The Lotus Evija is the Lotus that answered a simple question — how much car can this badge carry? — with 1,500 kW (2,039 PS from brushless DC electric motor. It was built from 2023, in the decade the industry is turning electric. Anthony Bushell and Barney Hatt under Russell Carr drew it.
How it came about
The Lotus Evija is a limited production electric sports car manufactured by Chinese owned British automobile manufacturer Lotus Cars. Unveiled in July 2019, it is the first electric vehicle introduced and manufactured by the company. Codenamed "Type 130" and "Omega", its production will be limited to 130 units.
The Evija prototype underwent high-speed testing in November 2019. A video was released on 21 November 2019 ahead of its debut later that day at the Guangzhou Auto Show. Lotus said it was planning thousands of miles of further road testing, on circuits in Europe and on Lotus's own track at Hethel. The Evija is set at US$2.3 million, before options and taxes.
The hardware
Power comes from brushless DC electric motor; 1,500 kW (2,039 PS is the published figure. It weighs 1887 kg. Work it out per tonne and you get about 795 horsepower — hypercar territory, where the limiting factor is the tyre, not the engine. It shifts through a single-speed at each engine. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Hethel, Norfolk, United Kingdom. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Jaguar Type 00, the Bugatti Centodieci, the Bugatti Mistral — show what else the money bought that year. Its Lotus stablemates include the Lotus 100T and the Lotus 101.