Lotus to develop new electric sports car with Alpine, premium “lifestyle” vehicles – SUVs possible?
Aside from announcing the name and reveal date for the forthcoming Emira sports car, Lotus has also confirmed that it will develop two more vehicle architectures that will underpin a range of new models, the first of which is due to enter production in 2025. Together with the Evija electric hypercar, this means that Hethel will have a total of four platforms on which to build its lineup.
The first of these two platforms is E-Sports (no, it’s got nothing to do with video game competitions), which will form the basis of a new electric sports car developed in partnership with Alpine. Lotus managing director Matt Windle said that the new platform will be “flexible and modular” and he has challenged his teams to “target the same weight as our latest combustion engine sports cars.”
The next one is perhaps of less importance to Lotus’ purist customer base but far more interesting to the general public – the Evolution architecture for premium vehicles. The company intends to build an all new range of “lifestyle” vehicles that will deliver increased volumes and revenue for the brand, which we assume will include the long-rumoured SUV. Lotus isn’t known for premium cars, so it will work with Geely’s teams in China, Sweden and Germany to bring these models to market.
Before that, Lotus will reveal the Emira on July 6, based on a new Elemental extruded aluminium architecture. The car will be the brand’s last to be powered by an internal combustion engine and will replace the Elise, Exige and Evora, all of which will be discontinued this year.
Also due to arrive later in the year is the Evija, built on the Extreme electric hypercar platform and targeted to produce outputs of a massive 2,000 PS and 1,700 Nm of torque – the latter Lotus is already confident of eclipsing with the finalised production model. The company has also confirmed that the car will incorporate the what3words geocode system for navigation, something that the Emira will also benefit.
While these vehicle architectures will be unique to Lotus within the Geely family, the company will make them available to other carmakers through its Lotus Engineering consultancy, so we could see a variety of vehicles based on these platforms in the future.
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