Yahoo Finance This Is the Electric Vehicle Architecture That Will Underpin Every New Lotus Sports Car
Lotus has revealed today the electric vehicle architecture that will underpin its next generation of cars. Called Project LEVA (Lightweight Electric Vehicle Architecture), it's a modular design that can incorporate several wheelbases, battery layouts, and electric motors. This is the platform that every sports car from Lotus will use for the foreseeable future.
The Project LEVA architecture has been designed to accommodate batteries placed in either a "chest" layout, where the cells are stacked behind the cabin, or a "slab" layout, where they're positioned like a skateboard under the cabin. Depending on the size of the car and how many seats the car is supposed to have, the vehicle can be equipped with a single motor making 469 hp or twin motors pushing out 872 hp. Here's the full chart shared by Lotus:
Lotus says the rear subframe in Project LEVA is 37 percent lighter than the unit found in its last ICE-powered car, the Emira. The company claims we should see the first production vehicle with this architecture on the roads by 2026; the company previously said it plans to have four EVs on the road by 2026. It also plans to market the platform to third parties through its Lotus Engineering arm.
“Project LEVA is as revolutionary now as the Elise architecture was in 1996," Lotus head of vehicle concepts Richard Rackham said in a statement. "In true Lotus spirit, significant weight savings have been achieved throughout, with a focus on ultimate performance, efficiency and safety being engineered into the structure from the outset."
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