Lotus Low CO2 car – good idea, dull name
by Simon Handby in Your car on 20.03.08
Most people probably feel a frisson of excitement at the prospect of buckling themselves up in a Lotus and turning the ignition key, but not every one of the Norfolk-based company’s projects is a tyre-shredding sports rocket.
Lotus’ engineering arm has, with component manufacturer Continental, been working on a family car with a low emissions target but decent performance. The result is the Lotus Low CO2 car – a concept at the moment, but one that shows a fair bit of promise.
The car, essentially a Vauxhall Astra with a Lotus-designed powertrain, produces a low-ish 149g/km of carbon dioxide. So far, so unremarkable given that a Prius manages a paltry 104g/km, but Toyota’s greenest can’t touch the Lotus’ 158bhp peak power or its claimed nine-second 0-60mph figure, let alone its 130mph top speed.
Car magazine has given the Low CO2 a test drive, and reckons that it’s “more than on par with our long-term… Golf GTI” – not bad for something with a tiddly 1.5-litre engine. So what’s the secret?
The Low CO2 is a mild hybrid – a bit like the Prius, but with much less capacity to store electricity. It uses an electric motor for an extra zip, but it can’t store enough charge to pootle around town, menacing pedestrians with the engine switched off. Interestingly, it stores electricity in a set of supercapacitors – much lighter and longer-lived than a battery.
Like the lightweight Elise, which manages to be surprisingly fuel-efficient, the Low CO2 shows that greener cars needn’t be dull. There’s plenty of work to do before the concept makes it into production, though – not least on the name.
IMAGES by Flickr users dodge challenger1 and oskay
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