Lotus Unveils Surprising City Car Concept

In brief: When most people think of Lotus, they think of sports cars like the Elise, not of ultra-compact hybrid electric city car concepts like this one.

Vehicle in the news

Make/Model: City Car (concept) Manufacturer: Lotus

The word

Lotus surprised everyone at the Paris Motor Show when they unveiled this range-extended electric concept car for urban commuters. The Lotus City Car concept is meant as a showcase for Lotus Engineering's electric integration and performance plans.

The City Car uses an advanced series hybrid drive train using Lotus' new Range Extender engine.

That engine is a tiny 1.2L, 3-cylinder (240Nm, 54kW continuous output) gas burner made specifically as a range extension device. It's a flex-fuel concept running on gasoline (petrol), ethanol or methanol.

The little car is pretty blockbusters in terms of performance, being true to the Lotus nameplate. It weighs less than 3,086 pounds and puts out 0-31mph in 4.5 seconds (0-62mph in 9 seconds). It's all-electric all the time with the Range Extender giving it a full range of 311 miles (37 miles of that in EV mode).

Top speed in the little City Car is 106mph as electric, dropping to 75mph when the range extender is on (in order to save fuel and RPMs).

And so ...

Very cool concept from Lotus here and extremely surprising.

Photo credits: Lotus

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