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Lotus Type 135: electric successor to Elise to share platform with Alpine

Last updated Apr 14, 2022

At the end of August, the British company Lotus Cars, owned by 51% of the Chinese holding Geely, announced the expansion of the model line with electric crossovers and a Chinese-made 4-door coupe, but Lotus will also have purebred sports cars. For them, a modular E-Sports platform has been developed, providing for at least three different layouts. The first production model on this platform will be a light sports car, so far known under the factory index Type 135, whose production will begin in 2026.

At the beginning of the year, Lotus announced the end of production of the old lineup (Elise, Exige and Evora), and in the middle of summer introduced its latest gasoline model, named Emira. After Emira, all Lotus novelties will be strictly electric. The company is already working on a potential successor to the Emira, the affordable Type 135 electric sports car that was officially announced in August along with two crossovers (Type 132 and Type 134) and a 4-door coupe (Type 133).

The Type 132, Type 133 and Type 134 will be built on the Lotus Premium “everyday car” platform and will be built in China at a 150,000-car-a-year plant under construction in Wuhan. It will also house the Chinese headquarters of Lotus Technology, which will oversee the mass production of Lotus models and the sale of engineering services to other companies.

In turn, the old, British wing of Lotus, together with the historic factory in Hethel, will continue to work on full-fledged sports cars – their own modular E-Sports platform is being prepared for them. Its development began a year ago as part of the LEVA (Lightweight Electric Vehicle Architecture) project, launched with the financial support of the British government. In September of this year, Lotus showed the E-Sports platform and gave its basic specifications, and today the British magazine Autocar shared additional details.

E-Sports platform rear subframe

At the moment, the E-Sports platform assumes the appearance on it of three types of electric vehicles with a common rear subframe, to which the rear suspension (multi-link, with elements made on a 3D printer) and a power unit with one or two electric motors are attached. There are two wheelbase options – 2470 mm and 2650 mm, and two layout options for the 800-volt battery – vertical (the British call such a battery “chest”) and horizontal (“skayboard”).

Short and long wheelbase versions of the E-Sports vertical battery platform.

The “chest” is located behind the backs of the driver's and the only passenger's seats and has a capacity of 66.4 kWh on a short-wheelbase car and 99.6 kWh on a long-wheelbase (also double). The power reserve on one charge is about 480 and 725 km, respectively. These figures may seem exaggerated, but Lotus relies on the low weight of its cars and good aerodynamics, while not a word is said about aluminum in the design – apparently, the key elements of the E-Sports platform are made of steel.

A long-wheelbase version of the E-Sports platform with a horizontal array and a 2+2 landing formula.

The third version of the platform with a skateboard-type battery with a capacity of 66.4 kWh is designed for long-wheelbase electric vehicles with a 2 + 2 seating formula. The second row of seats makes it impossible to install a “chest”, so the battery is located under the floor, and the seating height is increased by about 100 mm. Versions with a vertical battery are needed to get the lowest possible driving position and the maximum feeling of control over the car.

It is planned to supply a short-wheelbase sports car with a single electric motor with a capacity of 350 kW (476 hp), while long-wheelbase ones can have one (350 kW) or two electric motors on the rear axle with a total power of 650 kW (884 hp). The landing bath for all three layouts is unified as much as possible, but the company has not yet shown the front module of the E-Sports platform. In the front module, according to British colleagues, electric motors can also be located, and then the electric car will be all-wheel drive.

Lotus Cars managing director Matt Windle, cited by Autocar, says that in theory even a crossover could be made on the E-Sports platform, but Lotus itself does not have such a task. Now the British branch of the company is working specifically on the short-wheelbase version of the sports car, that is, the Type 135 model, which will appear in 2026. It is too early to say what models will be released after the Type 135, and the presented layout options are intended mainly for potential customers of the Lotus Technology engineering structure. So far, the only named customer is the French brand Alpine (owned by Renault): its electric sports car is likely to be based on a short-wheelbase version of the E-Sports platform, but a debut date has not yet been named.

In fact, the Lotus Type 135 is the only confirmed model on the E-Sports platform so far. Lotus will try to make the Type 135 as affordable as the petrol Elise was, meaning it would cost no more than £50,000 in the base, but this can't be guaranteed right now – everything will depend on the cost of components at the start of production.