the Lotus Electra is one of the most accomplished electric SUVs money can buy. This roughly $130,000 EV packs killer good looks, impressive range, and luxury touches all around. But can I love it like Lotus cars of old? Well, I've got thousands of miles on a mammoth electric European road trip to find out. I'm driving the Lotus Electra from my home in Edinburgh down the UK, across France, and into Barcelona before winding my way back home through Spain and France. This immense Odyssey will see me tackle endless highway miles, snowbound Mountain Roads, busy City centers, and nightmarishly narrow Village Alleyways. Across the 4,000 miles of my trip, I'll learn a lot about the Electra, from how to balance performance with range, how to live with the car's quirks, and ultimately whether the hyper-modern Electra matches up with my dreams of driving Lotus cars of bygone years. This is actually the first Lotus that I have driven, and that's a bit of a shame because as a child, I used to adore

them. I remember my neighbor had a yellow spre from about 1990, and I was obsessed with it. When I say neighbor, they actually lived several streets away from me, but I was so boted with this car that I would quite often walk around just so I can stare at him. But the times have changed since then, and Lotus has moved on. Back when I was an obsessive fan, Lotus was known for its exceptionally small and lightweight sports cars, theas the Spree, thean they all weighed about as much as an iPhone, and were all bolted together by some folks in Norfolk. Lotus today is somewhat different. It's still got a headquarter in Norfolk where it was originally from, but it's now owned by Chinese Automotive Giant gy, and the Electra is built in China, not Norfolk. And this car is also a huge departure from what we know from Lotus. While its two-seater sports cars were barely actually big enough to get two people in at all, the Electra comfortably seats four people, and I've got so much space.

in that boot for all of my luggage and all of my filming equipment on this trip. Then there's all the tech on board: the liar, the autonomous driving, the adjustable air suspension that makes the car go up and down, the massive screened in the front and in the back. It's all very not Lotus, but that is the point of the Electra. It's not the Lotus of old, it's the Lotus of today. I set off from my home in Edinburgh with a full charge and made my first leg to London with just a couple of easy charging stops before heading to the Euro Tunnel on England's South Coast. There I carefully drove the car onto the train that would take me under the sea, emerging 40 minutes later in France. The Electra s comes with a 2 KW battery, which boasts a maximum of 355 M of range per charge based on the more generous WLTP testing. On paper, that's a lot of mileage, but that maximum range is based on slower City Driving, whereas the vast majority of my driving was at less

efficient highway speeds. As a result, my range was consistently far lower than the quoted maximum. So, although I haven't been suffering from the classic range anxiety, I definitely have felt that I needed to really keep an eye every step of the way. It's such a comfortable car to just be in. These seats, for one thing, very snuggly on the old buttocks. And I think maybe the comfort is one of the things that has perhaps taken me by surprise, 'cause early Lotus cars weren't really built with comfort in mind. They were basically tin boxes with an engine. You know, if you wanted luxury, you go for a big lumbering Rolls-Royce. But if you want something small and nippy that you can take on country roads, it's a Lotus. And not knowing much about this car, the Electra, before I got it, I kind of expected that things like luxury and padding and stitching and feel would be sort of afterthoughts. But that's not the case at all. It's clearly been designed very much as an all-encompassing luxury.

vehicle so you can go fast, but you'll actually be comfortable while you do it. And to be honest, that on a trip like this is the Dream. It's time for acceleration. Oh, I do like it. Ah, that wasn't even in sport mode, that's in tall, but it's still God. It goes. I think it's just so surprising for a car which is this big and heavy. You expect it to feel quite lumbering. So you're trying to dry the cathedral and actually it doesn't feel that at all. It feels Nimble. It feels quick. It feels like it wants to be driven like an old [Music] [Applause] Lotus. Now, no road trip is complete without Road snacks, so I bought a massive bag of pick and mix. Like a massive bag. I mean it might not look that massive now, but let me tell you it was a massive bag. There's just not that much left. Road snacks got to keep your sugar levels up, and it's got to be something that you can just grab, shove your hand

into and put into your face. There's no point trying to eat a steak or a roast dinner or a casserole while you're driving, so don't even try. As I made my way further south, the only issues I hit were with the storms and the driving rain on the highway, although that was quickly replaced with clear blue skies as I got closer to Barcelona. What I now had to worry about was tackling City Center congestion. When I read the reviews of this car before I got it, all of them pointed out how insanely massive it is, and I was expecting this truck to arrive. And while it is big, there's no question it is a big car. It just doesn't feel that big when you're actually driving it in the busy center of Barcelona. However, the car suddenly felt much, much bigger. I winced with stress every time a scooter or tiny City car would whiz past me within an inch of scraping the expensive paintwork as I tried to navigate the City's complex one-way.

[Music] System. Eventually, I got to the garage I booked and parked the car while I attended the Mobile World Congress press conference. At the end of the week-long show, I picked it up and simply repeated the journey back out of Barcelona, this time heading Northwest further into Spain. I've been planning my route in different ways. One, of course, Google Maps on my phone. I put in a vague destination of where I want to go and then see what route it spits out. Then, number two, using the Shell Recharge app. Now, this is how I've done all of my recharging on this journey. The app not only shows all the compatible chargers that I can use along my route, but it also allows me to filter specifically for the fast chargers. And of course, on a journey of this length, using fast chargers is absolutely critical 'cause I'm trying to do about 7-8 hours of driving per day. And if I had to stop and recharge for several hours on that trip, then I'm not going to get anywhere.

shell recharge app also allows me to pay for the charging and activate the charging through the app. Annoyingly, despite it being 2024, most Chargers don't just let you use your contactless credit card. But at least by using the app, I can pay through that, and it's fine. But my first charging point in Spain wouldn't allow me to initialize charging, i.e., with the recharge app or the provider's own poorly rated app. Even after entering my credit card details multiple times, there was simply no way to use the charger. And so I had to find [Music] another. I used the Electra's built-in satnav to find an alternative, desperately counting the miles as they ticked by and my range dropped. But the charger I was directed to simply didn't work, with no power going to it whatsoever. With precious little range remaining, I was forced to find yet another charger. Mercifully, this one did work, but it only offered slower speeds, so I had to wait for a while while it charged. But it wasn't the only time this

happened for me. I've used a system to re-root myself to a charging point. That when I get there, it's just completely out of order. And one of them, I actually think was brand new and hadn't yet been activated. It was still in his bubble wrap. After it happened twice, I opted never to use it again because I just couldn't take the risk of being rooted to a charging point, needing to charge but not being able to. And while the conversation around range anxiety, I definitely think is less these days, simply because we've got so many more charges available, and the cars themselves have so much more range. Things like that simple weird quirks that just haven't been thought through annoy me because they throw anxiety. They throw doubt and fear back into the mix almost at a point when we've got over it. I made good time driving up through Spain, stopping off in a desert area where I simply had to shoot some video of the elra in The Amazing Stark Rocky landscape. I continued North hopping.

between fast charges when I could, and then stopping at a slow charger behind a McDonald's to give me just enough range to get to a faster charger 100 km away. While I'd left plenty of leeway to comfortably reach my destination, the route I'd chosen had other ideas. As I left the town and climbed higher into the hills, pouring rain turned to blizzarding snow, covering the roads and trees and getting thicker with every minute I drove. As I climbed higher, the car had to plow through yet deeper snow on the road, and I became increasingly concerned. Google Maps suggested the route simply continued through the hills, but I had no idea whether the road climbed higher and might become more dangerous, or if the worst might already be behind me. While I was confident that the Electra, as a large heavy vehicle, would be well equipped to handle some snow, I had no idea how well it would potentially handle much more treacherous conditions. The problem was I'd used a lot of the car's power getting even this

far continuing on this road felt too dangerous, but turning around meant backtracking a long way to that same slow charger in the McDonald's parking lot. I eventually found a different slow charger tucked away in a Hillside Village that required a slightly shorter detour, although the satav decided to take me through the heart of it, down steep cobbled streets so narrow I worried I'd been inadvertently directed down footpaths rather than roads. These tight alleyways set the car's parking sensors screaming on all sides as I inched my way through. It's amazing how big the car felt when I was convinced I was going to gouge big holes in its sides. Still, I eventually found the charger and waited long enough only to get me to the fast ionity charging back. But even that didn't work out as expected. My new problem is that I'm at an ionity 350-kilowatt fast charger. There it is behind all the rain, uh, and yet despite that, although it originally charged at something like 300

km an hour. It's now dropped to 8, and it's just staying there, and it's going to take 4 hours to recharge the car. And I don't have that kind of time. I don't know whose fault this was, Lotus's or Ionity's, but I resigned myself to charging for just an hour before hopping on to yet another bank of Ionity fast Chargers nearer to my overnight destination of Bilbao on the northern coast of Spain. Thankfully, this charger worked perfectly. [Music] Over the next few days, I headed for home, driving first to the French Coastal Resort of Biarritz to take in the stormy Seaside conditions before snaking my way further Northeast along mile after mile of rural French highways and byways. For most of the motorway miles, I am using the autonomous driving. Now, this isn't fully taking control of the car, but it is doing the acceleration, so my legs are back up here, and it will automatically adjust my speed if it sees a car in front, but it has got liar on.

the top. When you activate it, then a liar system raises out of the roof, and that scans the road in front. So, what that actually means is that it is looking at the road markings and will keep the car in line on the road. So, that does mean that right now the car is driving itself. I'm not doing any steering. I am not using it. It's doing its own thing. But legally, I do still need to keep my hands on the wheel. I need to be paying attention to the road. I can't just sit back and play on my phone. So, while it's not fully autonomous, it's offering enough support to make these long Motorway miles absolutely fly by. The availability of fast charges meant my route back was pretty uneventful, especially as the constant driving rain meant I didn't bother with any sightseeing detours. Instead, I just hunkered down and followed my route home across France. Great thing about doing toll booths in France in an English car is that you cannot reach

over. So every single time I stop at one of these, I've got to stop, park up, undo my belt, and get out. And then I get back in, wallet's back in, belt back on, into drive, and off we go. And then I just repeat that 20 or 30 times. Of course, that would just be much easier if I was traveling with another [Music] person. Eventually, I reached Cal board the Euro tunnel train and emerged back in England. A further 10 hours the following day took me from London back home to [Music] Edinburgh. The journey was an absolute mission, and while parts of it felt like a grueling slog, I was still impressed with how easy the elra made those long stretches of highway driving. The 3 weeks and thousands of miles I did with the car allowed me to get to know it well, and I have truly loved driving it. Rarely have I been in cars that strike such a balance between luxury and performance, and I adore its look, which manages to appear both aggressively

sporty yet also sleek and refined. I love its elongated aerodynamic swooping form that, to me, makes it look more like it's been crafted not just in a wind tunnel, but by a wind tunnel. The other problems I've had have been fairly minor, but they do just rear their head a little bit too often. Like it's got liar in order to do autonomous driving, and 98% of the time that works absolutely fine. Then other times, I'll be cruising along the highway at whatever speed I'd set it at, and then suddenly it will just slam on the brakes, but only briefly, dropping me by 20 km an hour with a sudden jolt. And does that for absolutely no reason that I could understand. And I've also had the actual whole saup system just crash out on me about three times, and that's terrifying when I'm driving through a city center needing these directions, and then all of a sudden they're not there, and I can't pull over in order to put my root back.

in but I won't lie, there is a small part of me that quite likes it. Lotus has typically been a company that's had a bit of a reputation for leaving things a little unfinished. There is the old joke of Lotus is an acronym meaning mean lots of trouble usually serious, but it was sort of forgiven because the cars were basically cobbled together by a small team based in essentially a Big Shed in England. So, buying a Lotus meant buying into that and knowing that you weren't necessarily going to get the type of finesse that you might have expected from a massive German car maker. So, there is part of me that kind of sees these little quirks, these little things that should have been polished up before the car was put on sale. That's almost a family resemblance going back to earlier Generations over 3,000 Mi later, and I have absolutely fallen in love with this thing, and I am going to be gutted when Lotus takes it back off me. It is a pleasure to drive. It's got looks to kill.

for and its long range and fast charging means, it is an absolutely superb long-distance Cruiser. But, is it the Lotus that I dreamt of as a child? Well, I can say with honesty that no, it's not. It's better. This is the Lotus that I dream of as an adult. [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Driving 4,000 Miles in a Lotus EV, Across a Desert and Through a Blizzard

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