Lotus Electric City Car Revealed

Image of Lotus Electric City Car Concept

Lotus has produced the Lotus Electric City Car Concept

There’s been a fair bit of speculation that Lotus will produce an electric version of the Elise. After all, Lotus are a very innovative company and they already produce the running gear for the Tesla Roadster. And it seemed likely that Lotus would produce a Lotus Evora Electric after Lotus boss Mike Kimberley revealed back in January that Lotus were working on an extended range electric car.

But now comes news that Lotus have produced an Electric City Car Concept. Just 8’6″ long and 5’3″ wide, it is a Toyota iQ type vehicle – but smaller – and has the iQ’s 3+1 interior configuration. And it’s designed to be purely an urban car – something for popping to the shops and doing local errands. A second car as an extremely economical runaround.

With its stiff aluminium spaceframe housing just 10KWh of lithium ion batteries and a 37KW motor, the Lotus City Car will be short on power but high on economy, and the stiff spaceframe will also provide good crash protection. There is also the option of doubling the battery capacity for longer range or colder climes. It will manage 65mph and be very nippy up to about 40mph.

As a City Car it’s not likely to handle like a Lotus – especially considering it is taller than the iQ – but the ‘Wheel at each Corner’ configuration should still make it very driveable.

This is just a concept, and it would appear that Lotus have no plans to put it in to production. But perhaps – just perhaps – this could be the prelude of an electric city car for Lotus’ owner Proton.