'Record-breaking' time claimed for Lotus Emeya
Get this: the new hyper-GT will charge from 10 to 80 per cent in just 14 minutes. And speed, er, matters - right?
If there’s one thing the makers of high-end electric cars feel obliged to do, it’s compete on paper. Ideally, every number a manufacturer is required to assign to a flagship EV will be preposterously large (think output) or infinitesimally small (usually acceleration) - especially when compared to its closest rival. The incoming Lotus Emeya, with up to 905hp and 0-62mph in 2.78 seconds, is a case in point - even if Porsche retains bragging rights with the 952hp and 2.4-second-to-62mph available to the Taycan Turbo S (Turbo GT buyers get even sillier numbers).
Now, though, Lotus has found a chink in Porsche’s armour thanks to page 9-10 of the 2023 P3 Charging Index for Asia. In that document, the global consulting firm apparently compared the fast-charging capabilities of various ‘market-leading’ EVs and decreed the Emeya’s battery capable of getting from 10 to 80 per cent charge in just 14 minutes. Whether or not that does actually constitute a ‘record-breaking’ charging time using a public network (as Lotus suggests) is probably less significant than the fact the car achieved a peak charging rate of 402kW against an average of 331kW. The latest Tacan tops out at 320kW. Bingo.
While this is unlikely to have future Emeya buyers pumping their fists in the face of Porsche owners (if for no other reason than the fastest UK chargers currently run out of puff at 350kW - and PH has never witnessed one get close to that figure) it does at least speak to Lotus’s suggestion that its hyper-GT will accrue nearly 200 miles of range in just 10 minutes. Which really would give you just enough time to nip off for a pee and buy a Crunchie before contentedly resuming your journey (assuming in the future you’ve located a powerful enough charger in ideal conditions and then consume said charge at the WLTC rate of 18.7kWh/100km).
So it’s not without the usual disclaimers then, although the Emeya’s performance does reinforce the idea that the Chinese side of the Lotus coin is at the forefront of such tech, including the way it packages and cools its battery cells. Additionally, it has already designed a suite of commercial solutions that provide for an ultra-fast 450w charger, as it encourages the world to embrace what an 800-volt electrical architecture means for tedious wait times. “Emeya pushes the boundaries for how an EV performs, providing drivers with the confidence to travel anywhere,” noted Qingfeng Feng, Lotus’s CEO. “We’re bringing an unrivalled driving experience in the ultimate grand tourer package, so drivers want to go electric.”
That's just the standard PH guff on any new car not priced like it's 1985.
That's just the standard PH guff on any new car not priced like it's 1985.
I’m neither with the haters or the lovers! But there are some key issues that mean they are not for everyone and certainly shouldn’t be the only new option in a few short years.
I’m neither with the haters or the lovers! But there are some key issues that mean they are not for everyone and certainly shouldn’t be the only new option in a few short years.
personally, i don't care about heavy EVs wearing out their wheels and tyres faster, though i guess its bad for the environment.
i do care about them wearing out the roads faster and making potholes, which was already an issue due to the general trend of heavier cars and SUVs.
A 450w charger is going to be tediously slow.
"The AASHO Road Test was a multiyear experiment conducted by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) during the 1950s and is still perhaps the most comprehensive test on trucks and paved road damage. During the tests, trucks with different weights and configurations were driven around a loop until the road was damaged to a certain point. The report produced an extensive list of equations for describing the data collected from the tests, and from those equations was born the Generalized Fourth Power Law. It’s a rule of thumb for comparing the amount of pavement damage caused by vehicles with different weights:-
In the equation, W1 is the weight of an axle on vehicle 1, which we would compare to W2, the weight of an axle on vehicle 2.
Consider a standard sedan with two axles and a total weight of 2 tons. Assuming an even distribution, each of its axles would bear the weight of 1 ton. Now consider a semitruck with eight axles and a weight of 40 tons -- each of its axles would weigh 5 tons. The relative damage done by each axle of the truck can be calculated with the following equation, and comes out to 625 times the damage done by each axel of the sedan.
Considering that the truck has eight axles and the sedan has two, the relative damage caused by the entire semitruck would be 625 x (8/2) -- 2,500 times that of the sedan.
“The damage due to cars, for practical purposes, when we are designing pavements, is basically zero. It’s not actually zero, but it’s so much smaller -- orders of magnitude smaller -- that we don’t even bother with them,” said Karim Chatti, a civil engineer from Michigan State University in East Lansing."
To my mind that makes total sense when we have lots and lots of double-decker buses regularly running on the exact same roads, weighing at minimum 12.4 tonnes empty and up to 22 tonnes(!) fully packed.
It's funny how no-one ever complains about the weight of buses though...
Lol
personally, i don't care about heavy EVs wearing out their wheels and tyres faster, though i guess its bad for the environment.
i do care about them wearing out the roads faster and making potholes, which was already an issue due to the general trend of heavier cars and SUVs.
https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/every-ev-...
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