Type 130 - Lotus Evija

[EuropaSman]

Yes, seriously. It will go round corners very quickly even at nearly 2 tonnes. 

There are other cars that aren't exactly light weight, so on the face of it shouldn't be as good in the twisties, but they are. The Nissan GT-R for instance that can vary torque from side to side. It has computers to keep the car on the road and cheat the physics.

Not forgetting that Lotus has designed a package with the aero, and they will have kept the centre of gravity and the polar moment of inertia as low as possible.

Light is still right, but unfortunately the issue with the battery technology being  currently available still being relatively heavy is a moot point. I'm sure that for the designed performance and to meet all the type approval requirements Lotus has kept the weight of the Evija as low as possible.

I like this video below where the chap in it driving the car sums up what I'm trying to say.

Regarding Formula 1 cars, with the hybrid systems the cars have to have these days, they have got heavier too. 

 

[tim_marra]

F1 cars are currently the heaviest they have been in a very long time.

[Sport220]

Was thinking the same thing just a few days ago… Surely this has to be the year they start delivering cars?

[Escape]

On 14/03/2023 at 19:11, mg4lotus said:

I can't help but feel the Evija is the car that people who bought the Rimac should have bought 😜

Bar the fact that none have been delivered (as far as I know). It doesn't matter how fast, powerful or beautiful a car is, if you can't actually buy it NOW, you can't show it off...

A missed opportunity for Lotus if you ask me. Same (and shame) with the Emira taking too long to reach customers and that way not taking full advantage of the enthusiasm it generated when it was revealed.

[Jack Stone]

@JayEmm makes some good points. Personally, I've always thought the Evija is among the best-looking sports cars ever created and that it was such a wasted opportunity not to use the body form for an "affordably priced" ICE-powered Lotus halo model (ie in the McLaren 720/Ferrari 488/F8 bracket). I've had that conversation with several senior Lotus Cars people, who didn't disagree! At least the Evija styling has influenced the looks of my next Lotus (when my Emira finally arrives!)

  

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Jack Stone

[exeterjeep]

2 hours ago, Jack Stone said:

makes some good points

One of the dealers suggested he could sell loads if it was petrol and a bit cheaper.

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

I think the JayEmm video raises some interesting points and it’s good to see someone actually publicise them. However, I think he’s also wrong about a couple of things. Geely was never going to develop a hypercar with an internal combustion engine, despite what others have done. It was always going to be a halo car for Lotus’ EV future. They either went down the EV hypercar route or not at all. On reflection, not at all may have been wiser, since the market is clearly not there for this product. Also, he claims that Lotus didn’t do their market research into this potential customer base. Again that’s not right. Lotus hired a whole team of Sales staff with high end clientele experience specifically to sell Evijas. There was the London launch, Goodwood FOS, a world tour and a US launch at Pebble Beach. But even these guys failed to convince more than a couple of handfuls of people to buy one and they have since moved on.

Following that, Lotus hired Jenson Button to promote the car on track from a driver’s point of view. Nice enough guy, but no connection to the heritage of Lotus whatsoever and would probably be happy to promote Dacia if the fee was right. At least he’s supposed to be buying one of the Evijas, although presumably at a decent staff discount. So I guess the final fling was employing Emo to promote the special edition cars and I bet that most of the eventual customers for those cars already had a deposit down on the standard livery car anyway.

It will certainly be a shame if the Evija does not prove to be a sales success. It’s comfortably the best looking of the multimillion pound hypercars.

 

[JayEmm]

Call me a cynic (and many have) but if they hired a crack team of expert salespeople, went to all the right places, got talking to the people who had cash to splash and still failed to find buyers - I'd call that proof they didn't do their market research, because they asked the market and it said no thankyou.

The missing piece of the puzzle is what happened with Williams. I'm told that's a major reason for the delay. I personally think it's tragic that a company with the engineering expertise and history of Lotus would go to a (historic) F1 rival to help develop their Halo car. I also can't help but shake the feeling (cynic again) that the argument might have been over that old Lotus classic - an unpaid bill!

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Regarding your first paragraph, what you state is still market research. Just not the result that Geely wanted to hear! Let’s face it, the max. 130 units was only a nod to the Type number. Like you suggest, they could have said max. 30 units from the outset, but would it have been worth the development cost? They probably won’t even reach that low number now, so maybe time to cut their losses, supply the cars on order and then use the assembly building for something else.

[ramjet]

I thought that I read somewhere, on here I think, that they had sold all 130?

Not the case then, obviously.

[Bibs]

Sales figures have never been released. 

2 hours ago, JayEmm said:

an unpaid bill!

Geely have very, very deep pockets and I think those days are behind Lotus. The issue with Williams I think is that Lotus realised that they have the in-house expertise to complete what they had contracted out, and Williams (I think) breached the agreement somehow which gave Lotus the chance to terminate it. 

[C8RKH]

They may have realised (or thought) they had the in-house expertise but the delays, possibly, infer that they didn't. To be honest, I'm not trying to be an arse here, but I think most people have forgotten about the Evija, what it is, and what it is was to represent. Another classic, in a long line, of marketing and missed opportunity blunders from my absolute favourite car brand of all time.

I even looked at a "used" Emira First Edition this week, and was quite tempted by the spec. It would look great as the "sensible" car next to my Evora 410 ned.

 

[Bibs]

I'm sure they didn't make the assumption on a guess that they might be ok, I'd have thought they'd have identified that they could fulfil that requirement internally. 

We have zero idea why they're not all delivered so far so any speculation is more likely miles off the mark. Producing a car with nigh on 2,000 horsepower that doesn't kill everyone who looks at it, let alone drives it, isn't a task that can be undertaken over a weekend. The average hypercar is 4-6 years from announcement to delivery, it's not unusual. 

[C8RKH]

I am not under estimating the timing or the skill required Bibs. But yet again this can be viewed, through some lenses, as another monumental FU with regards to commitments, timings, expectation settings etc. Plenty of other examples of this when halo cars are concerned, take the XJ220 for example.

I know you will always defend Lotus, have close links etc, but outside of that, there will be plenty looking through THEIR lenses saying this is a typical. neh classic, FU from Lotus re over promising and under delivering. As a very experienced and time served car manufacturer, Lotus would have known what it was signing up for, for sure.

Shit happens, we all know that. So sometimes it is better to make sure your pencil has some lead in it, before you start to draw the future and parade your picture around. That's all.

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

1 hour ago, ramjet said:

I thought that I read somewhere, on here I think, that they had sold all 130?

Not the case then, obviously.

No, Lotus was always very careful to state that they had sold out “this year’s” production quantity. Since not one car appears to have been delivered in any of the years since the 2019 launch, that’s always been a pretty meaningless statement.

[Frickin_idiot]

22 hours ago, JayEmm said:

Call me a cynic (and many have) but if they hired a crack team of expert salespeople, went to all the right places, got talking to the people who had cash to splash and still failed to find buyers - I'd call that proof they didn't do their market research, because they asked the market and it said no thankyou.

The missing piece of the puzzle is what happened with Williams. I'm told that's a major reason for the delay. I personally think it's tragic that a company with the engineering expertise and history of Lotus would go to a (historic) F1 rival to help develop their Halo car. I also can't help but shake the feeling (cynic again) that the argument might have been over that old Lotus classic - an unpaid bill!

A very cliched and somewhat naive take in my opinion.
 

There are countless examples of prestigious car brands utilising external support and expertise to develop / engineer vehicles. 

 

[JayEmm]

I know - they usually got external support from Lotus!

Hethel's R&D and vehicle development capability was legendary worldwide, I know over at McLaren they also do masses of consulting even on non-automotive projects to keep the coffers topped up

[electro_boy]

My 2p on this subject ... 

I don't really care how many Lotus have sold and if its a financial success or not.  For me this was always just an engineering show of force and marketing exercise to relaunch the Lotus v2.0 brand after Geely took over.

So from my point of view I don't care if they sold 1, 10 or 130.   Just get one fully fledged production car completed and do the rounds on Top Gear, EVO etc ...  and get people excited and  frothing and gain some new Lotus fans and write off the loss as R&D and marketing.

From what I remember didn't the original Bugatti Veyron sell at a massive loss?   VW group just wanted to see what could be done if you gave engineers a blank cheque.  Similar to the Lexus LFA and possibly many other examples ... 

None of those are considered a failure, everyone still looks very fondly at them, even though some of them didn't sell in high numbers and some of the them didn't make any profit. So I don't see why the Evija can't be in a similar vein?

[Sport220]

3 hours ago, electro_boy said:

(...)

None of those are considered a failure, everyone still looks very fondly at them, even though some of them didn't sell in high numbers and some of the them didn't make any profit. So I don't see why the Evija can't be in a similar vein?

In the sense that it's been 4 years since it was unveiled but still not a single one delivered to customers and therefore no one can see them on the roads?

https://media.lotuscars.com/en/news-articles/lotus-evija-production-comes-alive.html

Quote

 

(Hethel, UK – 19 February 2020) – The new manufacturing facility where Lotus will build the Evija all-electric hypercar is being readied for final prototype production.

Series production and first customer deliveries of the all-electric two-seater will begin in the summer.

The hall is situated at the brand’s historic home of Hethel, in Norfolk, UK. It has been built trackside, next to Lotus’ storied 2.2-mile circuit which has hosted testing and shake-down sessions with many Formula 1 legends such as Ayrton Senna, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jim Clark and others.

The result is a versatile and inspiring workspace that will see Lotus hand-build up to 130 examples of the Evija. The first year’s production allocation is already designated to customers around the world.

 

 

Edited May 15, 2023 by Sport220

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

450 Veyron and 500 LFA produced, so many, many times the expected volume of Evijas. 

[hamza]

 

Did Rimac just beat Lotus to the punch?

[Bibs]

The car on display this weekend at East Carleton Manor was the first production car due to be delivered imminently. 

[jep]

 

[Giniw]

Stunning............. Elan in the background! 🥰

 

(and the Evija is not that bad either)

[Bibs]

@jep's car