Lotus's new car arrived as promised in the early hours of the 30th.
It is so topical that its "resume" is filled with a dense list of titles before it is officially introduced. Lotus's first-ever SUV model, the terminator of pure fuel vehicles, the "first shot" on the road to brand electrification.
Lotus named the new car Eletre, Chinese interpreted as a new student, quite a sense of determination and tragedy in this move. Lotus is not the first supercar brand to build an SUV model, or even the second third, but it is the first to completely cut off the back road to take a fate road that is diametrically opposite to the first half of his life. Such a strong contrast once again shapes the image of Lotus "born to die" in your and my heart.
After the sad song of "the wind is cold and the water is cold, the hero will not return" is over, and it is the turn of the protagonist Eletre - it is indeed a pure electric SUV launched in response to the times, but it can still represent the spirit of Lotus. This is the best epitaph that Lotus can engrave for its pure fuel vehicles, only once, but unprecedented.
The first dimension of the Lotus spirit in Eletre is clearly the distinctive design and the rich and exaggerated aerodynamic application. Although lotus CEO said at the EMIRA conference that "only people who don't understand aerodynamics will miss large-displacement engines" is both boring and warlike, it can be seen that Lotus's achievements in aerodynamics must also be full of economy.
So we can see that the porous design derived from the Lotus supercar Evija is reproduced on the Eletre. The "airways" on both sides of the cover run through the upper and lower sides, and the front surrounds the left and right deflectors embedded in the grille, and in the process of high-speed galloping, part of the airflow from the front will pass through the openings on both sides of the front headlights, separated into upper and lower air curtains, and the other part enters the cover air duct through the middle grille and flows to the roof. The many regularly arranged triangle blocks under the license plate are designed with active heat dissipation openings, which can cool the battery in addition to achieving the purpose of rectification. The combination of the above functions provides 51 kg of downforce to the Eletre's front axle, as well as an unmatched visual impact.
Say goodbye to the vicious front face and usher in the enchanting sneaky coupe style. Full of shape, rich lines, I heard the official claim that Eletre pursues not only a visually compact, combat feeling, the simple body surface is once again at the service of aerodynamics, the official said, airflow can form 7 sets of air ducts on the Eletre body. The drag coefficient of 0.26cd is another proud value. In addition, hard-core equipment such as 23-inch blade rims and 10-piston carbon-ceramic brake systems can also be assembled on new cars, but the streaming media exterior mirrors are not available for money in some countries.
Driving to the rear of the car, its competitive style is no less than the front face. The actively adjustable rear wing can provide up to 116 kg of downforce, and the openings on both sides of the through-type taillights are still at the service of aerodynamics. As a joke, any "hole" in Lotus Eletre is designed to make the driver drive faster and more steadily.
The above is the skill that Lotus can easily grasp before the arrival of Eletre, and the content below is the "first" in Lotus's history.
A set of interiors using a variety of colors + a variety of materials, so that Eletre completely bid farewell to lotus throughout the ancient and modern hard (lian) core (jia) atmosphere, with a sense of technology as the main, and then supplemented by visual movement, whether you love or not, this is Lotus's future interior style. Of course, the design of the oversized central control screen and the cup holder is difficult not to think of The Krypton 001, after all, it is all produced by Geely.
In the past, Lotus was eager not to have a screen in the whole car, and now Lotus is eager to have screens everywhere in the car. 12.6-inch dashboard, 15.1-inch OLED central control screen, 12.6-inch co-driver screen, 29-inch AR-HUD, 9-inch rear central screen, if you add two streaming media exterior mirrors, who dares to say that only new forces will play multi-screen?
More than the number of screens, there are sensors on Eletre's body. 4 x 128-line lidar, 6 mmwave radar, 12 ultrasonic radars, 7 cameras, 4 surround view cameras, and 1 in-car camera. Lotus even provides a special service for these 4 lidars, all of which can bounce up when in use and retract when not in use, just like the jump light design of the past. If you want to ask as far as? Narutus's answer must be – aerodynamics above all else.
After finishing the hardware and software, 2 NVIDIA 7nm Orin chips provide computing power support, thus providing powerful and intelligent driving assistance functions. The car machine system is equipped with dual 8155 vehicle-level chips to meet the needs of full 3D images and more than 5 4K screens, lossless data transmission, high-definition Bluetooth music and so on.
By the way, Lotus Eletre will come standard with the sound system of british gem brand KEF, the purpose of which is obvious, listening to songs is secondary, and simulating sound waves is the serious work.
The second dimension of lotus spirit is the Eletre supercar power specification. Even if this is a medium and large SUV with a length, width and height of 5103/2019/1630mm and a wheelbase of 3019mm, with the help of the front and rear EDS dual motors, the Eletre can obtain a total power of 675kW, with an acceleration time of 0-100km/h in only 2.95 seconds and an acceleration time of less than 12 seconds for 0-200km/h.
In addition, the Eletre is equipped with a battery pack with a capacity of 100kWh, a cruising range of 600km under WLTP conditions, and an 800V voltage platform for a three-electric system, which can get more than 150km of battery life in 5 minutes of charging. Of course, this is under the premise of technical support, as for when the 800V voltage platform can be widely popularized, it is not easy to say.
For handling, Lotus equipped the Eletre with a front McPherson rear five-link suspension configuration, CDC shock absorption and air springs to support body height adjustment, suspension damping adjustment, active stabilizer stiffness adjustment and other operations. It can be seen that Lotus has also made great efforts to make the Eletre less SUV in driving.
I am convinced that Eletre will be a memorable node in Lotus's transformation, and its spiritual power will be far greater than its material power. In the near future, Lotus will surely launch more pure electric models, perhaps compared to the Eletre, those who no longer have the ultimate aerodynamics, nor will they carry supercar power specifications, but they will still remember that it was Eletre that gave them the opportunity to be born.