THE 2,000+ HP LOTUS EVIJA CLAMS 3RD FASTEST 'RING TIME FOR A PRODUCTION CHASSIS CAR.
Lotus Cars has had quite the existence with more ups and downs than that massive rollercoaster at Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi. In recent times it looks like the company has gotten everything sorted out and we’re seeing some amazing cars starting to appear. The company is quintessentially British, and it comes with the usual British pride, but thing only really started geting properly on track when Chinese giants Geely and Etika Automotive invested in the company. Having financial and technical backing has helped the small brand in many ways, particularly in the new EV age thanks to how far ahead the Chinese companies are in terms of batteries and electric motors. The most amazing car to come out of this motoring collaboration has to be the Lotus Evija. Not only does the new all-electric hypercar have all the right curves in all the right places, it has some absolutely mind-blowing power and performance. The Lotus Evija was the first all-electric British offering and it’s also the most powerful of it’s kind, which is saying something in teh world of electric hypercars. The car was first seen in 2019 and since then it’s been developed and fine-tuned and it has just made the news again after a session at the famed Nurburgring. When it launched, the Evija was the most powerful EV we’d seen, and with the way the industry was progressing, we were sure it’s power figures would have been surpassed by now, but it hasn’t been. The electric hypercar is still rated to have more power than the Croation hypercar, the Rimac Nevera. You know, the one that now lays claim to no less than 23 Guinness World Records in the speed and performance categories including hitting 276 km/h in reverse. REVERSE!
The Lotus Evija boasts over 2,000 hp, almost 1,500 kW, and with that much power the expected performance is high. The Evija is powered by four electric motors, one on each wheel, and even though there is so much tech on board, it’s the lightest of the production EV hypercars with a weight of just 1,680 kg. When it was first revealed, Lotus claimed the car was capable of hitting 100 km/h in a smidge under 3 seconds with a top speed up at 320 km/h (we spotted 343 km/h in the footage), all while having a 345 km range. Properly impressive, but everyone compared the top speed to the Nevera, which is a stonking 412 km/h, a fair bit higher than the Evija, but top speed isn’t the only factor with powerful cars. Real world performance and driving dynamics mean more than outright pace, and we’ve finally been let in on how the Evija performs on track when driven at 10/10ths. On Friday 13 October 2023, a team from Lotus took the car to the famed Nurburgring to see what lap time it could put up. The Nevera has the ‘Ring record for an EV with a time of 7:05.29 at the hands of Croatian racing driver Martin Kodric. Well, we should say it HAD the record. The keyfob to a track-prepped Evija was handed to German race driver Dirk Müller, and he had one job - to obliterate every lap record possible. Müller didn’t shatter all the records, but he did ensure the Lotus Evija put in the 3rd fastest time we’ve seen at the modern layout of Nurburgring. The fastest to date is the purpose-built racecar from Porsche, the 919 Hybrid Evo that set a lap time of an insane 5:19.546 back in 2018. The second-fastest time belongs to the Volkswagen ID.R that set a time of 6:05.336 in 2019, which is properly impressive as it only has two motors and 500 kW of power. The Lotus Evija now claims the third spot in the rankings after it’s stint on track - the car posted a new official record lap time of a riducluoiusly fast 6:24.047 minutes. Boss level!
Take a look at the YouTube video from Nürburgring that shows the Lotus Evija hypercar shattering lap records with this amazing onboard footage - German driver Dirk Müller has nerves of titanium: Lotus Evija X Prototype Hypercar | 6:24.047 Official Lap Time | Nürburgring
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