Lotus has a goal with its latest model, the Evija, and it’s aiming right for the top, in terms of lap times – the British sports car maker has the Nurburgring Nordschleife production electric vehicle record in its sights.
A technical presentation for the 2,000 PS, 1,700 Nm pure-electric model revealed that the car’s battery pack has been designed to sustain delivery of the powertrain’s peak output for up to seven minutes before a self-preserving detune is required due to the heat generated, Pistonheads reported.
“Yes, we are thinking of the Nordschleife. We think we’ll be comfortably quicker than the Nio EP9 there,” Lotus principal platform engineer Louis Kerr confirmed to the website. While the Volkswagen ID. R took the outright EV lap record around the 20.8 km circuit with a time of six minutes 5.336 seconds, the German entrant was a purpose built racer, compared to the next-quickest Nio EP9 which is a road-legal EV that achieved a lap time of six minutes 45.9 seconds.
Active cooling employed for the Evija’s lithium-ion battery cells is the reason it can support fast-charging of up to 800 kW, the report said. With this, a full charge can be attained in just nine minutes, and although 800 kW chargers are yet to be commercially available, an existing fast-charger such as a 350 kW unit can get the Evija fully charged in 18 minutes.
The 70 kWh battery pack is also swappable, with Lotus exploring avenues for its customers to upgrade to more potent equipment as technology improves, Pistonheads reported. As for the Evija’s headline performance figures, the sub-three-second 0-100 km/h and sub-nine-second 0-300 km/h sprint times respectively are worst-case-scenario figures, meaning even better performance is possible.
For now, the all-time Nuburgring Nordschleife lap record remains the preserve of an ICE-powered, albeit electrified vehicle, the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo with a time of five minutes 19.55 seconds.
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