A bit of Lotus gossip

[pdr479]

I have checked in the forum search and no mention of this seems to be there......Talking to one of my old clients he tells me: i am off to do a contract for lotus (all to do with crash testing i think) on the new Esprit and the electric Elise (you what)oh yes he tells me they have dveloped some high performance lecy car,any one else no or heard anything about this or was he pulling my pud!
Paul

[[k]ar|]

Cool - great to hear that work is continuing on the new Esprit. There was something floating around a while back that it had been cancelled.

An Electric Elise sounds interesting. Venturi were supposed to be devloping an electric sports car, but at ridiculously high cost. Probably heavy too. Hopefully, the "performance through light weight" philosophy will be carried dover to this new variant.

[k]

[Esprit]

Interesting... although I don't see an electrig Elise being that feasible unless it's at a VERY high price.... it'll definitely be heavier than the standard one and given that the Elise has never been an overly aerodynamically slick car, it should have average performance and range.... I'll happily stand corrected though

I'll stick with my petrolium-distillate-fuelled internal combustion engine thanks

[oastbloke]

There was talk of an electric Elise 6 odd years ago. I think they made a prototype, seemed to be more about marketing than real intent. Hope they're more serious this time (and have space for the milk bottles)

[jig]

I saw the Venturi at Goodwood this weekend - <i>very</i> strange seeing it fly down the track making practically no sound at all!

[rfoster]

Sign me up for a leccy elise. I'll whack a big solar panel on the roof of my house and enjoy free motoring!
Saw the Venturi 'Fetish' on Fifth Gear a few weeks ago, cost is around £300,000 I think and 0-60 in 5 seconds. Looks great, but £300,000? Come on.

[Andy T]

Not sure if the rumour of an electric Elise is true or not but I think Lotus would be spot on if they were in the process of developing an electric car. I Love all things petrol related but the days of the petrol engine are numbered. I reckon somebody somewhere very soon is going to come up with the idea that the only way to give electric powered cars mass appeal is to make them sexy! A quick, cheap (possibly subsidised) Lightweight fun car is the ideal way to do that IMO. Get everybody wanting one, hey presto all the manufacturers jump on the bandwagon and before you know it the technology for a kickass leccy sportscar costs a whole load less than £300k!

Come on Lotus!

[garydvo]

Casting my mind back was an Elise tested in Detriot back inthe late 90's?

[scuffham]

there was an Electric one back in 96/97

done by Lotus and Zytec to promote Zytecks new motors, VERY light and powerfill (from memory something like 7Kg's and 75Kw each).

it was faster 0-100 than the std car at the time...even though it was somewhat weighed down by batteries

www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?f=15&h=0&t=19320

[sneakypete]

And that is gonna sound like, what? Bzzzzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.???

Or will I have to get a Sportzzzzzzzzz Exhaustzzzzzzzzz to improve that?

[garydvo]

Just think you could have a full size scalextric.

Sports rheostat, upgraded armatures, wire coil cooling, Huzza battery induction, ported brushes....

Gets rid of the HGF I guess.

Gary

[sneakypete]

Maybe we could fit the track (errr, road I mean) with those cool crossover things. Oh, and banked curves. Yes, that would be cool.