Morphing bodywork among Lotus’ ideas for a future electric race car

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  This is the Lotus E-R9, an interpretation of what an electric endurance race car might look like in 2030. [credit: Lotus ]

Regular readers will know that we’re pretty enthusiastic about the future of Lotus, the UK-based maker of lightweight sports cars. Beset by financial troubles for much of its existence, Lotus Group is now owned by Geely, the Chinese company that was responsible for Volvo’s renaissance. The company has an all-new road car in development—a relatively attainable one called the Type 131 that’s in addition to the 1,971hp (2MW) limited-run Evija electric car.

We’ll have to wait a while before the Type 131 breaks cover, probably later this summer. In the meantime, Lotus Engineering (an engineering consultancy that’s part of Lotus Group, alongside Lotus Cars) has released some images of one of its latest projects. It’s an electric endurance racer called the E-R9, and as you might guess, it’s like catnip for those of us who think of ourselves as EV enthusiasts as well as racing fans.

“What we’ve tried to do is to push the boundaries of where we are technically today and extrapolate into the future. The Lotus E-R9 incorporates technologies which we fully expect to develop and be practical. Lotus has an amazing history of developing unique solutions, and we’ve done it many times in motorsport and with our road cars,” said Richard Hill, Lotus’ chief aerodynamicist.