Lotus Technology announces hybrid technology

[Jinba ittai]

Lotus should be looking ay Hydrogen, that's the way to go.

Battery technology is going to sufficiently improved before the hydrogen economy can be built out. My 2 cents anyways.

 

[Tomwa]

Agreed. While I would love for hydrogen to work, because it means we can keep ICE and sound and feel around, it means engine development and improvements from centuries of effort and advancement continue.

I just don't think it's likely. The infrastructure just isn't there and the economy of energy is not favorable. While "gas stations" conceptually would not change, the problem is, what you are left with is, stations what? Doing their own electrolysis to store compressed hydrogen in tanks.

Shipping compressed hydrogen around as a regular as we do for gasoline doesnt make sense. But the electrolysis energy requirements also don't make sense and there's no current known benefit of scale. If you've got that much electricity, storing it to batteries is easier and comes with less losses. (70-80% Energy loss converting water to Hydrogen)

Then we get hydrogen into the cars, the size of tank needed to support combustion is quite a bit larger than a gasoline tank. While hydrogen is over 2.5 more energy dense than gasoline, storage density sucks. You need a very small amount of hydrogen to go fair distances, but without cryo temps to push hydrogen to negative hundreds of degrees C, you are looking at pressures like 350psi but even then you are looking at a storage volume approximately 5x what gasoline needs.

Then... Well that large volume might get you pretty far, and environmentally it's clean (sufficiently so, I'm sure there's oil vapor and that would burn so there would be some minimal hydrocarbons.) but, burning hydrogen is only 20-30% Energy efficient. Maybe we could push that to 35-40% with improvements and technology, but .. that's 20% of 70% in the worst.

Batteries by comparison, electric to chemical, back to electrical, at this point is something like 65% efficient at the worst, and is more like 80+% efficient today, and stations don't need to store energy tanks on site, you can plug in at home.

 

[Davebeats]

I'd love to see a solid state battery or plug in hybrid being offered. My next daily driver will hopefully be one of those.

 

[Tokion]

Don't-cha just love politician-speak? Long-winded face-saving way of saying "EVs didn't work out the way we thought, so we're going to focus on what the customers actually want." Toyota has been saying this all along, while publicly refusing to go all EV. They've been developing hybrid tech the whole time, and made a profit last year instead of losing billions like most everyone else.

Unless Geely has a good hybrid solution in hand, they should partner with Toyota for engine technology. If Lotus Wuhan doesn't want to do this, Lotus Hethel certainly should for use in sports cars.

Great post Eagle7

I felt the replies to the questions of this interview were mostly off the mark, and it totally ignores that the solutions already exist, especially from TOYOTA, but also from others. I am all in favor of LOTUS developing great hybrid cars. But the truth is that their current electric range of models are inefficient (see Harry’s Garage) because of extreme overweight. The 134 cannot appear fast enough; but I suppose it is frantically being re-developed as a hybrid due to altered world-wide (outside China) market-realities where pure electric cars are getting harder to sell (except in Norway, which is the only country truly succeeding with close to 100% electric market penetration - due to a dedicated governmental policy program.)

I would like an Emira hybrid with the lightest possible hybrid system (most efficient lightweight battery technology) and the M139. Mercedes has already worked it out; so it is only a matter of Geely making a deal - and the engineers must re-engineer the Mercedes system to work in the mid-engined RWD Emira (maintaining relative lightweight).

 

[Man.v.Cars]

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/lotus-says-first-evija-customers-will-get-their-cars-next-few-weeks

 

[Nova]

Great post Eagle7

I felt the replies to the questions of this interview were mostly off the mark, and it totally ignores that the solutions already exist, especially from TOYOTA, but also from others. I am all in favor of LOTUS developing great hybrid cars. But the truth is that their current electric range of models are inefficient (see Harry’s Garage) because of extreme overweight. The 134 cannot appear fast enough; but I suppose it is frantically being re-developed as a hybrid due to altered world-wide (outside China) market-realities where pure electric cars are getting harder to sell (except in Norway, which is the only country truly succeeding with close to 100% electric market penetration - due to a dedicated governmental policy program.)

I would like an Emira hybrid with the lightest possible hybrid system (most efficient lightweight battery technology) and the M139. Mercedes has already worked it out; so it is only a matter of Geely making a deal - and the engineers must re-engineer the Mercedes system to work in the mid-engined RWD Emira (maintaining relative lightweight).

I think Geely has their own hybrid system with a fairly advanced design geared towards performance. The built-in motor is about 250KW, which is about twice as powerful as the most powerful Toyota hybrid design currently in production. For hybrid cars, the electric motor is the primary power source during initial acceleration and low speed operations, so the output of the electric motor is very important for performance. Given that Geely has an arguably superior hybrid solution, along with the mentioned 900V Lithium-ion battery system, I don't think they'd be interested in buying something from Toyota instead.

 

[Six Speed Stephen]

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/lotus-says-first-evija-customers-will-get-their-cars-next-few-weeks

They should make a hybrid evija

 

[Tomwa]

They should make a hybrid evija

Why would they?

Car is already fully developed, adding an ICE range extender isn't going to improve any of the performance characteristics, it already has ballistic HP numbers. For that car, which is effectively already 'done'. Hybrid doesn't help them.

 

[Six Speed Stephen]

Why would they?

Car is already fully developed, adding an ICE range extender isn't going to improve any of the performance characteristics, it already has ballistic HP numbers. For that car, which is effectively already 'done'. Hybrid doesn't help them.

Because electric cars aren’t that cool and they haven’t sold many

 

[Tomwa]

Because electric cars aren’t that cool and they haven’t sold many

They were never going to make many Evija's and... tell Rimac that electric isn't cool or the new Pininfarina Battista.

There is a market for these absolutely bonkers EVs. It's just not the common person. But they were never meant for common person when the car can't be had for a price starting below 1.5 Million dollars. They sold as many Evija's as they needed to, trying to appeal to more people would not have sold more cars.

 

[Six Speed Stephen]

They were never going to make many Evija's and... tell Rimac that electric isn't cool or the new Pininfarina Battista.

There is a market for these absolutely bonkers EVs. It's just not the common person. But they were never meant for common person when the car can't be had for a price starting below 1.5 Million dollars. They sold as many Evija's as they needed to, trying to appeal to more people would not have sold more cars.

Look at the numbers.

The nevera only sold 50 of the 150 production and Mate Rimac called it a flop.

It’s been 5 years and the Evija hasn’t even sold 130 cars.

No one wants electric super cars.

 

[Nova]

I just don't think something like the Evija can be adapted to a hybrid drive train. I also think all hybrid drivetrains are going to be somewhat of a compromise in terms of performance, even more so for highly integrated ones that use a mixed input planetart transmission setup with two integrated motors. This is why MB went with a separate gas and electric system in the C63 S E that uses the M139. But that system has its own issues, including challenges coordinating between the engine and electric motor, plus the horrendous weight penalty. NSX is another car that tried but failed largely to impress.

This is why I feel that Geely's system holds some promise. It's essentially capable of using electric motor only for just about all performance driving ,and the gasoline engine is only there to provide power during cruising and extending the range. The only downside would be that you don't have a lot of battery for extended performance driving on electric only.

 

[Tomwa]

Look at the numbers.

The nevera only sold 50 of the 150 production and Mate Rimac called it a flop.

It’s been 5 years and the Evija hasn’t even sold 130 cars.

No one wants electric super cars.

I don't think anyone took Lotus seriously that they would have 130 customers for a car starting at 2 million dollars. Pagani doesn't sell that many and no one considers those cars failures.

Granted they have employees in the hundreds, not thousands. But I don't think their production goals are that far off the total demands for a 2+ million dollar car. Say you'll make 20, and actually make 30-40.

Rimac Nevera, same deal. These businesses are motivated by investors to inflate the market size. Pagani is privately owned, and they are making as many cars as makes sense.

Koninsegg is doing the same. Number of units sold compared to their "projected" of current models they are getting out the door is wildly different. Where are the 2 or 5x number of customers coming from for the Jesko, while at the same time suggesting you'll sell double that of Gemera which seats 4 people and may have fewer buyers.

 

[Six Speed Stephen]

I don't think anyone took Lotus seriously that they would have 130 customers for a car starting at 2 million dollars. Pagani doesn't sell that many and no one considers those cars failures.

Granted they have employees in the hundreds, not thousands. But I don't think their production goals are that far off the total demands for a 2+ million dollar car. Say you'll make 20, and actually make 30-40.

Rimac Nevera, same deal. These businesses are motivated by investors to inflate the market size. Pagani is privately owned, and they are making as many cars as makes sense.

Koninsegg is doing the same. Number of units sold compared to their "projected" of current models they are getting out the door is wildly different. Where are the 2 or 5x number of customers coming from for the Jesko, while at the same time suggesting you'll sell double that of Gemera which seats 4 people and may have fewer buyers.

Numbers don’t lie dude. No one’s buying em.

Porsche cancelled their Mission X electric hyper car for the same reason.

Pagani sold every single car. Koengisegg has also sold every single gemera.

You’re making my argument for me

 

[Tomwa]

Check again about all those things.

Mission X is not cancelled.

My point about Pagani is, they didn't claim they would try to sell hundreds. They sold very few. In some part that is due to their limited production capability, but also knowing they just could not find 200 buyers at 2 million per car.

The Gemera? They will not sell 300 of them in the first year, I doubt they will ever sell 300 of them. Saying "all sold" when the car has not released yet is misleading marketing. The initial production run of 20 cars might be spoken for but clearly not all 300.

I'm not saying the Evija is super successful, but in its market point if they sell 40 of them it will be a success by pretty much any other hypercar measure.