Lotus will soon only produce electric cars… after one last combustion-powered vehicle
British sports car company Lotus is aiming to only produce electric cars. However, Lotus CEO Phil Popham said that the company will release one more combustion engine vehicle before moving to their new direction.
“One thing we do believe in is the future of battery electric vehicles, and our intention is to offer BEV (Battery Electric Vehicles) on our products in future. BEV is really well suited to sports cars—the torque characteristics, the weight distribution, design and flexibility of dynamics. For me it all leads to BEV as the ultimate technology for sports cars” said Popham.
The last Lotus vehicle with an engine will be presented in 2021. After that, the future cars will follow in the footsteps of their all electric Evija hypercar—which was unveiled in July 2019. Their next-generation electric sports car is expected to arrive towards the end of 2022.
Lotus has been under the ownership of Chinese car company Geely since 2017. Popham stated that “familiarity around Lotus is quite low today” and added that “the money that is going into product development is something we could never, ever afford to do on our own if we hadn’t got the ambitious owner that we have.”
With the Geely and Lotus collaboration, we could potentially see a whole range of electric vehicles, including sedans, GTs, and SUVs. It’ll be interesting to see how the company will expand and grow from here.