From £86,2958

Spiritual successor to the iconic Carlton, or just another hugely powerful electric wannabe?

The Lotus Emeya is the fourth stage in the masterplan to transform the new, revitalised Lotus from beloved but niche sports car maker to global luxury car manufacturer.

The Lotus Emira sports car and Evija hypercar lend the brand credibility, reassuring everyone that the old Lotus hasn’t left the building. The Eletre is to be the relative volume seller because, globally, big SUVs are what luxury car buyers want.

Exactly what the Emeya brings to the table is more of a head-scratcher. It appears that for all its bold reinvention plans, Lotus is still governed by a certain European car orthodoxy that dictates a sporting brand must have a super-saloon, even though that particular genre has become far less popular than it once was. For instance, Porsche sells only a fraction as many Panameras as it does Cayennes.

The Emeya, of course, is an EV, as most new Lotuses will be, which puts this saloon toe to toe with the Porsche Taycan. The Taycan itself is not quite flying out of showrooms the way Porsche might like it to and is already being markedly outsold by the Macan Electric.

It’s unlikely, then, that the Emeya will pull in the big volumes. Instead, it needs to prove to the world – and buyers unconvinced by SUVs – that Lotus can still make a serious fast saloon, regardless of whether it’s powered by petrol or electricity, or made in Hethel or Wuhan.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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Lotus Emeya review 2025 02 rear panning

In very simple terms, the Emeya is the saloon version of the Eletre SUV that we have now known for a year or so. That means it uses the 800V architecture, takes a very large battery and is available with an armoury of dynamics-enhancing tech including air suspension and four-wheel steering.

The motors are the same as on the Eletre as well. The Emeya 600 has dual 302bhp permanent magnet synchronous motors, while the Emeya 900 replaces the rear motor with a 604bhp unit and a two-speed gearbox, for a total of 906bhp.

Most Emeyas get 412mm, six-piston steel brakes, which proved very effective. Entry-level cars get four-piston items. On top-level 600 Sport SE and 900 Sport Carbon, a 10-piston carbon-ceramic set-up is available. Tyres are Lotus-specific Pirellis or Michelins.

Dig into the details and you will unearth a few technical differences from the Eletre, particularly concerning the battery. To make it suitable for a saloon, here the cooling elements are housed in a channel through the middle of the pack, which makes it a useful 20mm lower but does reduce the capacity a bit. The cooling itself and the battery management are also a generation on from the Eletre, accelerating the charging rate to up to 420kW.

Design work took place in Coventry under Ben Payne. It’s a different team from the one that styled the Emira and Evija, and you can tell. There is a clear family resemblance between the Eletre and the Emeya, but less so with the sports cars. Unlike the upcoming Jaguar EV, it fully embraces the EV aesthetic with a short bonnet and an ultra-long wheelbase, the Emeya adding 50mm to the Eletre’s already over-three-metre-long wheelbase.

That makes the Emeya a very big car. At 5.1m, it’s only slightly shorter than a Mercedes EQS and a fair bit longer than a Porsche Taycan. In Fireglow Orange, our test car certainly garnered plenty of looks.

Thanks to plenty of aluminium in the structure and the body panels, the Emeya is closer in weight to the Taycan than the EQS, but at 2478kg on Horiba Mira’s weighbridge, it’s still heavier than three S1 Elises.

As on the Volvo EX90, the Geely influence makes itself evident in the multitude of flaps and protrusions for various cameras and sensors for the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). There are berths for lidars on the roof, in the rear hatch and on the front wings, and the prominent black patches on the doors are for rear-facing cameras. Most of this tech is optional, however, which meant that our test car had the motorised housing on the roof that would pop up when you unlocked the car, even though it didn’t contain a functional sensor.

INTERIOR

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Lotus Emeya review 2025 12 dash

Unless you’re already familiar with the Eletre, you are likely to be astounded at the quality of materials and build in the Emeya’s interior. While Lotuses traditionally had an appealingly functional aesthetic, they weren’t usually luxurious. The Emeya couldn’t be more different: almost any surface that isn’t covered in soft, smooth leather or Alcantara is made of real metal or carbonfibre. The intricate curves and shapes of the dash and door panels give it a recognisable look, despite the relative absence of physical controls.

Your main way of interacting with most of the systems is through the 15.1in central touchscreen, but thankfully there are some buttons and rocker switches for the climate control, the central locking and the glovebox, while paddles on the steering wheel let you quickly cycle through the settings for the drive mode and regenerative braking.

I wasn’t sure about the four-spoke steering wheel at first, but it’s perfectly positioned, the thin, firm rim is nice to hold, and the spokes are well positioned to change your grip at a motorway cruise. The buttons and switches on it are a little unusual but work well.

The screen is big, clear and very responsive, and the menu layout is logical and has relatively few sub-menus. As a result, you can find what you’re after quickly enough, but some controls still feel strange and inaccessible: the adjustment of the heated and ventilated seats, and the fan speed, are in a sub-menu, for example.

Generally, the infotainment is well thought out, with sensible smartphone integration, a clear navigation system with up-to-date traffic information and enough shortcut buttons. This feels like progress after our experience of the Eletre’s equivalent infotainment tech a year or so ago, which was at the time notably less usable.

Every version features an excellent 1380W 15-speaker KEF hi-fi system, which you can enjoy to the fullest since the Emeya is relatively quiet at a motorway cruise.

In the front, at least, making the Emeya’s battery lower than the Eletre’s seems to have worked, because the straight-legged driving position is comparable to a Porsche Taycan’s and doesn’t feel notably perched. The difference is that the Lotus’s scuttle is lower, which makes it feel less cocooned but airier – a matter of preference.

Although the optional 18-way adjustable seats in our test car weren’t short of configurability on paper, they did lack a little under-thigh support and were somewhat meanly padded. The Porsche’s softer chairs would be more comfortable over long distances.

Thanks to the Emeya’s lengthy wheelbase, rear passengers are well catered for knee room, but the floor in the back feels high and there’s not much room under the front seats for your feet, so it’s not the most comfortable position. Head room is limited too, even with the backrest in its most reclined position. The boot similarly suffers: there’s plenty of flat surface area but not much height. At least the big hatchback makes the area easy to access.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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Lotus Emeya review 2025 27 front cornering

Until not too long ago, an EV’s performance tended to significantly tail off at motorway speeds. The latest fast EVs have made it a lot less noticeable, but the Emeya tries to turn that on its head.

For a car with 604bhp – even one that weighs 2.5 tonnes – a 4.1sec 0-60mph time is a little underwhelming, and only slightly quicker than the entry-level single-motor Porsche Taycan (4.3sec). The Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 we tested in 2022 is half a second quicker. From 80mph, however, the Emeya starts to decisively pull away from the EQS. It needs almost six seconds less to reach 150mph and half a second less for the 50-80mph overtake.

Lotus gets so close to the ideal regen set-up: steering wheel paddles (up for more regen, down for less) with a few strengths and a freewheeling mode. Unfortunately, there’s no one-pedal mode and it forgets your last setting on start-up.

Lotus has chosen electric motors of a fast-revving design to develop power and torque for longer, rather than torquier ones that run out of puff sooner (the max motor rpm is in excess of 17,000rpm
on an equivalent EQS or BMW i7, it’s less than 14,000rpm). The effect is twofold. It makes the Emeya among the more autobahn-capable EVs, but also slightly less nausea-inducing at full power from low speeds, and then all the fiercer when powering out of corners on a B-road.

EVs this powerful can sometimes feel a little nervous on the road, but this is not the case with the Emeya. Even in Sport mode, it’s easy to mete out as much or as little power as you wish with your right foot. Equally, Range mode is well judged too, making the car a bit more docile without artificially choking it.

Lotus gives the driver fairly granular control over the regenerative braking with the left-hand steering wheel paddles. The ‘off’ mode lets the car roll with seemingly no friction whatsoever, but while the strongest mode gives strong retardation, it never comes to a complete stop. The brake pedal is much firmer than the mushy pedals in the Taycan and EQS but is too sensitive at parking speeds.

We were very impressed with the Emeya’s actual braking performance, however. It outbraked all the EV rivals we have tested by some margin on both dry and wet surfaces, and exhibited no fade.

We’ve only tried the Emeya 900 on the international launch (when it was still called the R). With its 905bhp, it drops the 0-62mph sprint to a quoted 2.8sec. It still manages to maintain intuitive accelerator pick-up, but we did find it a bit big and boisterous. For our money the performance of the S is more than enough, and feels vaguely sensible on the road.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Lotus Emeya review 2025 29 front cornering

Even though our road test car was in the most ‘purist’ spec available (standard motors, no four-wheel steering or active aerodynamics), any Emeya is a radically different car from the Lotuses of old. When you then also consider that Hethel had minimal input into this car, it would seem like a futile quest to look for Lotus DNA in this 2.5-tonne electric saloon.

And yet this is clearly no ordinary electric saloon. The steering is a particular highlight, and at least on a par with that of a mid-range Porsche Taycan. In fact, it’s not dissimilar in feel. The engineers have resisted the temptation to make it excessively quick or darty. Instead, it seems intuitively linear, with medium-heavy weighting and a dry, connected feel to it. It self-centres well when pulling out of junctions, and the subtle ebb and flow of weight accurately tells you how much you’re loading up the chassis in corners. It really is expertly judged.

There's a chance that a purely rear-driven Emeya will join the line-up at some point. Porsche did it with the Taycan, and in many ways that car is the highlight of the range. Expect a more indulgent handling balance, sweeter steering and a usefully lower kerb weight.

It doesn’t stop there, because the way the Emeya dives into corners belies its weight. The air suspension tightly controls the body but doesn’t suppress roll and weight transfer completely. The balance is such that if you float the car into a turn off the power, it will gently rotate into it, like the best hot hatches. Power out, and the electronics can direct just enough torque rearwards to create a tiny bit of slip of the back wheels to keep the positive rotation going.

If there is a disappointment, it’s that mild rotation is as exuberant as the Emeya gets. It never feels anything other than securely four-wheel drive, even with the (overly cautious) ESC switched off.

The differences between the Tour and Sport modes aren’t enormous. The sense of mild rear bias to the torque split is slightly more pronounced in Sport than in Tour, and the air suspension firms up a little. Some might wish for more differentiation, but unlike in many cars with different suspension settings, Sport mode remains usable on UK roads.

You get the sense the suspension is fighting a little to keep the body in check over very bumpy roads. That is perhaps inevitable given how much weight it has to control, and you can’t expect it to ‘breathe with the road’ in classic Lotus fashion. Ultimately, the Emeya rides well enough. It can’t escape some head toss over uneven roads and some clunking over corrugations, but none of it is egregious for a sports saloon. Ultimately it can’t compete for ride comfort with a Taycan on Porsche’s extraordinary Active Ride system, but then nothing really can.

This all applies to the Emeya S that we’ve road tested in the UK. When we tried the 900, we found it rather overwrought; it doesn’t much express itself, despite a torque split that’s technically more rear-biased. The steering doesn’t have the same class, either.

Track notes

Anyone dreaming of an electric Lotus Carlton will be disappointed by the Emeya. While it is very competent, it doesn’t tolerate any ham-fisted hooliganism. Drive it neatly, and it will behave in much the same way as it does on the road. You’re unlikely to run out of grip or traction, and the accurate and communicative steering lets you drive right up to the limit. Adding power or lifting off will tighten the line, but only up to a point. All of our attempts to get it sideways on the dry handling track proved futile.

On MIRA’s wet handling circuit, the Emeya still preferred grip over slip. It is possible to overwhelm the rear axle with power, but holding a drift is very difficult, since the car seems to want to either pull itself out with front drive or spin. Instead, the most satisfying way around a wet circuit is to set the car up for a corner with some weight transfer, and then try to maintain neutral steer on the way out.

Assisted driving

Our test subject was an early Emeya in a specification that is no longer available to order. Even though it was quite well equipped, it lacked both the Highway Assist Pack (£1900 on the base Emeya, standard on every other trim) and the £4250 Lidar Pack. Even so, you would expect a company that clearly takes assisted driving seriously to give a good showing even in standard spec.

Unfortunately, none of the ADAS worked all that well. The adaptive cruise control, while tolerable, was prone to braking if you engaged it while still a little too close to the car in front. On single carriageways it would often brake for oncoming traffic. The lane keep assist would bong and interfere with the steering too early, and the overspeed and driver fatigue warnings were especially keen to pipe up.

Thankfully, at the top of the screen there is a shortcut that takes you to an ADAS menu where you can disable all of them fairly easily. Even though the car turns on and off based on a person’s weight being in the driver’s seat, the ADAS don’t immediately reactivate when you stop and get out of the car.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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Earlier in 2025, Lotus reshuffled the Emeya and Eletre line-ups. What were formerly the S and the R are now the 600 and the 900, each with a handful of trim levels. Our test car was actually an S with some options, but it is broadly equivalent to a 600 GT.

A plain 600 is priced from £86,305. That’s about £10,000 less than a Porsche Taycan 4S, and options are similarly priced for both. That said, cheaper Taycans are available if you’re willing to settle for less power or fewer motors.

A 1380W, 15-speaker audio system from KEF is standard. It can be upgraded to a 23-speaker set-up, but there’s no need: it already sounds outstanding. Metal grilles are a nice detail.

Arguably the Emeya’s biggest shortcoming is its energy efficiency. The 2.4mpkWh touring figure is significantly worse than what we got from the more powerful Taycan Turbo S and gives the Emeya 600 a disappointing 237-mile cruising range. Conditions during our test were pretty much ideal too. Lotus quotes maximum regen up to 80kW, which pales in comparison to a Taycan’s 400kW. It appears there are some gains to be made there.

It’s a good thing, then, that the Emeya can charge very quickly indeed. No public charger in the UK can deliver the 420kW that Lotus claims the car can take, but we found a rare 400kW charger, and the Emeya maintained very high speeds throughout. There is one caveat to its performance, however. It has an 800V architecture, and while it can use 400V chargers, its speed is capped at a measly 80kW on those.

VERDICT

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To justify its existence, the Emeya needs to prove Lotus can not only build a competitive EV sports saloon but also instil classic Lotus values into it.

It does so with a chassis that shows unusual poise and suitability for UK roads. Although its real-world charging speed will be limited by the charger used, its industry-leading speed is quite the feat.

The Emeya also has an interior whose materials and quality wouldn’t look out of place in an even more expensive car. Its copious performance is both usable and exciting on the road too.

Overall, the Porsche Taycan is a more rounded and technically impressive proposition, and Lotus will need to work hard on its cars’ efficiency and packaging to remain relevant, but the Emeya has enough going for it as an appealing alternative, and to carry its historical baggage with dignity.

Illya Verpraet

Illya Verpraet Road Tester Autocar
Title: Road Tester

As a road tester, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews and comparison tests, while also managing the magazine’s Drives section. Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s in-depth instrumented road tests.

He loves cars that are fun and usable on the road – whether piston-powered or electric – or just cars that are very fit for purpose. When not in test cars, he drives an R53-generation Mini Cooper S.

Richard Lane

Richard Lane, Autocar
Title: Deputy road test editor

Richard joined Autocar in 2017 and like all road testers is typically found either behind a keyboard or steering wheel (or, these days, a yoke).

As deputy road test editor he delivers in-depth road tests and performance benchmarking, plus feature-length comparison stories between rival cars. He can also be found presenting on Autocar's YouTube channel.

Mostly interested in how cars feel on the road – the sensations and emotions they can evoke – Richard drives around 150 newly launched makes and models every year. His job is then to put the reader firmly in the driver's seat.