Lotus Emira V8 in Testing & Other News

Okay so today's Lotus Technology group investor call happened this morning.

Here are some updates:

- Hybrid Plugin Macan Competitor 2026Q1 China, Q3 ROW
- Facelift 2027 Lotus Emira I4 with power increase
- Lotus Emira V6 Discontinued
- Lotus Emira V8 Euro 7 Compliant powertrain in investigation/testing/development.

Thanks @Lotustoronto for being our live discord blogger


Disclaimer: I'm basing this off recollections from someone else from the call, I haven't had time to listen to the full call myself, but some things may be inaccurate, and a lot of info has been missed too, I recommend you listen to the call yourself, the QA starts at 21 minutes in.

 

[OppositeLock]

Sorry, but that is crazy talk.

What's crazy about it? I was oversimplifying, but when warm, and with a good condition catalyst, it will be very clean _most_ of the time. Where I live in CA, in a valley surrounded by mountains, we are very susceptible to smog, so I'm interested in clean cars. Most of this smog comes from old cars, furnaces, big diesel engines, things which emit unprocessed combustion products into the air. The shift to OBD-II came with a set of emissions requirements which were pretty tight, so OBD-II cars emit most of their pollution when the catalyst is warming up or when they're going open-loop since the ECU can't run in closed loop mode in some situation.

Years ago, I did some research into car emissions in CA, and came to the conclusion that 1 old classic car without emissions controls pollutes about as much as about as much as about 2,000 OBD-I cars, and about as much as 30,000 OBD-II post-2004 cars, and by pollution, I mean unburned hydrocarbons, NOx, oxygen allotropes and CO, I wasn't counting evaporative emissions and didn't factor CO2 at all.

Going off on a tangent here, but the biggest win for cleaning up our air is to clean up the oldest engines, in cars, ships, generators, heavy trucks.

 

[Jinba ittai]

What's crazy about it? I was oversimplifying, but when warm, and with a good condition catalyst, it will be very clean _most_ of the time. Where I live in CA, in a valley surrounded by mountains, we are very susceptible to smog, so I'm interested in clean cars. Most of this smog comes from old cars, furnaces, big diesel engines, things which emit unprocessed combustion products into the air. The shift to OBD-II came with a set of emissions requirements which were pretty tight, so OBD-II cars emit most of their pollution when the catalyst is warming up or when they're going open-loop since the ECU can't run in closed loop mode in some situation.

Years ago, I did some research into car emissions in CA, and came to the conclusion that 1 old classic car without emissions controls pollutes about as much as about as much as about 2,000 OBD-I cars, and about as much as 30,000 OBD-II post-2004 cars, and by pollution, I mean unburned hydrocarbons, NOx, oxygen allotropes and CO, I wasn't counting evaporative emissions and didn't factor CO2 at all.

Going off on a tangent here, but the biggest win for cleaning up our air is to clean up the oldest engines, in cars, ships, generators, heavy trucks.

I agree with the overall sentiment. But there is no way the exhaust coming out of any ICE car is cleaner than the atmospheric air.

 

[geoffbland]

Sorry, but that is crazy talk.

You would need to define what is meant exactly by "cleaner" but surprisingly it is essentially correct, that's not to say car emissions can't be improved further. If you want to read up on this - here's a report from the UK government:

https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat09/2112201014_1272021_Exaust_Emissions_From_Road_Transport.pdf

 

[OppositeLock]

I said the exhaust coming out on a "smoggy day" is cleaner than intake air, because the engine is catalyzing away all the ozone and NOx in the air, and emitting almost pure CO2 and water.

 

[Jinba ittai]

Yeah i understand what you’re saying. But I still have a hard time believing that the ppm of contaminants in the atmosphere on a smoggy day would exceed the ppm of contaminants at the end of a car’s exhaust pipe. Even if we’re talking one that has a modern catalytic converter. The cat can’t be 100% effective and you’re immediately next to the contamination source. I agree older cars are far worse polluters but if your drawing from the atmosphere it’s heavily diluted.

 

[scc.131.fe]

So glad to hear that Lotus has their engineering minds hard at work, but zero chance I give up my 6MT for a V8. All possible upsides considered, I wouldn't spend the premium (got my 6MT for $94k) and I'll bet a case of beer it doesn't sound better than my wife's 4.7 V8 Vantage (Aston engine, not Merc). That goes double if Lotus uses a flat-plane crank - I much prefer cross-plane noises!

Given the several electrical/programming bugs that people have experienced from matching the Emira to the well-known Toyota mill, I worry that V8 Emira reliability would trend in the direction of Mclaren ownership.

 

[OppositeLock]

Ha! Yeah, I love V8's but I agonized for a month over my Emira versus the runner up a McLaren 600Lt. It's the first time in my life I could justify buying an expensive car. I really liked the McLaren's incredible power, but everything else about the Emira was better, with handling being on-par. So, to me, the V8 represents the best of both worlds, but if such a thing were to happen, we still don't know what compromises would be made. The Emira is already a fat piggy. If the V8 adds a couple hundred pounds, I'd be less interested.

 

[Eagle7]

The problem with a new V8 and trans combo is you know this will be around $150k, which just simply moves it out of the range of most of the original Emira customers. The original target price of £59k was largely responsible for the numbers of deposits they received early on. Even if they make a carbon fiber version of the V6, it's still going to be $120k. If the tariff situation isn't negotiated out, then you can add $25k to both those prices.

Get a base model at around $79,999 for the U.S. and they'll get much better results. A base model with standard sound system (not KEF), cloth seats, cloth interior and headliner, standard wheels, touring suspension. A base model, not an almost FE model for $99k.

They seem to want to crash Porsche's party, and they're just not there yet. They may never be, but that's okay. Porsche's are a dime a dozen. I don't want Lotus to be like that. The fact that they've readjusted their view of the Emira, and they're extending its life is a good sign though.

 

[Quasimoto]

I agree with the overall sentiment. But there is no way the exhaust coming out of any ICE car is cleaner than the atmospheric air.

Not being argumentative here, but I work in the emissions testing world and we often see background levels that are higher than tailpipe during steady state…

 

[Jinba ittai]

Not being argumentative here, but I work in the emissions testing world and we often see background levels that are higher than tailpipe during steady state…

Not at all. Happy to hear from someone who works in the field. It’s counter to my intuition, but I stand corrected.

 

[Quasimoto]

It was fairly surprising (confusing) to me the first time I saw a running engine “cleaning” the ambient air…

 

[F1 SML8R]

It was fairly surprising (confusing) to me the first time I saw a running engine “cleaning” the ambient air…

Since we're going with this, now I'm curious. You are saying that in some instances of tested air, the exhaust fumes are less "dirty" than what's going in. Simple test, try breathing out of that exhaust pipe the next time it tests better than the air outside. Not being sarcastic, trying to understand clearly that you are really saying it's better to breathe exhaust fumes from an ICE based car than breathing say the really crappy air in say Los Angeles (we have bad air) or say Bangkok (equally bad, maybe worse than LA)? Don't get me wrong, bad air is bad air, but exhaust fumes will most certainly kill you in minutes (no matter how clean, but by default still worse than anything we breathe as we walk around).

 

[Jinba ittai]

Since we're going with this, now I'm curious. You are saying that in some instances of tested air, the exhaust fumes are less "dirty" than what's going in. Simple test, try breathing out of that exhaust pipe the next time it tests better than the air outside. Not being sarcastic, trying to understand clearly that you are really saying it's better to breathe exhaust fumes from an ICE based car than breathing say the really crappy air in say Los Angeles (we have bad air) or say Bangkok (equally bad, maybe worse than LA)? Don't get me wrong, bad air is bad air, but exhaust fumes will most certainly kill you in minutes (no matter how clean, but by default still worse than anything we breathe as we walk around).

No. We need oxygen to breathe. They’re saying there’s complete combustion so carbon dioxide coming out the tail pipe. You don’t want to breathe that.

 

[F1 SML8R]

Oh I know I don't want to breathe it, that's why I found the whole conversation odd. I think the original comment should have been prefaced by saying, "excluding Carbon monoxide content, anything remaining coming out is cleaner than what went in..."

 

[OppositeLock]

There should be no carbon monoxide, but there will be mainly water and carbon dioxide.

 

[OppositeLock]

So, as a bit of a tangent, I'm a numbers nerd and i keep track of how much gas I burn, and these numbers are kinda shocking.

In one car, a V6 Infiniti over the 15 years I had it:
Miles traveled: 101k
Gallons of fuel consumed: 4,467 (28, 150 lbs)
Pounds of oxygen consumed: 96,930
Pounds of CO2 emitted: 80,720
Pounds of water emitted: 31,270

I don't know how much CO, HC, NOx, Ox I emitted, sadly.


It's kinda crazy to think that you consume much more oxygen by weight than fuel, and you emit like 3x the CO2 weight as the weight of the fuel you consume.

 

[Reesebobby]

In the call they also said due to American interest they are looking into putting the Emira on a diet and will throw carbon fiber at the car.

U S A! U S A! Everyone now!

 

[geoffbland]

Since we're going with this, now I'm curious. You are saying that in some instances of tested air, the exhaust fumes are less "dirty" than what's going in. Simple test, try breathing out of that exhaust pipe the next time it tests better than the air outside. Not being sarcastic, trying to understand clearly that you are really saying it's better to breathe exhaust fumes from an ICE based car than breathing say the really crappy air in say Los Angeles (we have bad air) or say Bangkok (equally bad, maybe worse than LA)? Don't get me wrong, bad air is bad air, but exhaust fumes will most certainly kill you in minutes (no matter how clean, but by default still worse than anything we breathe as we walk around).

I was surprised too by this too. You would not want to breath the exhaust fumes directly as they are full of hot steam and CO2 with little O2. But assuming you also had a fresh air supply to cool and provide O2 you should be fine. There some be no CO if the engine is running correctly and modern fuels are cleaner so emit no nitrous oxides, sulphates or lead. I posted a study by DEFRA (the UK gov. research advisory body) earlier that details all this.