Vehicle Search Engine

Custom Search

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Lotus engines

Lotus Engineering


The APX (also known as the "Aluminium Performance Crossover") is an aluminium concept vehicle revealed at the 2006 Geneva Motor Show built on Lotus Engineering's Versatile Vehicle Architecture (VVA).
Whereas the VVA technology will be used in the creation of a new mid-engined sportscar for Lotus cars, the APX is in fact a high performance 7 seat MPV with four-wheel drive and a front mounted V6 engine from Lotus Engineering's Powertrain division. The engine was designed and developed to be available as a 2.2 litre N/A and 3.0 litre supercharged. A number of prototypes of both engines exist in full working order in a number of
mule cars.
Versatile Vehicle Architecture (VVA) is an effort by the Lotus car manufacturing company to reduce the investment needed for producing unique, niche-market cars by sharing a number of common components.
Cars produced using VVA:

Lotus APX
Lotus Esprit 2009

Electric vehicles

Lotus Engineering has established a group dedicated to hybrid and electric vehicles.[15]
Lotus plans to enter the electric vehicle race, CEO Michael Kimberley told the Financial Times . "Don’t be surprised to see an electric Lotus shortly,” he said, adding that a concept version could debut as early as March 2009, at Geneva Motor Show.[16][17] Lotus is now front and center in the electric-car arena.[18]
Lotus did not reveal details about the car or the engine but discloses that it will go for 300 to 400 miles (640 km) and it will really live up to the expectations of being one of the best electric cars in the world.[17]
Lotus joined Jaguar Cars and Caparo on a luxury hybrid executive sedan project called "Limo-Green"--funded by the UK Government Technology Strategy Board. The vehicle will be a series plug-in hybrid.[18]
Tesla Motors , a likely rival for Lotus if its plans go through, has also turned to contractors for parts of the all-electric Roadster.[16] Of note however, is the fact that Tesla currently obtains the chassis for their Roadster from Lotus as do Dodge for their EV because of the heavy weight of the batteries in an EV and Lotus's widely known low weight and sharp handling characteristics. While only 10% of the parts of the Tesla Roadster are shared with the Lotus Elise, Lotus is responsible for approximately 40% of the overall content of the car.[16]

Queen's Award for Enterprise

Lotus Cars were awarded the Queen's Award for Enterprise for contribution to International Trade, one of 85 companies receiving the recognition in that category in 2002. Lotus cars wore the badge of the award for a number of years. [citation needed]