Lotus intends to go for the production-EV record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany, platform engineer Louis Kerr told C/D.

The company is targeting the NIO EP9, which set a production-EV record of 6:45 there in 2017.

Lotus says its Evija electric hypercar will have a top speed over 200 mph and a sub-nine-second zero-to-186-mph time.

As we suspected, the Evija has indeed been designed to be able to set a new production EV record at the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany. We spoke to platform engineer Louis Kerr at the car's official unveiling in London, where he admitted the battery's seven-minute endurance will give the time required for what will almost certainly be a hugely fast lap.



"Yes, we are thinking of the Nordschleife," he confirmed. "We think we'll be comfortably quicker than the NIO EP9 around there."

Earlier this year, the Volkswagen I.D. R set an outright EV record around the famous track of 6:05.336, but the NIO's 6:45, set in 2017, is still the fastest time from what is nominally a production EV.

John Wycherley

Kerr also said that the Evija's spectacular acceleration figures are effectively worst-case scenarios, meaning that the zero-to-60-mph time of the final version could well be closer to two seconds than three, and time could also come from the sub-nine-second zero-to-186-mph time being claimed for the car.



We also got a response from Lotus Cars CEO Phil Popham on why production aspirations for the Evija have grown so dramatically, from the 20 or so that insiders told us were likely early this year to the limit of 130 the company announced this week. "If something's worth doing, it's worth doing properly, isn't it?" he said. Several contracts with buyers had apparently been signed before the car was publicly shown.

Buyers in the U.S. will be able to buy the car if they want to, and if they can afford the $2.1 million pretax price. But the Evija will not be going through federal approval and would therefore need to be either driven exclusively on track, or through the complication of Show and Display registration where permitted.

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