Lotus is under way with customer deliveries of its 2011bhp Evija electric hypercar, roughly four years after originally planned.
The brand’s halo car was revealed in mid-2019 and due to be with its first customers by the end of 2020. Shortly after its unveiling, though, Lotus pushed back deliveries to mid-2021 due to Covid-related development delays.
It was only earlier this year, though, that the firm was ready to hand over the keys to the £2.4 million flagship’s first customer. The first example arrived with its owner in January, but it's not yet confirmed how many have since been produced.
Built alongside the Lotus Emira at Lotus’s historic Hethel HQ, the quad-motor Evija is one of the world’s quickest road cars, capable of getting from 0-190mph in just 9.1sec and reaching a top speed of 218mph.
It was also originally claimed to be “the most powerful production car in the world”, with a target output of 1973bhp, and that figure has since been revised to 2011bhp, giving it an even greater edge over its 1877bhp Rimac Nevera and Pininfarina Battista rivals.
Lotus’s new European CEO, Dan Balmer, confirmed that the “Evija is now in handover mode”, attributing the four-year delay to the global pandemic that arrived at around the point it was due to launch.
“At a critical point in the project delivery, we hit Covid, and that effectively stopped any global testing on that car, and a lot of our supply base and technology partners in that car were affected by it as well, so that was critical,” Balmer told Autocar.
He projected that Hethel will be producing the limited-run Evija for the next two years to “fulfil the demand from customers” but stopped short of confirming whether Lotus still plans to cap the build run at 130 units.
Autocar first drove an Evija prototype in April 2021 and expects to get behind the wheel of a production-spec car in spring 2025.
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Good looking from front and side but the back end looks like it was designed by someone going for the BatMobile Mk3 look.
Hmmm, I wonder how many prospective buyers have got their lawyers trying to get them out of buying?
i wonder if Lotus have updated the battery pack, a lot has happened in battery development since 2020 and this was only quite light because of the insufficient 75kWh pack.
I fear that this is somewhat irrelevant now, just too late. Wouldn't you just get, or have already bought, a Pinin Batista instead?
I think this looks way cooler than the Batista, which in turn is better looking than the Rimac. But the market doesn't really seem to be there for any of them.
Simple gaslighting for Lotus to blame the delay on the pandemic. If the order book was sold out and customers were clamouring for their cars, you imagine things would have happened a bit quicker.
Most importantly, what's it like to drive? When will journalists get to review the car. There hasn't even been much in-depth reporting since its reveal five years ago.
There's a strong whiff of bs around Lotus right now, with the company publicly insisting everything is great despite all the evidence to the contrary. Now the design team that brought you the 2.5 tonne monsters seems to be taking responsibility for the sports cars too, so even the claim that these will continue to be developed in Hethel is dubious.
You've got to worry about Lotus future really.
Didn't they revise their sales targets down by 75% (!) due to the tariffs imposed by the EU and the US on Chinese made vehicles?
That sounds like an unviable business model to me. Let's hope not
I believe you're not trying hard enough to think like somebody who spends £2.4m on a car.There's a reason why expensive cars sometimes have buttons to easily disconnect the battery and it is that these people rarely even drive.You're projecting your sensible choices on them...
good looking car, especially when compared to a Rimac or Bugatti