New Lotus Emeya
A Lotus lightweight, high-revving petrol engine, but not necessarily high powered. Manual gearbox, rear-wheel drive, two doors, basic amount of equipment, basic amount of comfort.
Today we are talking about the latest Lotus EMEYA.
The EMEA is a five-door fancy hatchback with an automatic gearbox, technically adaptable air suspension, a big boot, a screen-laden interior, including digital wing mirrors, augmented reality satnav, a cutting-edge stereo system and it’s electric.
Still, Lotus is properly bullish on the topic of whether or not this is an actual Lotus. They call it a hyper GT and say that it has an unparalleled driver-car connection and has a uniquely Lotus driving experience. So let’s find out what that actually.
Means and whether or not it’s true. It’s a good start.
it’s straight out of the supercar playbook, all low and wide and swoopy, with wide wheel arches and proper broad shoulders. New Lotus Emeya
The body looks low, emphasized by the contrasting black pillars and roof. And the bonnet sweeps down so that from the driver’s seat, it looks like it’s pointing towards the road.
It all looks like it’s designed to be driven with a big, fat capital D. To that end, it has active.
Aerodynamics, so when the grille is closed, it reduces drag. But it can open and draw in cool air, which will cool the brakes in the battery. It also has some proper cool f1 kits.
There’s an active air dam at the base of the grille and an active diffuser at the rear. Combined, they help suck the car to the floor, which massively helps with handling and grip, which helps when you’re giving it a bigon.
Same sort of thing at the back. So this is an active spoiler. Ordinarily, it sits flush with the body work of the car, which makes the car more slippery and improves efficiency.
But it can raise, which will improve downforce and helps push the car into the road. It also has porosity, apparently, which is a very fancy word for holes, or technically, air vents. And they basically help the air travel smoothly across the car.
There are eight of them, to be exact.New Lotus Emeya
All this dynamic effort makes much more sense when you discover exactly what’s powering the EMEYA.
It has two electric motors, one front, one back, which combined produce 905 HP and 985 nm torque, driving all four wheels.
The naught to 62 mph time is just 2.78 seconds, making this one of the fastest cars on the planet.
It has a twin-speed gearbox on the rear motor too, which helps with a 159 mph top speed. Thankfully, the brakes are race grade we’re told, which means hopefully they’ll have better pedal feel than the average electric car.
So I think we can safely say. That this is going to be an absolute riot to drive.
But Lotus also reassures us that it’s a proper, comfy, luxurious electric at the same time.New Lotus Emeya
One that can do long distances too. And they seem to have put just as much effort into that.
The battery is massive, same as the one in the Lotus electric suv. That car has a 304 miles quoted range, so figure on 320 miles for this, as it’s a much more aerodynamic car.
Charging speed is rapid too, up to 350 kw, which means in theory, you can charge the battery from 10% to 80% in less than 20 minutes.
It’s even got a decent boot. It’s a liftback. So even though the actual volume of.
The boot isn’t the greatest, it’s very. Easy to get stuff in and out of.
Comfort should be exceptional, mainly because of the adaptive suspension, which reads the road 1000 times a second to ensure limo like ride quality.
The seats are super soft, Nappa leather shaped to gently keep you in place rather than clamping you in. Even the stereo is built for comfort.
It’s by Kess, an award winning audio company, that will charge you 180 grand for a pair of speakers.New Lotus Emeya
True story. Not only does that mean your kpop will never sound so good, but the car also has sensors that detects external noise and vibration and active noise cancelation, which takes the noise away.
So the car is then super quiet. So that plus the sine it electric motor means this car is basically as quiet as your MySpace servers. Speaking of a space of friends, there is a surprising amount of that stuff back.
So it’s five seats as standard. you can spec it for four individual seats, which is rather cool. Not only that, but the rear passengers have access to their very own screen, which does all sorts of cool things.
So you have various controls and configurations of your own seats. Plus you can reconfigure the front passenger seat. You also have access to the sound and the sound controls, climate controls. New Lotus Emeya
And rather excitingly, you can control the configuration of the sunroof, shade collapse and get unnecessarily carried away with the patterns that you create.
But anyway, more importantly, where you actually want to be is up front. What an amazing cabin. It feels very futuristic, particularly with all these screens .
I know that people say this a Lot, but it actually feels like a Concept car in here. Now, you might be concerned this 15 inch screen sucks for usability, but there’s another screen behind the steering wheel that has all of the key driving data, like your speedo and your battery charge.
The passenger also has their own screen, which has the date and time and rather annoyingly, controls for the stereo.
But let’s go back to the main screen because it’s proper interesting. Lotus has used the Unreal engine to power it, which the gamers among you will know is a video game graphics software. New Lotus Emeya
So it’s super responsive, has a unique interface, and powers some very cool features, like how the screen will render your car in real time. So when you open a window or turn the wheels, you’ll see it on the screen.
It’s pointless, really, but it’s fun, right? Things that it does do that are.
Useful, though, is it processes the cameras. That surrounds the car that gives you.
A 360 view of the car without any blind spots.
It also controls the 5.5-inch head up display, which gives you Satnav real time.
Driving information and safety warnings.
But aligned to all that futuristic stuff, it all just feels high quality. It’s lovely. The driving position is low and sporty, as you’d expect from a Lotus. And as for this Alcantara steering wheel, feels very nice.
Prices aren’t confirmed yet, but expect them to be similar to the Electra, which starts at around 90,000 pounds, rising to about 120,000 pounds.
That puts it squarely in Porsche Taycan and Audi E-tron GT territory. We’ll see the first ones hit the road in early 2024 if it can.New Lotus Emeya
Meet its opposing briefs in the same way that a Porsche Taycan does. So on the one hand, it’s a very cool sports car, and on the other hand, it’s a luxurious comfortable touring car. It could be an electric masterpiece.