Driving 4,000 Miles Across Europe in Lotus' New EV Was Brutal but Incredible

The Lotus Eletre S EV is one of the most accomplished electric SUVs money can buy, with range, killer looks, a luxury interior and loads of high-tech additions. But the China-made car is a big departure from the UK-built Lotus cars I grew up idolizing. So can I love this new version of Lotus just the same? I took it on a mammoth 4,000-mile road trip around Europe to find out.

I drove the Lotus Eletre S from my home in Edinburgh, down the UK, across France, and into Barcelona, before coming back home via a more rural route through Spain and France. This immense odyssey saw 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 learned a lot about the Eletre, from how to balance performance with range, how to understand the car's quirks and ultimately, whether the hyper-modern Eletre matches up with my dreams of driving Lotus cars of bygone years. 

The Eletre was a joy to drive through Spain.

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As a child in the '90s, I adored Lotus sports cars. I remember my neighbor had a '90s yellow Esprit that I was obsessed with. I say "neighbor" -- they actually lived several streets away from me, but I was so besotted with this car that I would quite often walk around just so I could stare at it. 

But the times have changed, and Lotus has moved on from its exceptionally small and lightweight sports cars: the Elise, the Esprit, the Elan. They all weighed about as much as an iPhone and were all bolted together by some folks in the English county of Norfolk. These cars were designed to be fast, agile and above all fun. 

Lotus today is somewhat different and is now owned by Chinese automotive giant Geely (Volvo's parent company). It still has headquarters in its birthplace of Norfolk, but the Eletre is built in China. 

With the Eletre, Lotus is part of the throng of automakers that are now crowding dealerships and highways with electric vehicles. It's a long list, from EV specialists like Tesla and Rivian to longtime makers of traditional cars that have added EVs to their fleets: Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and so on. For drivers buying those cars, it's a chance to lean into cutting-edge tech but also a way to steer away from the gas-powered vehicles that contribute mightily to climate change.

(For a full slate of EV news and advice, including recommendations on best EVs and best home chargers, see CNET's Plugged In page.)

Unlike many Lotus sports cars, the Eletre can comfortable seat four.

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The car itself is also a huge departure from Lotus' past. While its two-seater sports cars were barely big enough to get two grown adults inside, the Eletre comfortably seats four people with loads of room left for luggage. Then there's the weight. Some of Lotus' previous cars weighed in under 700 kilograms. The Eletre tips the scales at over 2,500 kilograms (more than 5,500 pounds). The Lotus Eletre has a base price of $107,000 and the Eletre S model I tested is roughly $130,000.

Then there's all the onboard tech: the lidar, the autonomous driving, the adjustable air suspension that makes the car go up and down and the massive screens in the front and in the back. It's all very… not Lotus. But that's the point of the Eletre. It's not the Lotus of old. It's the Lotus of today, and my first couple of days driving it required mentally adjusting to this new era. 

I set off from Edinburgh with a full charge and made my first leg down to London with just a couple of easy charging stops before heading to the Eurotunnel on England's south coast. There, I drove the car onto the train that would take me under the sea, emerging 40 minutes later in France. 

I relied on fast chargers so as to not waste time.

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The Lotus Eletre's range and how it rides

The Eletre S comes with a 112kW battery, which boasts a maximum of 355 miles (571 kilometers) of range per charge based on the more generous WLTP testing. On paper that's a lot of mileage between charges, but that maximum range is based on slower city driving, whereas the vast majority of my driving was at highway speeds, which are less efficient. As a result, my range was consistently lower than the quoted maximum.

On one occasion I had set the Lotus in-car sat-nav to direct me to a destination 328 kilometers away. And while the car displayed 452 kilometers of range remaining (theoretically giving me around 120 kilometers left at my destination) it actually said I would run out of range before reaching the end of the route. Evidently, the system took the average road speeds I'd be doing into account and determined I'd get nowhere near. It turned out it was absolutely right and I quickly learned to pay attention to these more realistic estimates.

So although I didn't suffer from range anxiety, I definitely felt that I needed to keep an eye out every step of the way. I made sure to give myself leeway and pay attention to what the system told me in terms of how much range I should have left. 

I love the look of the Eletre.

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I took a similar route last year in the VW ID5 and concluded that the ubiquity of fast EV chargers across France makes long-distance driving in EVs as easy as in any gas-engine car. I found that to still be the case in the Eletre, making my way comfortably through France, eating up mile after mile of generally forgettable highway, hopping between fast chargers to give quick top-ups every couple hundred miles.

The Eletre, I found, is a superb long-distance cruiser. It's exceptionally comfortable, with plush seats that offer a divine cushion for the buttocks, with luxurious leather trim throughout the interior and a cracking sound system for my Periphery-dominated playlist. It drives smoothly, with adaptive cruise control and lane keep assistance making for an easy ride between charging points.

And, true to form for any Lotus, it's a powerhouse. It'll do 0-60 mph in a little over four seconds, which feels wildly nippy for something that weighs as much as a small moon. 

The ubiquity of fast chargers in France make it very easy to do long-distance electric drives.

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As I made my way toward Barcelona, the only issues I hit were the epic storms and driving rain on the highway, although that was quickly replaced with clear blue skies as I entered the city. What I now had to worry about was tackling Barcelona's city center congestion and awkward road systems.

I'd read in other reviews that the Eletre was a truly massive vehicle and while it's certainly big, it doesn't really feel it when you're driving on highways or along sweeping country roads. In the busy center of Barcelona, however, I suddenly felt like I was driving a cathedral. I winced with stress every time a scooter or tiny city car would whizz past me within an inch of scraping the fancy paintwork. 

I don't love city driving at the best of times, and having to navigate my way through the heart of Barcelona to my parking garage was an ordeal I'm sure will give me stress dreams for years to come. It was an experience made worse as I was driving a UK-spec car designed to be driven on the left-hand side of the road, but actually being driven on the right-hand side, which didn't make my spatial awareness any better. 

The interior is extremely comfortable.

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Eventually I got to the garage I'd booked and parked the car for a week while I attended the Mobile World Congress. At the end of the show, I picked it up and drove out of Barcelona, this time heading northwest, further into Spain. 

Some EV recharging issues

I used the Shell Recharge app for most of my route planning, simply filtering for fast chargers along the route I wanted and paying via the app each time I plugged in. It was mostly a straightforward experience. However, my first charging point in Spain was operated by a company called Wenea, and the Recharge app would not allow me to initialize charging, nor would the dedicated Wenea app I had to download, even after entering my credit card details multiple times. There was simply no way to use the charger and so I had to find an alternative. 

In France this would have been less of a problem, but the relative scarcity of Spanish chargers meant I had to be careful about my next move so I wouldn't get stranded. I used the Eletre's built-in sat-nav to find an alternative within range and then headed there, desperately counting the miles as they ticked by and my range dropped. 

I had to visit two nonfunctioning chargers before finding this one.

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Then things got worse. The charger I'd been directed to was simply nonfunctioning, with no power going to it whatsoever. I was forced to find a different, slower charger within range and managed to juice the car up. But it wasn't the only time this happened for me. 

See also: What If Your EV Could Power Your Home During a Blackout?

On two more occasions the Eletre's navigation system rerouted me to chargers that were out of order or that I wasn't able to access. Thankfully both times I found alternatives, but I learned never to trust the sat-nav's charge point suggestions as I could easily have been stranded without power. It's a problem Lotus can easily address, though I suspect it may not have been something I'd have even noticed had I been using Apple CarPlay, which, at the time of writing, still isn't available on the car, despite being promised as an over-the-air update when the vehicle launched in 2023. 

But I soon had a bigger problem. 

I made good time driving up through Spain, stopping off in a desert area where I simply had to take some photos of the Eletre in the stark, rocky landscape. I made my way north, following highways and other major roads, hopping between chargers, eventually arriving in the Spanish town of Soria. 

Even with its massive wheels I wasn't sure how well the car would cope on snowy roads.

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The only charger I could find was a relatively slow 43kW charger behind a McDonald's. The restaurant was closed, sadly, so I had to sit in the car with the rain beating down on the roof while it slowly charged enough for me to comfortably drive to a much faster charger 100 kilometers away. While I'd left plenty of leeway to reach my destination, the journey had other ideas. 

On snow-covered mountain roads

As I left the town and climbed higher into the hills, the pouring rain turned to blizzarding snow, covering the roads and trees and getting thicker and 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. 

I've made the mistake of driving a snowbound mountain road without snow chains before, and on that occasion I genuinely feared for my life as the VW Golf I was in became almost impossible to control and it left me perhaps overly cautious when driving in snowy conditions like this.

In the end, I had to turn back.

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Google Maps suggested the route simply continued through the hills, but I had no idea whether the route climbed higher and could become even more dangerously snowed-in or if the worst might already be behind me. While I was confident that the Eletre, as a large, heavy vehicle, would be better-equipped to handle snowy conditions, I had no idea how well it would handle potentially much deeper snow.

I wasn't prepared to take the risk and I managed to pull over to assess my options. The problem was, I'd used a lot of the car's power reserve climbing the hills, especially in the subzero temperatures, which seriously reduces the efficiency of the batteries. Continuing to my destination on this road felt too dangerous, but turning round meant backtracking a long way to the same slow charger in the McDonald's parking lot, arriving with almost no range left and then waiting hours until I could risk a detour. 

I felt trapped and anxious, not knowing which option was best. In the end I found a different slow charger tucked away in an alternative hillside village that required a shorter detour. I managed to make it to the village without issue, although the sat-nav decided to take me through the town, down steep cobbled streets so narrow I worried I'd been inadvertently directed down footpaths, rather than roads. 

I'm not sure these were roads I was driving down.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

These tight alleyways, flanked by houses on both sides, required me to ignore the screaming of the car's parking sensors which were alerting on all sides as I inched my way through. It's amazing how big the car felt when it took up every inch of space on the "road."

Still, I eventually found the charger, plugged in and had some lunch. I charged only enough to get me to the fast Ionity charging bank so as to not waste time, but even that didn't work out as expected. On plugging in to the Ionity charger, the car would only charge at a steady slow rate, instead of making use of the full 300kW speeds on offer, meaning a full charge would take an excruciating four hours. 

I don't know whose fault this was -- Lotus's or Ionity's -- but I resigned myself to charging for 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 and I "brimmed the tank" before parking up at my hotel and having a much-needed beer. 

I struggled to find a fully functioning bank of fast chargers in one part of Spain.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Over the next few days I headed for home, driving first to the French coastal resort of Biarritz before snaking my way further northeast along mile after mile of rural French highways and byways. The availability of fast chargers meant my route back was entirely uneventful, especially as the constant driving rain meant I didn't bother with any sightseeing detours. 

Eventually I reached Calais, boarded the Eurotunnel train and emerged back in England. A further 10 hours the following day took me from London back home to Edinburgh.

My overall impressions of the Lotus Eletre

The journey was an absolute mission and while parts of it felt like a grueling slog, I was impressed with how easy the Eletre made those long stretches of highway driving. The three weeks and thousands of miles I did with the car allowed me to get to know almost all the ins and outs and I've learned a lot about it.

First, I adore the look. It manages to appear both aggressively sporty, yet also sleek and refined. I love its elongated, aerodynamic swooping form that makes it look more like it's been crafted not just in a wind tunnel but by a wind tunnel. I love how comfy it is on the inside and how I never felt achy or sore even after sitting behind the wheel for eight or nine hours. 

The car is great to drive in any conditions.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

And yes, I love how powerful it is, feeling sporty and agile despite its massive weight. Even in its balanced Tour driving mode, stamping on the accelerator shot me forward with enough force to pin my back against the seat. It makes it great fun to drive, and even with the weight, it's easy to throw into corners and put the power down on the exit. Rarely have I driven cars that strike such a balance between luxury and performance. 

But I found a variety of problems in my 4,000 miles with it. Of course, there are the issues I had with the sat-nav directing me to inappropriate chargers, but that's not all. I also had the sat-nav simply crash and restart on multiple occasions, erasing my route and leaving me, in one particularly harrowing moment, driving through a busy city center with no idea where to go next and no ability to stop and reenter my destination. 

And while I generally enjoyed using the lidar-based autonomous driving modes, I did not like the multiple times it either slammed on the brakes briefly on the highway -- despite there being no traffic around me to brake for -- or the times the lane keep assist simply decided it didn't want to steer me round a gentle bend and I had to quickly seize control to avoid driving straight off the road.

You lock and unlock the car by tapping this RFID card against a touch point on the outside.

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I also don't love that the car key is an RFID card with a contactless touchpoint on the outside on the driver's side that you hold the card against to lock and unlock it. The contact point is only on the driver side, so when I plugged the car in (the charger port is on the opposite, passenger side) I'd then have to walk back around to lock it. 

Problems like these make the car feel unpolished in places and they're quirks I've only come to notice after spending so much time with it over such a long distance. But they're mostly inconsequential problems that don't really impact the driving experience and, I'll be honest, a small part of me quite likes that it's a bit rough around the edges. I'll explain. 

Back in the day, Lotus cars were not known for their finesse. In fact the joke was always that the name was an acronym for "lots of trouble usually serious," with frequent technical issues rearing their heads for owners. So while the Eletre on the surface may be a vast departure from the Lotus I've known and loved, it does at least have some commonality to Lotus of old. 

The Eletre is a thing of beauty.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Over 4,000 miles later, I have absolutely fallen in love with the Eletre. It is a pleasure to drive, it has looks to kill for and its long range and fast charging mean it is an absolutely superb long distance cruiser. 

Is it the Lotus that I dreamed of as a child? I can say with honesty that no, it's not. It's better. This is the Lotus that I dream of as an adult.