- The SUV has a 900-volt system and a sizable 70 kWh battery and two motors.
- Lotus has also added a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder to the big SUV.
- Lotus will soon start selling the Eletre PHEV in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
We’ve known about Lotus’s plans to launch a plug-in hybrid version of the Eletre for months in China, but what we didn’t expect was for the SUV to undergo a name change, too. Say hello to the new Lotus For Me, and yes, that will be its real name in China. Fortunately, that odd name won’t be retained for overseas markets.
Lotus describes the PHEV as a “hyper-SUV” with its new X-Hybrid architecture. It uses a trick 900-volt electrical architecture with a 70 kWh battery pack and a pair of electric motors, combining to produce 939 hp, slightly more than the flagship all-electric Eletre R. A 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder has also been incorporated in the powertrain.
Read: Lotus Might Slash Eletre’s Price In Half In Canada
Off the line, the For Me needs just 3.3 seconds to hit 100 km/h (62 mph) and will power from 0-200 km/h (124 mph) in 10.5 seconds while running down the quarter-mile in 11.16 seconds. Perhaps more impressive is the fact that it has an electric range of 260 miles (418 km), a combined driving range of over 870 miles (1,400 km), and WLTP-quoted fuel consumption of just 0.07 l/100 km, under ideal test conditions (aka, not something that’ll be easy to replicate in the real world).
The battery pack supports 6C charging rates, allowing it to be topped up from 30-80 percent in just 8 minutes.
What Else is New?
Visually, there’s virtually nothing separating the new For Me from the regular Eletre, other than some new badges, exhaust pipes, and some additional cooling vents in the front.
Under the skin, the same 48-volt active anti-roll bars as the Eletre have been retained, as has the trick dual-chamber air suspension and dual-valve adaptive dampers. Despite the fitment of a new plug-in hybrid system, the For Me weighs roughly the same as the Eletre, varying between 2,575 kg (5,676 lbs) and 2,626 kg (5,789 lbs), depending on the specification.
Lotus says the For Me will launch in China later this month, then land in Europe in mid-2026 and become available in North America, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and other markets later in the year.
The launch of the For Me has coincided with Lotus announcing its new Lotus Tuned Specification (LTS) proprietary engineering and dynamic-tuning standard. The car manufacturer describes this as a holistic engineering system that has seen Lotus engineers co-develop important systems, including brakes, active stabilizer bars, and suspension components, with key suppliers.
