Canadians shopping for a high-end sporty electric SUV can now get the Lotus Eletre for a lot less money than before.

Back in January, when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Canada would permit the import of up to 49,000 Chinese-made EVs per year without the additional 100 per cent tariff rate, Lotus officials said they would slash the Eletre’s price by about half.

Well, cut they did, but by more than half actually.

The automaker has introduced a new Eletre base model that has a starting manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $119,900.

Until recently, the Eletre had only been available in the top-of-the-line Carbon trim, which carried an MSRP of $313,500.

The MSRP doesn’t include various fees, levies or luxury tax.

The new starting price is a little more than a third of the previous one.

What does the new Eletre give up?

The newly launched-in-Canada Eletre model has a 600-hp all-electric powertrain, giving the SUV a zero to 100 km/h sprint time of 4.5 seconds.

The previous Carbon trim, which has been removed from the automaker’s online configurator for Canada, had an output of 905 hp and could hit 100 km/h in under three seconds.

Three trims to choose from

The newly launched Eletre is available in three trims. There’s the base model ($119,900), Touring ($129,900) and Sport ($139,900).

All three have the same powertrain, but the content level of each is different.

The estimated driving range on the three Eletre models is 460 kilomtres.

Full model details are available on the Lotus website.

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