Four new Lotus platforms

Lotus has long been known for its consultancy work within the global automotive industry, and its activity in that area is being stepped up with the opening of the Lotus Advanced Technology Centre on the Wellesbourne campus of the University of Warwick. It’s due to open this year. The images here are an illustration of the new facility, where 100 people will be employed. As well as working for third party clients, Lotus Engineering is developing four new structural architectures collaboratively with colleagues in Europe and China. This dedicated family of structural platforms are available to other OEMs through the Lotus Engineering consultancy. There are four in total, named Elemental, Extreme, Evolution and E-Sports.

Elemental is a sports car architecture on which the Emira will be built. It features the extruded aluminium for which Lotus is known, but “is a massive step-change technically.” Expect to find out more about that when the Emira is revealed on 6 July. The Evija is built on the Extreme platform. The Evolution platform is “the first ever truly global automotive architecture from Lotus.” It’s described as the basis of ‘lifestyle vehicles’ which we’re interpreting as the long-rumoured SUV. It has been designed in the UK, working with teams in China, Sweden and Germany. Finally, the E-Sports platform will form the basis of new cars from Lotus and Alpine.

Lotus Engineering is also expanding its consultancy work. Much of this is undertaken in the strictest confidence, but some projects are in the public domain. These include work with Extreme E team JBXE, British Cycling, plus work with EV specialists. These include Project LEVA a collaboration led by Lotus Engineering that is targeting the acceleration of and innovation behind new lightweight structures for next-generation battery electric vehicles. Further EV work is being carried out with BattCon. Lotus Engineering has launched a pilot containerised battery testing facility to assess methods of energy storage.