Lotus Eco-Elise: Showing the Rest of the Carmakers How It’s Done

| понедельник, 7 сентября 2009 г.

Lotus makes some great cars; they’re high powered, light weight, handling focused, driver’s cars; and now they’re trying to make them green too. Lotus has taken the Elise S supercar and and turned it into an Eco Superhero, just to show they can. This is all apparently part of Lotus’s new green focused business plan. They’ve already been involved in helping create the 100% electric Tesla Roadster; and at Lotus’s Hethel England headquarters they recycle almost 60% of their waste and have been able to reduce water usage by 11%, electricity consumption by 14%, and gas by 30%. Clearly they’re dedicated to this whole green thing.

To reduce the amount of nasty solvent emissions in the Eco-Elise, they switched to water based paint, which has the double effect of required a lower temperature to cure than the regular paint, which in turn saves energy. They used a low energy grown hemp resin for the body work, and eco-friendly, dye free wool for the interior. Plus It has solar panels on the roof to generate energy for the electronics so that power doesn’t have to put a dent in fuel efficiency.

Lotus cars are known for that special red light shifting prompt that shows drivers when to shift to maximize speed and power. The Eco Elise employs a ”green light” prompt that helps the driver time their gear changes for maximum fuel efficiency instead. Brilliant.

It looks like Lotus is taking a ‘bigger picture’ approach with the Lotus Eco-Elise. It’s not just about cutting back on emissions from the car itself, but cutting back energy usage across the board, from start to finish.



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