutely cannot trust that number there saying I've got a range of 120 M on 39 % battery is balloonly it's probably got about 75 miles in it not 120 and that's really annoying so yeah huge disappointment it feels like it has the Lotus handling and everything this but it's such a a departure from what we Ed from uh Lotus I sort of reminds me of the lotus carton this is like a Gile done by lotus that it has all the handling all the attributes that you know from Lotus but it's just a bigger different car from Lotus that is really come from from the gely board and how they've done it yes it's designed in centry but all the engineering is in is in Germany hasn't been anywhere near he and it that is why it feels to me like a very different Lotus a bit of a departure but it's priced right and looks right it's just that inefficiency so there you go there's my conclusion on the Lotus Electra I hope you enjoyed this video if you did well keep watching keep subscribing more videos coming along very soon

Channel: Harry's garage

Views: 378,692

Keywords:

Id: 6vXIMMenezA

Length: 28min 16sec (1696 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2023