Last updated on April 20th, 2020 at 10:13 pm
While Geneva, Frankfurt and even London might have been chosen for the event debut of a supercar, Lotus has chosen the Guangzhou Auto Show. When you need 130 people to put down a deposit of £250,000 for a car that will cost £2 million on delivery and then more for ongoing service and support: you need to be targeting the market with the deepest pockets. For electric vehicles, that market is China. WhichEV takes a look at the footage and checks out the Chinese market stats.
Writing our original Evija story evoked a sense of pride; with a bodyweight of just under 1,700Kg twinned with an all-electric engine capable of delivering close to 2,000 bhp for the driver, its power-to-weight ratio is simply stunning.
Should you choose to drive very sensibly, however, the Lotus Evija can offer a potential range of up to 250 miles. It's still not clear if this car will be ‘street legal' across all American States, which might also have been a factor in choosing the Guangzhou Auto Show as the launch venue. Plus, there is the sheer size of China's market.
In 2018, car sales in China reached 28 million units, versus 17 million in the USA (the world's second-largest market); that figure includes a large drop of 3% – the country's first decline in 20 years. Slower growth levels are set to follow.
“Look for the market to fall by up to 5 percent in 2019 because consumer confidence remains shaky”, said Michael Dunne, the CEO of ZoZoGo (former president of GM Indonesia), speaking recently to CNBC. “There’s simply too much uncertainty amidst a slowing economy, job security worries and then there is the big cloud of angst about US-China trade tensions”.
Even with those drops, the market will still dwarf every other nation state.
So what can we look forward to?
The exterior design is all about smooth lines and beauty, while the inside has a seriously spartan look, reminiscent of the Lotus Elise – albeit with rectangular steering wheel and digitised interface. Lotus has promised that it will be more comfortable to drive than the Aston Martin Valkyrie or McLaren Senna.
Design Director, Russell Carr, explained, “The Lotus Evija is a true Lotus, in that it elegantly balances stunning aesthetic forms with ingenious technical solutions to create a beautiful car with innovative design features. It will re-establish our brand on the global automotive stage and pave the way for further visionary models“.
We're certainly looking forward to how it compares to Pininfarina's Battista and the Karma SC2.
As more and more pure electric super/hypercars are launched, it can only help pressure the regular driver into seeing EVs in a more positive light. We all grew up watching F1 and drooling over the gas-guzzling Italian beauties of the 70s and 80s. Surely the next generation will grow up idolising products like the Evija.