Dale Vince of Ecotricity has posted some musings and video on his Zerocarbonista blog about the progress his team have made with his wind-power Exige we we're telling you about a few months back and things seem to be coming along quite nicely. His team seems to be more than up for the challenge of turning the gas-powered Lotus Exige into an electric vehicle capable of doing 0 to 60 mph in less than four seconds. Of course, the Exige could already meet their top end goal of exceeding 100 mph but doing that with an electric car can be challenging. Like the Tesla Roadster their prototype will unavoidably be compared to, it won't make use of a transmission. Unlike the Roadster, they will also forgo a rear differential by using a separate electric motor for each rear wheel. The motors can spin at speeds of up to 8,000 RPM so their engineer has each one going through a reduction gear that will turn a lot of that speed into power torque. Using the final 2,000 RPM figure to estimate the top speed, our in-house math wizard has calculated this baby could do 148 mph, give or take 10 mph. Probably take. Hit the jump for more.

*Update: Video now after the break!

[Source: Zerocarbonista via Smartplanet]

Ecotricity founder Dale Vince is a guy with a dilemma we here at AutoblogGreen can empathize with. He's very environmentally aware yet he really likes fast cars. His solution? Build an electric sports car. Luckily, he's got wads of cash (and previous connections with Lotus) to make this sort of dream come true and, according to a post on his zerocarbonista blog, construction is already under way.

An Exige, judging by the rendition on his blog (picture above), is probably the donor chassis for this project and is currently lying in pieces in Norfolk, presumably at the Lotus shop there. No word on whether the new hybrid and electric car group within Lotus Engineering is involved with the undertaking but it seems rather likely. Of course we are familiar with another existing electric sports car with some Lotus DNA that Vince could have put his name on a list for but the required waiting time is probably too long for a guy so committed to green he only drove about 3,000 miles last year. Of course, if those miles were traveled in the Mercedes which appears with him in his explanatory video (after the jump) than that would be like 100,000 Prius miles.

Click the Exige for a high-res gallery

Back in mid-2006, Lotus unveiled a flex-fuel E85-capable Exige 265E that was being used as a technology demonstrator. Lotus has used the 265E to learn about optimizing the performance and efficiency of ethanol and flex-fuel engines. At this week's Geneva Motor Show, Lotus is unveiling the next stage of this research with the Exige 270E Tri-Fuel. This one is capable of running on gasoline, ethanol or methanol. Paging Bob Zubrin: your car is ready. With an E85-compatible engine, the process of calibrating the powerplant basically involves a two-dimensional continuum of possible fuels going from gasoline to E85. Adding methanol into the mix adds a third dimension to the map and makes the question much more complex. Detecting the fuel blend and determining the appropriate fuel flow for optimal performance is more difficult in this scenario, but Lotus has done this and upped the power to 270hp.

The other aspect of this project is the work that Lotus is doing with researchers on synthetic methanol as an alternative to bio-ethanol. Lotus describes a method of producing a carbon-neutral methanol fuel by extracting atmospheric carbon dioxide and reacting with hydrogen to produce methanol and water. The idea is that the hydrogen could be produced by renewable means such as solar, wind, or tidal power -- or any number of other methods, for that matter. This has many advantages over using either hydrogen or electricity directly. It eliminates the issue of storing and transporting hydrogen as well as the limitations of batteries. As a liquid fuel, methanol could be relatively easily distributed and used. There is, of course, a big question of the efficiency of the whole cycle. There are also other means of producing methanol and, of course, other synthetic alcohols like butanol.


[Source: Lotus]

The Lotus Exige is already one of the coolest high-performance cars around. One could argue that, at least as far as supercars go, this one is pretty green. The whole idea behind the Lotus Exige, and the Elise, is that very high performance can be achieved with smaller engines if the weight is suitably reduced. In fact, Lotus has been doing this for quite some time, starting with their Lotus 7 sports car of decades ago.

Fifth Gear got to find out what ethanol fuel can do to a cars performance when they tested an Exige that had been converted to run on E85. We have spoken about the performance advantages of E85 in the past. Here is a video that shows you exactly what we were talking about. With the higher octane rating of E85 and the lower burn temperatures, additional power can be made. If an engine manufacturer wanted to make the same amount of power, they could do so with a smaller and lighter engine, making the fuel consumption match that of its gasoline counterpart. As it stands at this time, though, there are no production cars that take advantage of this aspect of the renewable fuel. This leaves the door open for tuning shops to show us the way.

The video also points out another drawback of ethanol: the lack of refueling stations. One could argue, in the Midwestern states in the U.S. at least, that the corn lobbyists have done a good job of fixing that problem. With any luck, farmers will soon realize that corn is not the only, let alone the best, foodstock for the creation of ethanol, and we will see less corn ethanol, and more alternatives in this already alternative fuel.

This is actually not a new video, but seems relevant enough to bring back to the forefront. Thanks go out to Linton, a reader of the site for reminding us how green high-performance can be at the redline.

[Source: Fifth Gear]

Biofuels are pretty sexy (in the marketplace, at least). Sports cars also have a reputation of sexiness. Put the two together and what do you have? The Lotus Exige 265E. The "E" stands for ethanol.

The lightweight Lotus Exige 265E is, according to Lotus, "the most powerful road version of the Lotus Exige ever" and has approximately 265 horsepower. The car is powered by a modified 2ZZ VVTL-i supercharged and intercooled high revving 4-cylinder engine that is found in the standard Lotus Exige S. The results? 0-60 mph in 3.88 seconds, 0-100 mph in 9.2 seconds and a top speed of 158 mph. All this on E85. The engine modifications include additional fuel injectors on the inlet manifold and at the supercharger inlet.

Geraint Castleton-White, Head of Powertrain for Lotus Engineering said that the the Lotus Exige 265E technical demonstration vehicle is good for driving and for making a point. "We wanted to prove the point that green sportscars can also be very high performing sportscars. The fact that we have produced a research version of the Exige that is more powerful than the standard road car is a testament to the benefits of going green," he said.

[Source: Lotus]