Agree that Lotus is an entry to exotic cars. Disagree that Porsche is a budget sports car. Porsches as a range cost more than Lotus, and reach higher performance spec than Lotus. Lotus is more akin to the experience of a McLaren or Ferrari, just down on power. Porsche is akin to… Porsche, since they also make exotics.

So I’ve driven the Emira on a few different occasions, and I’ve driven every flavor of Cayman plus 991 911s.

The 911 is a step above Emira. That should be no surprise looking at the price tags, the 911 can reach $300k for certain editions.

Emira is a Cayman competitor, but that doesn’t tell the full story either. The Emira is more powerful and visceral than your base Caymans, and probably sits in the space between a Cayman GTS 4.0 and GT4.

The 911 will be more comfortable, more luxurious, and more reliable.

The Emira will be more emotional, and feel more bespoke / exotic. More feedback through the steering and more mechanical bolt-action shifts.

The 911 feels like it was fused together from a single piece of steel. The Emira feels like it was hand assembled, which it largely was.

Very different flavors. I love the 911, but chose Emira.

Flights to Portugal are cheap, and Portimao is an amazing track ;)

https://autodromodoalgarve.com/driving-experiences/alpine-vitesse-je-taime/

We are in total agreement.

I’ve been lucky enough to log thousands of miles in Elise, Exige, and ND MX-5, plus hundreds of miles of canyon in 981, 718, 4C, 991, Caterham and track time in Elise, Exige, Evora, Emira, A110, 718, 991, MX-5 and Radical and so I feel like I have a firm handle on this lightweight raw genre to the point that I tend to split hairs a bit, and that’s all that’s happening here. The S2000 is absolutely a great pure driver’s car. I agree that the rawness and austerity (plus less weight and unassisted steering) are important factors that elevate one car in this group over another but they are all in the group.

S2000 is obviously a great and pure experience, but still no comparison to Elise. The Honda has power steering and weights over ~40% more.

Lotus gets plenty of credit amongst car enthusiasts as they are basically the purest driving experience you can have at attainable prices… but if you’re not a car person, you have no idea what a lotus is. Pulling into a gas station with an Elise I’ve heard “look at that Ferrari!” And “is that a Lamborghini?” Etc. Every answer but the right one.

Pretty nice, but a first-generation product from a manufacturer who isn’t known for tightening all their screws. Take it from someone who has owned a similar drivetrain in the Wrangler twice. Both have had issues in-warranty.

It’s a compelling vehicle, but I would budget some repairs. Can’t always count on the warranty. For example some leaky axle seals on my jeep ruined the rear brakes. Warranty covered the seals but had to spend $800 out of pocket for the brakes since warranty doesn’t cover “collateral damage”.

This would have to be implemented by a network as a standard way of using their network. Someone like PlugShare making reservations on a Chargepoint plug would be chaos, because not everyone has or uses that app or has any visibility to the process.

Reservations do exist at some plugs, but they are one “one deep”. As in, you can reserve it for 10 minutes while you drive over, but someone else can’t queue a reservation behind you.

I was there. We really only got the Gravity, EV3 and EV4 concepts, plus Sorento PHEV. Santa Fe has a PHEV but doesn’t sound like North America will get it.

Keep in mind, Hertz is going to require that you charge it before returning it so you WILL need to charge. You should make that distance if you’re not being a maniac on the throttle. Use heated seats to reduce your need for the regular heater. If you do need to charge en route, a 5 minute stop should be plenty. Use the PlugShare app and filter by Tesla Supercharger for Tesla and CCS for everything else.

EVs with one pedal drive will regenerate down to a near stop and then use mixed braking to bring the car to a full stop.

I love manual transmissions. Every car I’ve ever owned that wasn’t electrified has been manual. I love analog, tactile, engaging driving experiences and have gravitated to lotus for these reasons.

But, I think we’re headed in the wrong direction on this. All of this fake engine noise, simulated shifting, artificial drive modes, it’s not the way. It’s pandering. It’s also an admission that EVs are not as exciting as what came before. An EV pretending to be a gas car will never be as good as a gas car is at being a gas car. So what are we doing here?

How about this: let’s develop new ways that EVs are exciting and engaging and give the driver more direct feedback from the chassis and inputs. Instead of clinging to the past, let’s embrace the future and come up with something that plays to the strengths of EVs.

One way I can think that EVs are more engaging and connected than gas cars is the accelerator pedal. In an EV, it feels like there is a direct linkage between your foot and the electric motor. It’s almost like you can “feel” the torque curve and roll it around under your foot. Combine it with strong regenerative braking and the feeling is like a scalpel. It’s a higher fidelity input than a gasoline car. Let’s start there, because not every EV automaker gets even that part right.

But then what? I’m not sure. But here are a few ideas:

1. Active aero. Air brakes flipping up under hard braking, wings tilting, air blades ejecting, etc. that new Nissan Hyper Force has a bit of this actually. Lotus does it too on Eletre but it’s very subtle. It shouldn’t be subtle. The driver should feel and/or see that it’s happening. Give audible cues so the driver understands what the aero is doing. It makes the car feel alive.

2. Give us sound, but not fake. I don’t know what the engineers have to do but warp or modify the real acoustic noise than EV motors make in ways that are more satisfying than a high pitched sound. We do this for gas cars, engineering the exhaust note. There must be a way to EVs.

3. Drop some pounds for crying out loud. This is going to take some battery breakthroughs but the EVs need to shed weight so the chassis communicates more and the assists (steering, traction, torque vectoring) can all be dialed back.

4. If you’re going to pipe in fake noise, make it mean something. Let me “hear” the amount of power going to each wheel through torque vectoring.

5. Give my left foot something to do. What can that control? Maybe stronger regen. Maybe it cancels regen like a clutch. Maybe it increases or decreases the torque vectoring to change chassis dynamics mid-corner. Hell maybe it’s a boost pedal idk.

These might not be great ideas, but my point is this: we have this new technology. Let’s leverage its strengths to great more engaging experiences rather than stifling it with nostalgia. We’re drivers we want fidelity and control, not a binky to console us.