Best Auto Lotus Range Extender Style

Remember the Lotus Evora 414E Hybrid concept news from yesterday? Well, this is the petrol half of the hybrid package. It’s a solid cast, 1.2 litre, three-cylinder combustion engine which outputs 35kW at just 3500rpm. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s designed strictly as a supportive generator to electric motors.

Lotus says the engine was purely designed for hybrid vehicles and it is why the engine was made to be so compact. The light-weight aluminium monoblock design was casted in such a way that the cylinder head, exhaust manifold and block is all one cast. Lotus says this reduces cost and weight, as the entire engine only weighs 85kg.

So what’s the news? Well, the design caught the eye of Fagor Ederlan (the owner of a large, international automotive component supplier known as Fagor Ederlan Group) at last year’s Frankfurt Auto Show. Fagor Ederlan announced the group has signed a partnership with Lotus Engineering for the production of Range Extender technology. So expect to see the engine mated to various Lotus, and possibly other manufacturer’s, hybrids in the near future.