Lotus Eletre review

Well, the range runs from the base Eletre at £89,500 through the Eletre S at £104,500 to the more powerful – but visually identical – Eletre R at £120,000. Sounds expensive until you look at the market and note that a Range Rover Sport SE starts at nearly £84k and a hybrid P550e Autobiography lists at £114k. Ditto pricey full-fat Range Rover. The best Taycan - the 4S Cross Turismo - is £95k, so the Eletre, in context, seems priced fairly reasonably.

Do watch the Options uplift though. Lotus is jumping straight on the luxury bandwagon and charging large amounts for small things. £3,599 for camera mirrors (you don’t want them), £495 for an Alcantara steering wheel. And then the big bills: £11,999 for the carbon ceramic brake upgrade, £5,000 for executive rear seating, £9,099 for exterior carbon work.

We’d swerve most of that and go with something colourful (flatter shades don’t seem to suit the Eletre) with a silver wheel. Green over tan looked very nice on launch, probably as an S. Likely £110-115k with some options. For that you’re looking at a Porsche Taycan GTS Sport Turismo (£111,200) which would be the real killer choice to make. The Porsche is better to drive, but some people want an SUV, and the Eletre is currently the best of that particular bunch.

Benefit-in-Kind for ’23-’24 is two per cent, and you’re probably looking in the region of £1,200 a month on the usual kinds of lease. So not absolutely out there in terms of what these things cost. Lotus itself is offering a base Eletre for £1,166 a month over four years with a £10,000 deposit. The S is a couple of hundred quid more, the R the same again on top of that.

One thing to note. Lotus needs to get its dealer network up to speed, firstly to get bums on seats with the Eletre, and secondly to make sure that it can service and look after a vehicle that has very little in common with anything the company has produced before.