Future of Lotus

[Dave Eds]

4 hours ago, Advantage said:

Whit Geely/Volvo announcing that they will only be producing electric or hybrid cars from 2019 I wonder where that leaves Hethel?

Still in Norfolk!  

[NedaSay]

4 hours ago, LotusLeftLotusRight said:

What's the problem with hybrid anyway? I've never driven one, but you're still getting a petrol engine and if it's good enough for the hypercars and the new NSX?

The hybrid car that I regularly drive as part of my car coop membership is a Toyota Prius C, it is not an exhilarating drive as the engine is tuned for extreme economy and the electric engine is mostly there to assist with torque infills or driving at a snail pace in traffic (below 19kph) I want to try the Volvo hybrid soon but the T8 spec is in a different league.

I by far prefer the electric option we have which is a Nissan leaf, a much better car as far as car term goes but crazy stupid range anxiety every time I see the range expectancy dive blow 30% in winter. I also had a run in a Tesla which deletes that fear altogether as it is much bigger.

The future is electric but Hybrid is a case of undesired step in between both tech. you cumulate packaging problems as you need to stuff to systems in the car, that is a lot more weight and requires a lot of finicking for things to work in an optimal way.  I understand JMG lack of enthusiasm about hybrids, unless your package is "hypercarish"and you don't care for space, you'll have to sacrifice some convenience for something that should be a sportscar that can be a daily.

Now there's the 48v battery that will transform any regular car in a soft hybrid without too much trickery. Essentially the bigger battery allows stop-start tech and a certain amount of power boost while coasting without all the wiring, and if you had some bits you can make it a KERS system by just adding around a few kgs.

I think Volvo going full electric and hybrids is a good sign of things to come to Hethel, Geely and Volvo are making strong statements here, the approach is a bold one but it definitely looks like they have the tech to back it up. Besides Volvo's market segment and  the strong following they enjoy will guarantee some form of success.

 

 

[NedaSay]

5 hours ago, theelanman said:

producing petrol cars in the UK?......

think the Volvo stuff is the stuff they'll make in China.....

it'll take some time and cash to develop the Lotus Hybid further.......the Evora Hybrid was very complex and is also now not in the hands of Lotus.....

I presume the technology might be....but who knows who kept what as it was only a development program

They definitely kept all the IP and paperwork connected to it

The question is more being redeveloping that tech, adopting the Volvo tech outright or working with Volvo Geely and Polestar to develop a Lotus hybrid tech. As hybrid tech is at best a step toward full electrification this last option doesn't appear to me as very logical. it all depends on how many year we will be stuck at the intermediate level.

[theelanman]

I think the real answer is that none of us know and we will only find out when they make a decision

......we can speculate to our hearts content but could all be heading off in the wrong direction............ lol

[nerobi]

Reminding

Quote

Also off the table for Lotus is any kind of hybrid. Speaking to Autoblog, Gales explained that hybrid systems adds weight, complexity, and take up space. The first two items go against the core values at Lotus, and the third creates packaging issues. "Besides, when you have low mass it's easy to be efficient," the CEO said. He added that a pure EV might be something Lotus would consider, but not anytime in the near future.

http://www.autoblog.com/2016/08/05/lotus-elise-suv-news/

[Bravo73]

JMG said that pre-Geely. Will he still be around post-Geely?

[Ccd]

If you assume that future Lotus cars will use Volvo power plants and accept the aggression with which Volvo is converting to partial or all electric, it raises the possibility that the current Lotus lineup could be the last ICE cars that Lotus produces.

[nerobi]

@Bravo73

Yep, it was. Here is the newest thing i could find from JMG:

Quote

I asked him about electrification. “Why not? Looking at the current cars, no. You add 150kg and you lose the luggage space. But I won’t exclude a mild hybrid on the next Exige. We must do it for performance reasons. It must be light, and have a good battery.”

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/chinese-car-giant-geely-has-bought-lotus

Edited July 5, 2017 by nerobi

[nerobi]

Geely buys a flying car company 

http://jalopnik.com/volvo-s-geely-bafflingly-buys-flying-car-company-terraf-1796644259

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

More like a plane you can drive, than a car you can fly!

[nerobi]

About Volvo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWmnUuuCdEo

[auRouge]

On 06/07/2017 at 12:19, LotusLeftLotusRight said:

More like a plane you can drive, than a car you can fly!

 

On 06/07/2017 at 10:23, nerobi said:

Geely buys a flying car company 

http://jalopnik.com/volvo-s-geely-bafflingly-buys-flying-car-company-terraf-1796644259

Bring it on ????‍✈️

[Ccd]

What I think could be interesting is to mimic what Honda did with the  NSX: pair a ICE with an electric motor at the back to eliminate turbo lag (not the torque vectoring in the front).  The NSX is a good study in using electric motors to improve performance, not economy.  It also speaks to one of the challenges to doing this: a very significant weight penalty.  Perhaps one compromise would be to use a high performance 4 cylinder engine paired with an electric motor to produce low-end torque.  The added weight of the electric motor would probably be substantially offset by using the smaller engine.  

[C8RKH]

i know you are describing the inevitable future @Ccd but what you describe is far away from a car I'd love to buy.

Now 3.5 litre twin turbo al la McLaren and 480-550bhp in an Evora and I'm changing my knickers already and all out of tissues.

I'm just a dinosaur. I know. Oh, and drop the extra two seats to shorten the wheelbase slightly, lower the weight and improve the packaging by lowering the engine mass.  Damn. That's another box of tissues I have just had to open.

[NedaSay]

6 hours ago, Ccd said:

What I think could be interesting is to mimic what Honda did with the  NSX: pair a ICE with an electric motor at the back to eliminate turbo lag (not the torque vectoring in the front).  The NSX is a good study in using electric motors to improve performance, not economy.  It also speaks to one of the challenges to doing this: a very significant weight penalty.  Perhaps one compromise would be to use a high performance 4 cylinder engine paired with an electric motor to produce low-end torque.  The added weight of the electric motor would probably be substantially offset by using the smaller engine.  

Many here have been thinking about Polestar and Lotus tuning the Volvo Drive-E T8 spec engine. Polestar just released a a mild upgrade getting it to reach 415bhp but considering they were able to get a much larger chunk of power from the T6 spec in the S and V60 (367bhp) and that the electric engine from the t8 is rated at 80 bhp  they could i guess theoretically churn around 500bhp by just adding the bits... However if a 4 cylinder is lighter that a V6, a V6 twin turbo produces more bhp, so Polestar and Lotus would have to rework the electrical bits to produce the extra oomph and for the moment that means adding more batteries which are quite heavy.

The NSX is not a convincing hybrid sports car in my book. Yes it has all the cool bits from the hypercars but it doesn't have quite the performance of access supercars, dare I say the Sport410 is reaching very similar top speed 191mph vs 195mph for the NSX.

The closest in spirit to what you are proposing would be a pumped up BMW i8 which is less powerful, gets on at 1567kg only pushes 387bhp but has a much better fuel economy.  The new NSX racks 1,725 kg which is almost 350kg more than the 720S (1383 kg) or 285kg more than a 570S which is on par  with power and uh the NSX has worst fuel economy... So this is a lose-lose situation, the car is heavier because it's an hybrid, about as powerful as the competition and is slower ... 

So with a 4 cyl the car would be somewhere in the middle of these two, the question being how much lotus can save around the car to make the car close to lets say 1400kg all dressed? Because Lotus has to be the lightest thing on the road or at least lighter than its competition. In my opinion if lotus goes hybrid they should go with it on the SUV first there's a lot of gain to be made there, on a sports coupé, especially at supercar level, weight is the enemy, to the point that I think most of these cars won't go past soft hybrid (fitted with 48v batteries in order to allow for stop start tech and limited full electric range in city mode) to lower emissions. This alone should not weigh too much and provide what will be required in the medium term. 

Still I think we'll see some manufacturers jump straight from conventional engines to full EV with nothing than electric motors and a slab of batteries a la Tesla skipping the hybrid stage altogether, Jaguar will be the first with the iPace, Rolls Royce already announced it was their plan to skip the hybrid age . And this will happen sooner than we think, with many players now involved in the EV business... Tesla and other pure players have proven that EV can be sporty and not weigh too much the Tesla P100D is a luxobarge which can rival with a Panamera S in performance and only weighs 400kg more.

 

Still Lotus may end up with an hybrid in the sports car range because it will be quite easy to develop and put in production, Geely will have Volvo to share the tech, Lotus would be wrong to not oblige, but will it be a game changer I honestly doubt it, except if Lotus can get this hybrid car to weigh below 1400kg and perform like no other car before.

 

 

Edited July 11, 2017 by NedaSay

[swindon_alan]

49 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

i know you are describing the inevitable future @Ccd but what you describe is far away from a car I'd love to buy.

Now 3.5 litre twin turbo al la McLaren and 480-550bhp in an Evora and I'm changing my knickers already and all out of tissues.

I'm just a dinosaur. I know. Oh, and drop the extra two seats to shorten the wheelbase slightly, lower the weight and improve the packaging by lowering the engine mass.  Damn. That's another box of tissues I have just had to open.

That will be the new Esprit then...

[qwerty123]

Oh God don't. I've had my hopes dashed too many times...

[Ccd]

I'm just speculating on what the path forward might be.  This could be the last generation of non-hybrid cars

[NedaSay]

Yes it could be the last generation of non hybrid, it could also be the last generation of diesel engines or maybe not... Some cars will definitely go the hybrid route but others won't. 

We are all dreaming of a new Esprit, I know I am. Some will want it to be V8 and able to compete against the 488, the 720S or the Huracan. And yes It could also go the classic way with a 4 cylinders engine instead like the original did but this time yes it could come as an hybrid future will tell if it ever happen.

For me the good news about Volvo phasing out non hybrid combustion engines in the next 2 years is that the designs do as a result become fair game to be rebranded, reworked improved and tuned by all Zhejiang Geely brands which will continue to use combustion engines for the foreseeable future, that does include Lotus which is the company that is the most likely to ask for these engines to be tuned. The very good news is not only that these engines are top of line last generation and hybridizable but mostly that Lotus will be able to share I.P. with Geely, Lynk & Co, Polestar and Volvo instead of being a client. It may take a while for meaningful things to materialize but the should be pretty special when they come if Volvo's transformation is anything to go by.

Oh and just a tidbit concerning the the status of the new overlord, It looks like the Chinese market is going Geely's way:   

http://www.barrons.com/articles/geely-automobile-shares-jump-as-profit-forecast-beats-estimates-1499738285

Doubling profits from RMB 1.9B would mean over USD 500M, and the stock value is booming. It is green green green for ZHG no wonder they afford buying a flying car company... It should be another month before the deal for Lotus is sealed and another few months for Geely to announce some form of business plan if they care to announce any. 

Edited July 12, 2017 by NedaSay

[KAS-118]

Polestar Coupe - I wonder how this fits in with Lotus https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/polestar-plots-600bhp-coupe-inaugural-model

[C8RKH]

With regards to the Polestar coupe this was interesting (below). Volvo, as it says, maybe new to composites and lightweight, but that is a Lotus forte. This acquisition really starting to make sense me thinks and could be really good for Lotus. Quite excited, apart from the use of 4pots with turbo's and hybrids. But then I'm a laggard who prefers more cylinders and CC's.

 

"Without citing sources, British magazine Autocar reports the model won’t join the V90and the XC60 in the Volvo lineup. Instead, it will be developed, built, and sold by Polestar, a budding subdivision that promises to put an equal focus on electrification and performance. It will take the form of a high-performance coupe that makes extensive use of lightweight composite materials like carbon fiber in order to keep weight in check. Volvo is relatively new to the carbon fiber game, so it has a little bit of catching up to do.

However, Autocar’s sources revealed the two-door will boast over 600 horsepower, which is more than enough to send shivers down the Germans’ spine. Will it be any good to d

Nothing is official yet, but we’re tempted to say yes. Geely, the Chinese company that owns Volvo, recently purchased a controlling stake in famed British sports car manufacturing Lotus. If anyone in the industry knows how to make a car that handles like a dream, it’s Lotus. And, Volvo is open to the idea of tapping into its British step-sibling’s knowledge to make a world-class chassis.

“I don’t see any problem using Lotus’ knowledge. I think it’s pretty applicable across the board,” Roger Wallgren, the principal engineer of vehicle dynamics for the XC60, told Australian website Drive last month."

"

[NedaSay]

Good things should materialize in the years to come. Hopefully.

[ramjet]

On 7/5/2017 at 23:24, USAndretti42 said:

For example a cutaway Evora Hybrid.

 

And I think that the glowing bit is the Flux Capacitor.

Wasn't the 414E all electric or was it going to have that tiny engine in it as well? I can't remember.

[Bibs]

http://www.lotuscars.com/engineering/evora-414e-hybrid

[Stuart Monument]

10 hours ago, ramjet said:

And I think that the glowing bit is the Flux Capacitor.

Wasn't the 414E all electric or was it going to have that tiny engine in it as well? I can't remember.

I can confirm the flux capacitor doesn't work. It's sitting in my garage !