Automotive Engineer commissions Lotus to design tiny city EV [w/VIDEO]
Lotus city car design – click above to watch the videos after the jump
Developing cars quickly is nothing new to the designers and engineers at Lotus in England. They do contract development for automakers around the world all the time. With that in mind – and knowing that Lotus has been actively involved in many electric and hybrid vehicle projects in recent years – the editors at Automotive Engineer magazine naturally approached them with a project idea: design a brief on what a new city car might look like five years from now.
After two weeks of work, Lotus design chief Russell Carr produced a design brief that defined a car 3.74 inches shorter than a Smart ForTwo and nearly 16 inches shorter than the new Toyota iQ. Somehow in that tiny space, Carr has managed to squeeze in space for four adults. The sketches show two different iterations of the vehicle, both with two sliding doors on the flanks. All are electrically-driven with a liquid-cooled 37 kW motor and a 10 kWh lithium ion battery pack under the floor. See more in the video after the jump.
[Source: Automotive Engineer]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
dieqast 10:24PM (7/18/2009)
This is old news.. but that doesn't stop me to comment.
Love Lotus Engineering and their work, this is another example exactly why.
Pretty well thought-out (especially architecture!), but (despite all the love) I am still missing some out-of-the-box thinking, only Aptera has been able to do to date. More focus on composites and aero and finally, wouldn't the high frequency of start-stop scenario's make an ultracap a viable addition to the energy storage system?
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murc 12:50AM (7/19/2009)
Aero doesn't really matter when you cant break 35mph.
lol
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DasBoese 9:12AM (7/19/2009)
Well, this has been tried a lot over the years, usually to no avail (NEVs nonwithstanding). If anyone can pull it off, it's them.
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Lorena Palin 11:58AM (7/20/2009)
So...whats the range? I mean people in the city's often get cars because they want to go places that aren't easily assessable with public transport.
That being said, cheap and simple is good, the people at lotus are pretty brilliant
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wave54 3:23PM (7/20/2009)
"The vehicle would have a range of around 50 km or 30 miles while it would be able to reach a top speed close to 65mph or 105km/h."
Link to the entire article with more specs:
http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2009/07/lotus-designs-smart-fortwo-sized-all.html
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