• Space for five adults
• Practical hatchback boot
• A lot of safety tech

How much space is there?

The Lotus Emeya is a big car with lots of space front and back. There’s certainly enough for a passenger well over six feet tall to sit behind someone of similar height with legroom to spare. Three adults fit relatively comfortably on the back seat, as well.

You can spec the Emeya with four seats, the rear bench being swapped for a pair of recliners. These offer a wide range of adjustment to enable occupants to make best use of the space available. The Porsche Taycan and Audi E-Tron GT – key rivals – also have four seats but are nothing like as spacious or opulent. Here, the Emeya is much more like the Mercedes S-Class and BMW i7 in its quest for luxury.

There are only two demerits of note. Rear headroom could be more generous, but there’s more than you get in the BMW i5 – a car that appears more upright. And there’s a slight lack of foot room under the front seats, though that would only be an issue for exceptionally tall back seat passengers. The front seats can always be raised if front passengers don’t mind, anyway.

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Lotus Emeya boot space and storage

The Emeya scores an immediate win over its Taycan, E-Tron GT and i5/i7 rivals by being a five-door hatchback, rather than a four-door saloon. Though the boot is relatively high off the ground, the big tailgate makes it so much easier to load. The 509-litre space (426 litres with the four-seat option) is generous too, bolstered by an extra space under the bonnet intended to stow the charging cables. The Emeya still trails the 620-litre cavern in the back of the Mercedes EQS, though.

There are limitations to the Emeya’s ultimate practicality. Though the boot is wide and long, it’s actually quite shallow – a large suitcase lying flat only just fits under the rear window at its lowest point. At least the back seats fold down in five-seat models, creating 1,388 litres of capacity in a space around two metres long – useful for flatpack shopping.

There’s all the usual interior storage spaces – bottle-size bins in the doors, biggish glovebox, cupholders in the centre console and a cubby under the front centre armrest. In other words, there’s enough.

Is it easy to park?

There’s a lot of the Emeya. It measures 5,139mm long and 2,005mm wide, so finding a space big enough for it may be an issue. Once you do, actually parking it isn’t difficult. All models have front and rear parking sensors and a very effective 360-degree view that shows on the infotainment screen, all of which lets you know exactly where the extremities of the car are.

We’d avoid the optional ‘side screens’, which replace the door mirrors with rear-facing cameras. Not only do they cost £2,000, they don’t give the depth perception you get from conventional mirrors, which provide a perfectly good view themselves.

Safety

• No Euro NCAP rating
• But it’s loaded with driver assistance tech
• Should be very safe overall

Car safety body Euro NCAP hasn’t assessed the Emeya and is unlikely to do so – it focuses on more mainstream cars. But every car from other Geely-owned brands – Lynk & Co, Polestar, Volvo and Geely itself – that NCAP has put through its paces has performed extremely well, so we’ve no concerns here.

Not least because it’s loaded to the gunnels with safety tech. All models come with autonomous emergency braking, front and rear cross traffic alert, traffic sign recognition and driver attention monitoring to name just five from a very long list. The outer rear seats have Isofix child seat mounting points.

The optional Highway Assist Pack uses LIDAR sensors for more accurate assisted driving. It’s already impressively capable on motorways and Lotus says more advanced features can be unlocked via software updates as regulations allow.